Society

Alan Watts – Existence Is Weird

Awareness, Consciousness, Energy, Existence, Experience, Identity, Linguistics, Love, Metaphysics, Nature, Perception, Philosophy, Power, Reality, Society, The Unknown, Unity

“It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things normally are, is odd – uncanny and highly improbable. G. K. Chesterton once said that it is one thing to be amazed at a gorgon or a griffin, creatures which do not exist; but it is quite another and much higher thing to be amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe, creatures which do exist and look as if they don’t. This feeling of universal oddity includes a basic and intense wondering about the sense of things. Why, of all possible worlds, this colossal and apparently unnecessary multitude of galaxies in a mysteriously curved space-time continuum, these myriads of differing tube-species playing frantic games of one-upmanship, these numberless ways of “doing it” from the elegant architecture of the snow crystal or the diatom to the startling magnificence of the lyrebird or the peacock?”
– Alan Watts

Cornel West – Truth

Awareness, Consciousness, Existence, Experience, Film, Identity, Linguistics, Love, Nature, Perception, Philosophy, Psychonaut, Reality, Society, The Unknown

“The language of failure and disappointment, disenchantment, disillusionment, is a little bit Romantic for me…. Why not have a sense of gratitude that you’re able to do as much as you did? That you’re able to love as much and think as much and play as much? Why think you need the whole thing? Where’s the expectation that you need the whole thing coming from?…

America’s a very fragile, democratic experiment predicated on the disposition of the lands of indigenous people and the enslavement of African people and the subjugation of workers and women and the marginalization of gays and lesbians. It has great potential, but this notion that somehow we had it all or ever will have it all, that’s got to go, you’ve got to push it to the side.

And once you push all that to the side, then it tends to evacuate the language of disappointment and the language of failure. And you say, OK, how much have we done? How have we been able to do it? Can we do more? In some situations you can’t do more. It’s like trying to break-dance at seventy-five, you can’t do it anymore! You were a master at sixteen; it’s over! You can’t make love at eighty the way you did at twenty, so what? Time is real!”
– Cornel West

Clips from “Examined Life” by Astra Taylor – Trailer

Michio Kaku – Will Mankind Destroy Itself?

Awareness, Consciousness, Cosmology, Earth, Energy, Existence, Nature, Peace, Perspective, Power, Reality, Science, Society, Space, The Unknown, Time, Unity

“It’s humbling to realize that the developmental gulf between a minuscule ant colony and our modern human civilization is only a tiny fraction of the distance between a Type 0 and a Type III civilization – a factor of 100 billion billion, in fact. Yet we have such a highly regarded view of ourselves, we believe a Type III civilization would find us irresistible and would rush to make contact with us. The truth is, however, they may be as interested in communicating with humans as we are keen to communicate with ants.”
– Michio Kaku

Mister Rogers & the US Senate

Art, Awareness, Compassion, Consciousness, Energy, Existence, Experience, Identity, Linguistics, Love, Peace, Perception, Philosophy, Reality, Society, Unity

“This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end each program by saying, ‘You’ve made this day a special day by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are.’ And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service.”
– Fred Rogers