“What an astonishing thing a book is… one glance at it & you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly & silently inside your head, directly to you.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. #Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
This is one reason why the #GOP wants to ban books. They do not want Americans to experience what Sagan refers to as "binding people together who never knew each other".
The GOP wants Americans to feel isolated and fearful of anyone "other" than themselves. It's much easier to exploit people so full of fear that they can't think straight. People who are calm and feel secure are much harder to manipulate, because they can take the time to think things through.
@Sheril@iamgerardthomas one of my all-time favorite humans. Not just for his mind, but his storytelling/narration skills. I can hear this quote in his voice. Now I wanna rewatch Cosmos for the tenth time. 😂
@Sheril@sonyasteele The original Sangha at the time of Lord Buddha Shakyamuni, which included women at their own insistence, learned and spread the Buddhadhamma through verbal means. I find that far more impressive than books.
@Sheril I agree. I found I was provided abundant creativity I did not already know for certain was in me that is expressed with my writing, when I started getting busy with writing stories I create.
Personally, I count complex language as humanity's most important invention of all time.
The ability to clearly and accurately convey abstract ideas is the Mother of all other skills and inventions, the basis of vicarious experience and the birth of history.
@Sheril He's having ukrainian heritage because he's father and maternal grandmother are immigrants from my country. Truly the best post after Ukraine's Independence Day 🇺🇦 :blobcatcoffee:
@Sheril just listened to Carl Sagan explain Pale Blue Dot again the other day (love that YouTube has all that stuff archived). Pale Blue Dot sums up our human existence better than any religious text or political ideology. If we are to save ourselves, then it's up to us to shed the dogmas that would otherwise hold us back. Or as Sam Harris might say, we can no longer try and make the best of bad ideas; no longer can we give a glossy veneer to ideologies which are ugly underneath.
Of course, whether or not this is really a Saint Carl quote, it still very much describes how he (as well as Saint Bertrand [Russel] and others) have kept me company in my life —— even though both of them died before I was to the point of being able to appreciate them (and in the case of Saint Bertrand, before I was even born).
But still — it would be nice to verify whether this is an actual quote from Saint Carl. Do you know the source?
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