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We think we wish to join the wild animals in the jungle but will not tolerate the wild animals in our kitchens. There are too many ants, we think, reaching for the spray, when it is equally true that there are too many humans.
“Time slows, swirls, repeats. Each step is hard going, the heavy pack peeling me back off the slope or jamming me into it. Spindrift hisses into my face, frets my cheeks. I murmur a mantra to myself: Take the time that needs to be taken, take the time that needs to be taken.”
― Underland: A Deep Time Journey
― Underland: A Deep Time Journey
“Thinking is one way of doing, and words are one way of thinking”
― The Birthday of the World and Other Stories
― The Birthday of the World and Other Stories
“I’ve always heard that it’s better to give than to receive, but someone has to receive, and I’ve learned to do it.”
― Ten Million Steps: Nimblewill Nomad's Epic 10-Month Trek from the Florida Keys to Québec
― Ten Million Steps: Nimblewill Nomad's Epic 10-Month Trek from the Florida Keys to Québec
“If something did go terribly wrong in human history – and given the current state of the world, it’s hard to deny something did – then perhaps it began to go wrong precisely when people started losing that freedom to imagine and enact other forms of social existence, to such a degree that some now feel this particular type of freedom hardly even existed, or was barely exercised, for the greater part of human history.”
― The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
― The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
“Max Planck once remarked that new scientific truths don’t replace old ones by convincing established scientists that they were wrong; they do so because proponents of the older theory eventually die, and generations that follow find the new truths and theories to be familiar, obvious even. We are optimists. We like to think it will not take that long.
In fact, we have already taken a first step. We can see more clearly now what is going on when, for example, a study that is rigorous in every other respect begins from the unexamined assumption that there was some ‘original’ form of human society; that its nature was fundamentally good or evil; that a time before inequality and political awareness existed; that something happened to change all this; that ‘civilization’ and ‘complexity’ always come at the price of human freedoms; that participatory democracy is natural in small groups but cannot possibly scale up to anything like a city or a nation state.
We know, now, that we are in the presence of myths.”
― The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
In fact, we have already taken a first step. We can see more clearly now what is going on when, for example, a study that is rigorous in every other respect begins from the unexamined assumption that there was some ‘original’ form of human society; that its nature was fundamentally good or evil; that a time before inequality and political awareness existed; that something happened to change all this; that ‘civilization’ and ‘complexity’ always come at the price of human freedoms; that participatory democracy is natural in small groups but cannot possibly scale up to anything like a city or a nation state.
We know, now, that we are in the presence of myths.”
― The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Liam’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Liam’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2,623 books
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448 friends
641 books
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62 friends
607 books
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463 friends
7,095 books
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18 friends
950 books
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124 friends
664 books
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34 friends
799 books
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80 friends
1,447 books
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114 friends
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