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The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.
LEADERS ARE VISIONARIES WITH A POORLY DEVELOPED SENSE OF FEAR AND NO CONCEPT OF THE ODDS AGAINST THEM. —Robert Jarvik
To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were. Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world that poses no threat?
the only environmental factors that continued to matter were those that fought back, that countered new strategies with newer ones, that forced their enemies to scale ever-greater heights just to stay alive. Ultimately, the only enemy that mattered was an intelligent one.
We all come into the story halfway through, we all catch up as best we can, and we’re all gonna die before it ends.”
PREDATORS RUN FOR THEIR DINNER. PREY RUN FOR THEIR LIVES.
PROBLEMS CANNOT BE SOLVED AT THE SAME LEVEL OF AWARENESS THAT CREATED THEM. —Albert Einstein
This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: You hurt it, and keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.
Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing—irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness. By now you don’t experience the world as it exists at all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions. Shortcuts. Lies. Whole species is agnosiac by default. Rorschach does nothing to you that you don’t already do to yourselves.”
YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU MAD. —Aldous Huxley
Maybe nobody’s told you that even waking souls are only slaves in denial.
“You have a naïve understanding of evolutionary processes. There’s no such thing as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn’t matter whether a solution’s optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternatives.”
NOT UNTIL WE ARE LOST DO WE BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND OURSELVES. —Henry David Thoreau
