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| Continuing our journey with Pope Francis re our environmental crisis |
I [Pope Francis] will point to the intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet, the conviction that everything in the world is connected, the critique of new paradigms and forms of power derived from technology, the call to seek other ways of understanding the economy and progress, the value proper to each creature, the human meaning of ecology, the need for forthright and honest debate, the serious responsibility of international and local policy, the throwaway culture and the proposal of a new lifestyle. (Location 366)
Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others.
(Location 391)The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish. Industrial waste and chemical products utilized in cities and agricultural areas can lead to bioaccumulation in the organisms of the local population, even when levels of toxins in those places are low. (Location 395)
And now some other voices:
Undoubtedly, the relative equality of women is an objective marker of the degree of evolution achieved by any society.
[T]he fundamental question for all four philosophers [Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Benjamin, & Cassirer) was whether all the various natural languages are themselves based on a single, unifying, and unified language. If so, what is the nature of that form? And on what does its ultimate meaning rest? What does language do to us? Do we give our words sense and meaning, or is it the world-shaping power of the words and signs themselves, which call us into life, thought, and questioning? Who shapes whom? In what form? And above all: With what objectives?
Fourth, the mathematical theory of probability can be, and usually has been, developed without reference to what kind of probability is being spoken of. This is because the mathematical theory of, say, dice throwing depends only on the symmetry or equiprobability of certain outcomes, allowing equal numbers to be assigned to them. One can say that there is symmetry between all of the six possible outcomes of a single throw of a die, and hence they each have probability , without needing to say in what respect they are symmetrical or what kind of probability is being considered—whether one is discussing properties of the die or uncertainty about the outcome.
Here were the beginnings of the public sphere and civil society, two of the great spurs of modernity; but Rousseau saw them as centres of soul-destroying hypocrisy. ‘In the midst of so much philosophy, humanity, and civilization, and of such sublime codes of morality,’ he wrote, ‘we have nothing to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honour without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.’
As molecules of breath descend deeper, they switch on parasympathetic nerves, which send more messages for the organs to rest and digest. As air ascends through the lungs during exhalation, the molecules stimulate an even more powerful parasympathetic response. The deeper and more softly we breathe in, and the longer we exhale, the more slowly the heart beats and the calmer we become.
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