If I look back over the last hundred years it seems to me that we have lost more than we have gained, that what we have lost was valuable, and that what we have gained is trifling, for what we have lost was old and what we have gained is merely new.
–Edwin Muir in The Story and the Fable, quoted in Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000), p. 74
Tampering with the natural order was a hazardous business. Franklin told a story of how an excess of blackbirds in New England’s cornfields prompted the locals to pass laws encouraging the destruction of those pests. The blackbirds were duly diminished, but the New Englanders soon discovered their meadows engulfed in worms on which the blackbirds had fed. “Finding their loss in grass much greater than their saving in corn, they wished again for their black-birds.” Drawing the moral, Franklin cautioned, “Whenever we attempt to mend the scheme of Providence and to interfere with the government of the world, we had need be very circumspect lest we do more harm than good.”
–H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2000), p. 220
I found this lecture by Andrew Keen very interesting about “Web 2.0,” general media literacy, the need for gatekeepers, etc. I loved his phrase “Twittering ourselves to death.”
I’m finishing up Graham Greene’s spy novel, The Human Factor. (I found a first edition at a garage sale for fifty cents.) It’s a good story — it keeps you reading and deals with some interesting ethical questions. I’ve enjoyed it.
I knew Greene wrote spy novels, but I only recently learned that he actually worked for the SIS — in fact, he was recruited by and worked under the infamous Kim Philby (one of the most successful double-agents in history). So he has inside experience — which makes his spy novels a lot more interesting, in my opinion.
As to the learning that any person gains from school education, it serves only, like a small capital, to put him in the way of beginning learning for himself afterwards. Every person of learning is finally his own teacher…
The press often does a good job of reporting basic facts of a dispute, but fails miserably in supplying the context that would allow a judgment about importance.
–Stephen Jay Gould, “Bully for Brontosaurs” in Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History (1991), p. 86
Fire and Knowledge aims to be thoughtful and challenging through quotes, links, commentary and essays.
Topics include science, religion, politics, literature, history and technology. As someone said, there are no uninteresting subjects, only uninterested people.