Dale Easley's Favorite Quotations

Dale Easley's Favorite Quotations

Keen, Sam

Hymns to an Unknown God

Keen, Sam

For me, it has been marriage and the daily discipline of living in a family, rather than any formal religious practice, that has softened my ego, taught me compassion, and allowed my eros and spirit to lie down together. (p. 178)

Nowadays, among Greens, radical environmentalists, and Luddite romantics, it is popular to recast the myth of the fall so that man's (male, rational, abstract, controlling) reason and technological genius are the snake in the Garden. Supposedly, our alienation is the result of our unseemly pride in seeking control over nature. This shortsighted condemnation of science and technology overlooks the changing history of perceptions of the sacred. The gradual discovery of the power of the human mind and will to understand and alter nature is one of the great chapters in the ongoing story of Spirit.
Think for a moment about the unnecessary disease and suffering that were simply accepted as a part of the human condition before we mounted an assault on malaria, yellow fever, plague, polio, leprosy, tuberculosis, and famine. At their best, science and technology spring from the sacred power to trascend the givenness of nature that is immanent within the human mind and will. It does violence to this genuine reverence to demonize the impulse to seek a measure of control over nature. From the beginning of the investigation of nature, we experienced our capacity to understand and change as an awesome and marvelous divine gift. Reason, science, technology developed out of an epiphany. To have refused the gift of power would have been irreverence. The prodigal sons and daughters of Mother Nature would have remained forever passive-dependent children had we not had the courage to eat the apple and set out on the long journey of the spirit that began on the far side of Eden. (p 189)

Someone once asked Marshall McLuhan why television reports only bad news. He is said to have replied that television is full of good news, but it is only in the commercials. No matter how many massacres are reported in the news of the day, every few minutes a commercial promises us happiness and salvation if we purchase Brand X rather than Brand Z. In rapid succesion, television brings us the bad news and the gospel of prosperity and progress, images of children starving in the Sudan and diet plans that transform overweight Americans into slim beauties. (p.~276-277)

Hymns to an Unknown God
Keen, Sam
For me, it has been marriage and the daily discipline of living in a family, rather than any formal religious practice, that has softened my ego, taught me compassion, and allowed my eros and spirit to lie down together. (p. 178) Nowadays, among Greens, radical environmentalists, and Luddite romantics, it is popular to recast the myth of the fall so that man's (male, rational, abstract, controlling) reason and technological genius are the snake in the Garden. Supposedly, our alienation is the result of our unseemly pride in seeking control over nature. This shortsighted condemnation of science and technology overlooks the changing history of perceptions of the sacred. The gradual discovery of the power of the human mind and will to understand and alter nature is one of the great chapters in the ongoing story of Spirit. Think for a moment about the unnecessary disease and suffering that were simply accepted as a part of the human condition before we mounted an assault on malaria, yellow fever, plague, polio, leprosy, tuberculosis, and famine. At their best, science and technology spring from the sacred power to trascend the givenness of nature that is immanent within the human mind and will. It does violence to this genuine reverence to demonize the impulse to seek a measure of control over nature. From the beginning of the investigation of nature, we experienced our capacity to understand and change as an awesome and marvelous divine gift. Reason, science, technology developed out of an epiphany. To have refused the gift of power would have been irreverence. The prodigal sons and daughters of Mother Nature would have remained forever passive-dependent children had we not had the courage to eat the apple and set out on the long journey of the spirit that began on the far side of Eden. (p 189) Someone once asked Marshall McLuhan why television reports only bad news. He is said to have replied that television is full of good news, but it is only in the commercials. No matter how many massacres are reported in the news of the day, every few minutes a commercial promises us happiness and salvation if we purchase Brand X rather than Brand Z. In rapid succesion, television brings us the bad news and the gospel of prosperity and progress, images of children starving in the Sudan and diet plans that transform overweight Americans into slim beauties. (p.~276-277)

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