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Quote by Susan Blackmore

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Susan Blackmore
Susan Blackmore

Susan Blackmore is a British writer and cognitive scientist known for her in-depth research into consciousness, death, and parapsychology. Her work explores the nature of human consciousness and how we understand death and life. more

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“"Natural" is a very dangerous word to use about sexuality ... Our society's notions of normality are completely fake and meta-trendy, since they rely on the changing standards of superstition, religion, Christianity and gender bias to define themselves. Americans, in particular, exhibit very childish reactions to sexual practices that are new to them, much like little kids who are offered a vegetable they haven't seen before: "That's disgusting!" "But darling, you haven't even tried it!" "I don't care, I hate it, I hate it!”

“There is not unmitigated ill in the sharpest of this world's sorrows; I touch not the sore of thy guilt; but of human griefs I counsel thee, Cast off the weakness of regret, and gird thee to redeem thy loss: Thou has gained, in the furnace of affliction, self-knowledge, patience and humility, And these be as precious ore, that waiteth the skill of the coiner: Despise not the blessings of adversity, nor the gain thou hast earned so hardly, And now thou hast drained the bitter, take heed that thou lose not the sweet.”

“Hyper-selectionism has been with us for a long time in various guises; for it represents the late nineteenth century's scientific version of the myth of natural harmony all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds (all structures well designed for a definite purpose in this case). It is, indeed, the vision of foolish Dr. Pangloss, so vividly satirized by Voltaire in Candide the world is not necessarily good, but it is the best we could possibly have.”

“I despair of persuading people to drop the familiar and comforting tactic of dichotomy. Perhaps, instead, we might expand the framework of debates by seeking other dichotomies more appropriate than, or simply different from, the conventional divisions. All dichotomies are simplifications, but the rendition of a conflict along differing axes of several orthogonal dichotomies might provide an amplitude of proper intellectual space without forcing us to forgo our most comforting tool of thought.”

“The silliest and most tendentious of baseball writing tries to wrest profundity from the spectacle of grown men hitting a ball with a stick by suggesting linkages between the sport and deep issues of morality, parenthood, history, lost innocence, gentleness, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum . (The effort reeks of silliness because baseball is profound all by itself and needs no excuses; people who don't know this are not fans and are therefore unreachable anyway.”

“It is so hard for an evolutionary biologist to write about extinction caused by human stupidity. Let me then float an unconventional plea, the inverse of the usual argument. The extinction of Partula is unfair to Partula. That is the conventional argument, and I do not challenge its primacy. But we need a humanistic ecology as well, both for the practical reason that people will always touch people more than snails do or can, and for the moral reason that humans are legitimately the measure of all ethical questions for these are our issues, not nature's.”