There's the constant concern with what happens to you when you die. Every society thinks about that and makes things to deal with that.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on how societies universally contemplate death and create ways to address the fear and uncertainty surrounding it.
Neil Macgregor's quote emphasizes the universal human concern regarding death and the afterlife. It suggests that all societies, throughout history, have grappled with the implications of mortality, leading them to develop rituals, beliefs, and practices designed to manage the fear and mystery associated with dying. This concern not only reflects our mortality but also speaks to the cultural significance of how we honor and remember the dead.
In practice
During a memorial service, one might quote this to acknowledge the shared human experience of dealing with death.
Google the name Prometheus, and see how often it has been given to innovations in many different fields, notably science, medicine and space exploration. The fire he stole can be seen, too, as the spark generating all artistic creativity.
In the world of the Middle East at the moment, the debates are shrill. But ... the wisest voice of all of them may well be the voice of this mute thing, the Cyrus cylinder.
The deciphering of ancient scripts changed forever the way Europeans were able to imagine the story of humanity, destroying centuries of received authority about the past with repercussions as important for our understanding of time and history as the geological studies of the same period.
The distinction between a gallery and a museum is enormous. The gallery is about looking at a thing of beauty; the purpose of the activity is an aesthetic response. The museum is actually about the object that lets you get into somebody else's life.
Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.
Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world, and that God will preserve it always.
In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood.
If we just sit and exist, and understand that, I think it will be helpful in a world that seems like a record that's going faster and faster, we're spinning off the edge of the universe.
Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling.
My need is for safety, fun and to have distribution of resources, a sustainable life on the planet. NVC is a strategy that serves me to meet these needs.
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