It has been fashionable in the twentieth century not only to debunk myth, ... but to pretend that that reasonable and educated people could avoid the embarrassment of religion and the risk of metaphysics by sticking close to demonstrable facts and testable hypotheses. However, in the course of reducing our beliefs and hopes to certainties and proofs, we impoverished and deluded ourselves. The modern anti-myth reduced human life to a story without a point, a tale told by an idiot, a process without a purpose, a journey without a goal, an affair without a climax (Godot never comes), an accidental collision of mindless atoms. ... We have hardly noticed that economics, technology and politics have become the new myth and metaphysic. We haven't avoided myth and metaphysics, only created demeaning ones.
Sam KeenRelated topics
century climax close comes course demonstrable economics embarrassment human hypothesis idiot journey metaphysic metaphysics myth ones point politics pretend purpose reducing religion risk story tale technology tell factsRelated quotes
Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers, - Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin... Alas the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to lawyers, - nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other, - her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit, - that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever, - not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All, - rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in Common.
Thomas Pynchon
England is the country of the English... England is the stage on which the drama of English history was played and the setting within which the English became conscious of themselves as a people ... when politicians and preachers attempt to frighten and cajole the English into pretending away the distinction between themselves and people of other nations and other origins, they are engaged in undermining the foundation upon which democratic government by consent and peaceable civilised society in this country are supported ... those who at the end of the twentieth century wish to keep alive that consciousness of being English, which seemed so effortless and uncontroversial to our forefathers, will discover that they are called upon, if they take their purpose seriously, to confront the most arrogant and imposing prejudices of their time.
Enoch Powell
I find it amazing now that my first economics class, taught by Alan Sweezy, used John Maynard Keynes's General Theory of Income and Employment as the textbook. Although this book is one of the most influential works of the twentieth century, it makes a really lousy textbook. Moreover, since I now regard Keynes's analysis as seriously flawed, it is surprising that I enjoyed the course so much. As a student, I appreciated the simple way that the Keynesian model explained the workings and failings of the overall economy. Especially appealing were the clever policy remedies, such as increased government spending and tax cuts, that Keynes recommended to combat unemployment. Too bad that I discovered later that the model was theoretically and empirically deficient!
Robert Barro
The problem is this: Nature has assembled all these species on this planet. The human species is no more important than any other species on this planet. For some reason, man accorded himself a superior place in this scheme of things. He thinks that he is created for some grander purpose than, if I could give a crude example, the mosquito that is sucking his blood. What is responsible for this is the value system that we have created. And the value system has come out of the religious thinking of man. Man has created religion because it gives him a cover. This demand to fulfill himself, to seek something out there was made imperative because of this self-consciousness in you which occurred somewhere along the line of the evolutionary process. Man separated himself from the totality of nature.
Thomas Ligotti
I adopt Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, therefore, subject to the production of proof that physiological species may be produced by selective breeding; just as a physical philosopher may accept the undulatory theory of light, subject to the proof of the existence of the hypothetical ether; or as the chemist adopts the atomic theory, subject to the proof of the existence of atoms; and for exactly the same reasons, namely, that it has an immense amount of primâ facie probability: that it is the only means at present within reach of reducing the chaos of observed facts to order; and lastly, that it is the most powerful instrument of investigation which has been presented to naturalists since the invention of the natural system of classification and the commencement of the systematic study of embryology.
Thomas Henry Huxley