Quotes About Connection

Unless we know ourselves and our history, and other people and their history, there is really no way that we can really have positive kinds of interaction where there is real understanding.

Facebook now is mostly about people you know. In the future it could be about people you know less but are more important.

See her? I was born to read her mind. I can get so close to her my breath is cool on her skin, & she'll be seven blocks away when a cry leaps into her throat & she knows I untied the money belt hidden under her velvet jacket.

Years ago you followed someone here, in love with breath kissing the nape of your neck, back when it was easy to be at least two places at once.

Inside my skin, loving you, I am this space my body believes in. — Yuself Komunyakaa, from "Unnatural State of the Unicorn," Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems . (Wesleyan University Press 1993)

Love is an immortal wound that cannot be closed up. A person loses something, a part of her soul, when she loves someone. And she goes about looking for that lost part of her soul, for she knows that otherwise she is incomplete and cannot be at rest. It is only when she is with the person she loves that she becomes complete again in herself; but the moment he leaves, she loses that part which he has taken with him and knows no rest till she has found him once more.

For every good book is worth the reader's while when there is a real communion of the spirit, and this is possible only when he feels he is being taken into the author's confidence and the author is willing to reveal to him the innermost searchings of his heart and talk, as it were, in an unbuttoned mood, collar and tie loose, as by a friend's fireside.

Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better.

Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning only within the network of stories they tell one another.

If you are really in love with someone, you never worry about the meaning of life.

Have you seen those zombies who roam the streets with their faces glued to their smartphones? Do you think they control the technology, or does the technology control them?

It takes a tribe to raise a human.

Sapiens don't behave according to a cold mathematical logic, but rather according to a warm social logic. We are ruled by emotions.

Data religion now says that your every word and action is part of the great data flow, that the algorithms are constantly watching you and that they care about everything you do and feel. Most people like this very much. For true-believers, to be disconnected from the data flow risks losing the very meaning of life. What's the point of doing or experiencing anything if nobody knows about it, and if it doesn't contribute something to the global exchange of information?

Consequently, people live ever more lonely lives in an ever more connected planet. Many of the social and political disruptions of our time can be traced back to this malaise.

Since humans are individuals, it is difficult to connect them to one another and to make sure that they are all up to date.

One on one, even ten on ten, we are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees.

In order to flourish we still need to ground ourselves in intimate communities. For millions of years, humans have been adapted to living in small bands of no more than a few dozen people. Even today most of us find it impossible to really know more than 150 individuals, irrespective of how many Facebook friends we boast.4 And if we don't belong to any intimate community, we humans feel lonely and alienated.

what people might really need are the tools to connect to their own experiences.

it is hardly natural for humans to be loyal to millions of utter strangers.

We want to believe that our lives have some objective meaning, and that our sacrifices matter to something beyond the stories in our head. Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning only within the network of stories they tell one another.

los sapiens no se comportan según una fría lógica matemática, sino según una cálida lógica social. Nos rigen las emociones.

This is why we can still find ourselves between the pages of the Bible, in the writings of Confucius or within the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. These classics were created by humans just like us, hence we feel that they talk about us. In modern theatre productions, Oedipus, Hamlet and Othello may wear jeans and T-shirts and have Facebook accounts, but their emotional conflicts are the same as in the original play.

online giants tend to view humans as audiovisual animals – a pair of eyes and a pair of ears connected to ten fingers, a screen and a credit card. A crucial step towards uniting humankind is to appreciate that humans have bodies.