Words&Dirt

“There was a model of the world, and we didn’t look outward at all; our conscious selves saw only the simulation in our heads, an interpretation of reality, endlessly refreshed by input from the senses. What happens when those senses go dark, but the model––thrown off kilter by some trauma or tumor––fails to refresh? How long do we stare in at that obsolete rendering, recycling and massaging the same old data in a desperate, subconscious act of utterly honest denial? How long before it dawns on us that the world we see no longer reflects the world we inhabit, that we are blind?”

––Blindsight, by Peter Watts, pg. 175

“If there is one thing that we can be said to truly own, it is our time. Unlike any other possession, as long as we are alive, our time is inseparable from our selves. Our choice of how to spend time is our choice of how to live life. And no matter how wealthy one is in terms of money, it is impossible to buy more time. Money might buy you life-saving surgery or otherwise enhance longevity, but it won’t guarantee long life; nor can it purchase more than twenty-fours hours of experience in each day. In this we are all equal; a money system that recognizes this equality is intuitively appealing.”

––Sacred Economics: Money, Gift & Society in the Age of Transition, by Charles Eisenstein, pg. 307