“Cognitive states of mind are seldom addictive, since they depend upon exploration of the world, and the individual encounter with the individual object, whose appeal is outside the subject's control. Addiction arises when the subject has full control over a pleasure and can ponder it at will. It is primarily a matter of sensory pleasure, and involves a kind of short-circuiting of the pleasure network. Addiction is characterized by a loss of the emotional dynamic that would otherwise govern an outward-directed, cognitively creative life.” WorldMindKindMatterStatesIndividualLossPleasureCreativeSubjectsObjectsEmotionalDependsAddictionAriseAppealsEncountersExplorationState Of MindPonderingCognitiveSensoryCreative Life Author:Roger Scruton
“In 1911 the little town of Nakhla in Egypt was the scene of one of the most remarkable events in historym when a chunk of rock fell from the sky and killed a dog. This is the only known canine fatality caused by a cosmic object. Improbably though this encounter was already, its truly extraordinary nature was revealed only decades later when scientists found that the culprit was not a common-or-garden meteorite, but a piece of the planet Mars.” LittlesFoundCommonKnownPiecesSkyRocksDogEventsObjectsPlanetsSceneGardenScientistTownsExtraordinaryDecadesAstronomyEncountersRemarkableCosmicMarsEgyptChunksCanineLittle TownsFatalityCulprit Book:The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life Source: The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life
“We are moving rapidly into a world in which the spying machinery is built into every object we encounter.” WorldMovingObjectsBuiltEncountersMachinery Book:Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution Source: Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
“Yet the most pervasive error one encounters in contemporary arguments about belief in God-especially, but not exclusively, on the atheist side-is the habit of conceiving of God simply as some very large object or agency within the universe, or perhaps alongside the universe, a being among other beings, who differs from all other beings in magnitude, power, and duration, but not ontologically, and who is related to the world more or less as a craftsman is related to an artifact.” WorldUniverseBeliefSidesObjectsHabitArgumentErrorsAtheistContemporaryRelatedAgencyEncountersMagnitudeDurationBelief In GodCraftsmanArtifactsConceiving Author:David Bentley Hart
“Imperialism, or the conquest and colonization of other populations, other peoples, has had as one of its side effects the growth of a discourse of objectivity. That is, when you encounter something new, something strange, something different, you have to find categories for it, you have to come to terms with new objects.” DifferentSidesGrowthTermEffectsObjectsStrangePopulationEncountersSomething NewCategoriesDiscourseImperialismConquestObjectivityColonizationSide Effects Author:W. J. T. Mitchell