'To
recover from our disease of limitlessness, we will have to give up the idea
that we have a right to be godlike animals, that we are at least potentially
omniscient and omnipotent, ready to discover “the secret of the
universe." We will have to start over, with a different and much older
premise: the naturalness and, for creatures of limited intelligence, the
necessity of limits. We must learn again to ask how we can make the most of
what we are, what we have, and what we have been given. If we always have a
theoretically better substitute available from somebody or some place else, we
will never make the most of anything. It is hard enough to make the most of one
life. If we each had two lives, we would not make much of either. One of my
best teachers said of people in general: “They’ll never be worth a
damn as long as they’ve got two choices."'
No comments:
Post a Comment