Nature Vs Culture Quotes

“Needs are imposed by nature. Wants are sold by society.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Nature and Passion are powerful, but they are also full of grief. True happiness would have the calm and order of bourgeois routine without its utilitarian ignobility and boredom.”
― W.H. Auden, The Enchafed Flood

“Our most cultural state is one of total certainty—which is the reason those of us who are most certain are those who are most out of touch with nature (i.e., reality).”
― Anthony Marais, Delusionism

“Humanity is as horrified and repulsed by real nature as it is by real death. Thus, we strike back against this formidable opponent with our sharpest weapon: our imagination. From this noble tool—born of necessity and elevated to beauty—culture was born, and the war against nature begun.”
― Anthony Marais, Delusionism

“In effect, we know from Darwin that there are only four characteristics necessary in order to get adaptive evolution, right? If you have reproduction, variation, differential success, and an environment of limited resources, you're going to get adaptive evolution.
When we set up an economic system, or a political system...*it evolves*. Things evolve within it. And if we don't anticipate that what we write down in our documents about what we're trying to accomplish does not have the capacity to overwhelm whatever niche we have set up and that we will ultimately see the creatures that are supported by the environment that we created, then we will never get this right. Because we will always be fooled by our own intentions, and we will create structures that create predators of an arbitrary kind.
So we need to start thinking evolutionarily, because that's the mechanism for shaping society into something of a desirable type rather than a monstrous type.
[...]
So let's say we're talking about a political structure...and we know we don't like corruption...and we're going to set a penalty for attempting to corrupt the system. OK, now what you've done is you've built a structure in which evolution is going to explore the questions, 'What kind of corruptions are invisible?' and 'What kinds of penalties are tolerable from the point of view of discovering how to alter policy in the direction of some private interest?' Once you've set that up, if you let it run, evolutionarily it will create a genius corruptor, right? It will generate something that is capable of altering the functioning of the system without being spotted, and with being only slightly penalized -- and then you'll have no hope of confronting it, because it's going to be better at shifting policy than you will be at shifting it back.

So what you have to do is, you have to build a system in which there *is no selection* that allows for this process to explore mechanisms for corrupting the system, right? You may have to turn the penalties up much higher than you would think, so that any attempt to corrupt the system is ruinous to the thing that attempts it. So the thing never evolves to the next stage, because it keeps going extinct, right? That's a system that is resistant to the evolution of corruption, but you have to understand that it's an evolutionary puzzle in the first place in order to accomplish that goal.
[...]
We sort of have this idea that we inherited from the wisdom of the 50s that genes are these powerful things lurking inside of us that shift all of this stuff that we can't imagine they would have control over, and there's some truth in it. But the larger truth is that so much of what we are is built into the software layer, and the software layer is there because it is rapidly changeable. That's why evolution shifted things in that direction within humans. And we need to take advantage of that. We need to be responsible for altering things carefully in the software, intentionally, in order to solve problems and basically liberate people and make life better for as many people as possible, rather than basically throw up our hands because we are going to claim that these things live at the genetic layer and therefore what can we do?”
― Bret Weinstein

“What a forced lifestyle our technology, our inventions imposed on our lives when we tried to live synonymously with computers; when we stepped inside their world, we left the natural one behind.”
― Katie Kacvinsky, Awaken

“Culture preaches monogamy while Nature repeats it—over and over again.”
― Anthony Marais, Delusionism

“Thanks be then to nature for this unsociableness, for this envious jealousy and vanity, for this insatiable desire for possession and for power..

Man wishes concord; but nature knows better what is good for his species; and she wills discord, in order that man may be impelled to a new exertion of his powers, and to the further development of his natural capacities.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Doth the universe lie within the compass of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but a leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us? Whither leads yonder forest-track? Backward to the settlement, thou sayest! Yes; but, onward, too! Deeper it goes, and deeper into the wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step; until some few miles hence the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white man's tread. There thou art free! So brief a journey would bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy!”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Nothing distresses the civilized person like unfettered nature. The Grand Canyon seen from behind the railing is indeed a splendid sight, but as soon as the desert reclaims your golf course that is another matter altogether.”
― Anthony Marais

“The biologists are a ruthless bunch, and quite devoid of any particular regard for doctors. In theory they don’t even want a surgeon to patch up a man who has been hit on the head with a brick, the argument being that it is better for the human race to be able to dodge bricks. Which is a correct viewpoint, I suppose, unless it happens to be your head and your brick.”
― Dr. Blake F. Donaldson, Strong Medicine

“Beauty in Decay!
.
.
I cannot rest easy in the rush of the hour,
where voices echo sharp as machines,
and the headlines knit a web
of ash, steel, and sorrow.

Last evening, in a restful orchard,
I found an old tree split by storms.
Its hollow cradling a single blossom,
pale and trembling in the dusk.

I left it untouched,
its fragile defiance far brighter
than the glow of any city's burning light.”
― Monika Ajay Kaul