Deep assignments run through all our lives; there are no coincidences.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that all events in our lives are interconnected and intentional, rather than random occurrences.
J. G. Ballard's quote emphasizes the idea that the events and experiences we encounter are not merely accidental; instead, they are deep, meaningful assignments that shape our lives and destinies. By stating that there are no coincidences, Ballard invites us to reflect on the significant connections and patterns in our lives, implying that every experience contributes to our personal narrative and growth.
In practice
In a motivational speech about finding purpose in life.
Science is the ultimate pornography, analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate objects or events from their contexts in time and space. This obsession with the specific activity of quantified functions is what science shares with pornography.
The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.
Au revoir, jewelled alligators and white hotels, hallucinatory forests, farewell.
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
Most English writers are not interested in change but in the social novel. That demands a static backdrop. I'm intensely interested in change - probably as a matter of self-preservation. What the hell is going to happen next?
Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It's no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes.
In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.
In a crystal we have clear evidence of the existence of a formative life principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a crystal, it is nonetheless a living being
Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.
The historical mission of our times is to re-invent the humanβat the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience.
For one who is indifferent, life itself is a prison. Any sense of community is external or, even worse, nonexistent. Thus, indifference means solitude. Those who are indifferent do not see others. They feel nothing for others and are unconcerned with what might happen to them. They are surrounded by a great emptiness. Filled by it, in fact. They are devoid of all hope as well as imagination. In other words, devoid of any future.
When men talk about war, the stories and terminology vary - it's this battle, these weapons, this terrain. But no matter where you go in the world, women use the same language to speak of war. They speak of fire, they speak of death, and they speak of starvation.
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