The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that adaptation to one's environment is essential for survival, and failing to do so can lead to self-destruction.
Gregory Bateson highlights the intricate relationship between living beings and their environments, positing that those who attempt to dominate or eliminate their environmental challenges ultimately harm themselves. This reflects a deeper philosophical understanding of coexistence and balance in nature, where harmony with one's surroundings is crucial for sustainability and survival.
In practice
In a speech about environmental issues, this quote could be used to emphasize the importance of sustainable practices.
In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not DNA.
It is impossible, in principle, to explain any pattern by invoking a single quantity.
Language commonly stresses only one side of any interaction.
What is the pattern that connects the crab to the lobster and the primrose to the orchid, and all of them to me, and me to you?
Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.
Footballers' 'lack of loyalty,' for instance, is not an indication of players' moral delinquency. Instead, the capacity to move on quickly without forming lasting attachments is a skill that the contemporary capitalist world inculcates and relies upon.
The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes.
Propose theories which can be criticized. Think about possible decisive falsifying experiments-crucial experiments. But do not give up your theories too easily-not, at any rate, before you have critically examined your criticism.
I think if we wish to live in any kind of a moral universe, we must hold the perpetrators of violence responsible for the violence they perpetrate. It's very simple. The criminal is responsible for the crime.
My disciples are vegetarian not as a cult, not as a creed. They are vegetarians because their meditations make them more human, more of the heart, and they can see the whole stupidity of people killing living beings for their food. It is their sensitivity, their aesthetic awareness that makes them vegetarians.
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted -- Nevermore!
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.