In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education.
Camille PagliaRead
My argument has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Camille Paglia argues that nature's processes prioritize survival of the fittest, but humans have the right to challenge these harsh realities.
In this quote, Camille Paglia presents a provocative view of nature as an indifferent force that ruthlessly controls the survival of species through a brutal process that sacrifices many for the benefit of a few. She calls for humans, endowed with rational thought and moral agency, to challenge the inherent cruelty of nature and assert their right to oppose its unyielding laws, suggesting that our obligation is to rise above nature's oppressive tendencies.
Themes
NatureProcreationHuman ObligationSurvivalRationality
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about environmental ethics, this quote could illustrate the moral responsibilities humans have beyond nature's design.
More from Camille Paglia
All quotes βEvery month, it is woman's fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.
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Serial or sex murder, like fetishism, is a perversion of male intelligence. It is a criminal abstraction, masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness. It is the asocial equivalent of philosophy, mathematics, and music. There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.
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The male orientation of classical Athens was inseparable from its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny.
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We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes.
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Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.
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When we talk about the environment, about creation, my thoughts turn to the first pages of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, which states that God placed man and woman on earth to cultivate and care for it. And the question comes to my mind: What does cultivating and caring for the earth mean? Are we truly cultivating and caring for creation? Or are we exploiting and neglecting it?
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Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.
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Nature gave us pain as a messaging device to tell us that we are approaching, or that we have exceeded, our limits in some way.
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