Stuart

“With more and more decision making and work done by robots, what will be left for humans to do? Do we really want to compete biologically with robot technology by using brain implants and genetically improved intelligence and social behavior? This choice would mean a sharp departure away from the human nature we have inherited, and a fundamental change in the human condition. Now we are talking about a problem best solved within the humanities, and one more reason the humanities are all-important. While I’m at it, I hereby cast a vote for existential conservatism, the preservation of biological human nature as a sacred trust. We are doing very well in science and technology. Let’s agree to keep it up, and move both along even faster. But let’s also promote the humanities, that which makes us human, and not use science to mess around with the wellspring of this, the absolute and unique potential of the human future.”
― Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence

“No, no – you don’t understand!” he sputtered, his face growing red not just with anger but with embarrassment, which seemed to make him angrier still. “Space is empty; it is a void in which the atoms move freely. There is no ‘notbeing;’ everything is in process of becoming. Everything is composed of atoms which are mobile and invisible, whirling in the void.” “Then the void is a place within which this takes place, where all these invisible atoms are in – what did you say? – constant motion.” “Yes, precisely,” he replied, relieved to discover that I was not quite the dunce he had begun to fear I was. “The atoms move inside space, inside the void, creating through their combination everything that is.” “Space, or void, then is not made up of atoms?” “No, because then there would be no place for them to move, as you yourself just pointed out.” “I’m still not quite sure what you mean. Everything is in process of becoming – doesn’t that mean that nothing is, that there is no being?” “No, because everything is always changing; everything that comes into being passes away.” “But how can anything ‘come into being,’ if ‘being’ does not exist?” “We define things, put them in categories, but nothing is exactly what the definition says it is.”
― D. W. Buffa, Helen

“The music that I was playing and writing in those early years, that I was importing to Europe, was quintessentially New York music in a way that I always hoped it would be. I wanted my concert music to be as distinctive as Zappa at the Fillmore East, and I think I ended up doing that.”
― Philip Glass, Words Without Music: A Memoir

“In America, for example, it is possible in most places to openly debate different views on religious spirituality—including the nature and even the existence of God, providing it is in the context of theology and philosophy. But it is forbidden to question closely, if at all, the creation myth—the faith—of another person or group, no matter how absurd. To disparage anything in someone else’s sacred creation myth is “religious bigotry.” It is taken as the equivalent of a personal threat.”
― Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence