INDEPENDENT CELLS OR CELLS IN COMMUNITY?
Siddhartha Mukherjee:
But there are still gaps in our understanding of the interconnectedness of cells. We are still living in a world where we imagine the cell, as Leeuwenhoek did, as a “living atom” – unitary, singular, and isolated, a spaceship floating in body-space.
ARE WE CONSUMERS OF OUR LIVES OR PRODUCTS OF THEM?
Eleanor Catton:
There are no wrongs. There’s just choice, and choice is neutral, and we’re neutral, and everything is neutral, and everything’s a game, and if you want to win the game then you’re going to have to optimise yourself, and actualise yourself, and utilise yourself, and get the edge, and God forbid that you should have an actual human experience of frailty, or mortality, or limitation, or humanity, or of the fucking onward march of time – those are just distractions, those are obstacles, they’re defects, they’re inconveniences in the face of our curated, bespoke, freely fucking chosen authentic existence, and sure, we can never quite decide if we’re the consumers of our lives or the products of them, but there’s one thing we are damn sure of, which is that nobody on earth has any right to pass any judgment on us, either way.
WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR US TO CHANGE COURSE?
Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, two co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, insist that they are not adamantly opposed to all new technologies.
Read moreEGO, EMPTINESS, AND REBIRTH
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche:
To approach the finality of our bodies while paying no attention to the mini-deaths of daily life is like confusing diamonds with pebbles and throwing them away.
LOOKING FOR HOPE WHEREVER I MIGHT FIND IT
My wife regularly points out my tendency to expect the worst in any situation. In fact, she goes so far as to call me a catastrophizer (though I’m not sure just how she would spell that word).
Read moreON THE VALIDITY OF THE BIBLICAL TEXT
Thomas Jefferson:
But the whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute inquiry into it: and such tricks have been plaid with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine.