Quotes About Interconnectedness

Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss. If you peer beneath the bits and pieces of the moss, you'll see toads, small insects, a whole host of life that prospers in that miniature environment. A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.

Saudi Arabia has also changed. People today are connecting with each other all across the world through small gadgets and television. It's a different society.

Religion appears in this book as it does in my other work on religion, media, and consumption—not as a solid, circumscribed, institutional, organized entity but more as (to borrow a phrase from author Anne Lamott) "the water at the edge of things.

The spikes above Livergate were a cruel reminder that his life now depended on mine, and it was by no means a foregone conclusion that I would live to see sunset tomorrow.

I wonder how it is that we are all connected despite our tremendous differences.

Awe is quite a specific experience. It happens when we view beauty amid vastness, predominantly in nature, triggering a deep sense of belonging. Our smallness against a backdrop of immensity reminds us of our insignificance and interconnectedness, which brings about a profound, yet elated, peace.

the sordid necessity of living for others."9

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

A person is a person through other persons.

Oneness cannot be achieved just between God and self; rather, oneness involves God, self, and others, and the world around us.

diverse, connected, interdependent entities whose behavior is determined by rules, which may adapt, but need not. The interactions of these entities often produce phenomena that are more than the parts. These phenomena are called emergent.

Physics becomes chemistry, chemistry becomes biology, biology becomes psychology, and so on. Or, put another way: cells emerge from the interactions of atoms, organs emerge from the interactions of cells, and societies emerge from the interactions of people. Each level of emergence produces higher order functionalities.

For animals and birds are like people, too, though they do not talk the same or do the same things. Without them the earth would be an unhappy place.

animals and birds are like people, too, though they do not talk the same or do the same things. Without them the earth would be an unhappy place.

Energy is food. Most people on earth feed on each other's energy, all of the time, seven days a week. The more energy you have, the more interested parties there will be in having lunch.

Human relations just are not fixed in their orbits like the planets -- they're more like galaxies, changing all the time, exploding into light for years, then dying away.

I think it's time we take a step back and recognize that while we are hurting our animals, we are hurting each other, and we are hurting our planet.

There was a time when if you had a financial crisis in Southeast Asia somewhere, it had no impact on our markets. Today it does.

We're often told that we live in a globalized world, and we talk about it all the time, but people don't stop to think about what it means.

I talk to the universe all the time.

Genres aren't closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

Originally, each human being is a complete and perfect existence. At the same time, we are each living within the one great, large-scale perfection.

Another definition of modernity: conversations can be more and more completely reconstructed with clips from other conversations taking place at the same time on the planet.

Death is to life as heaven is to hell they're both dependent on each other