Pollution is everywhere, in that ancient Greek sense of miasma: guilt experienced as abject body fluid, moral pollution defining what kinds of beings count in social space.
Timothy MortonRead
The ecological crisis we face is so obvious that it becomes easy...to join the dots and see that everything is interconnected. This is the ecological thought. And the more we consider it, the more our world opens up." The ecological thought "...is a vast, sprawling mesh of interconnection without a definite center or edge. It is radical intimacy, coexistence with other beings, sentient and otherwise.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the interconnectedness of all life and the importance of understanding our relationships with the environment.
Timothy Morton's quote highlights the profound realization that everything in our ecosystem is interconnected, urging us to recognize our relationship with various forms of life, both sentient and non-sentient. This interconnectedness fosters a deeper ecological thought that invites contemplation and promotes a sense of responsibility for the natural world and our place within it.
Themes
InterconnectednessEcologyNatureCrisisThought
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on environmental awareness, one might say, 'As Timothy Morton points out, the ecological crisis is a reminder of our interconnected existence with nature.'
More from Timothy Morton
All quotes →The trouble with ecological invocations of Nature is that they're like calling for a medieval tool, perhaps a portcullis or an arrow slit, to fix a modern problem.
Timothy MortonRead
I grew up in a haunting postindustrial landscape where prehistoric ferns grew among tens of railway tracks surmounted by brilliant arc lights where birds nested and sang in the dead of night, because for them, it was day.
Timothy MortonRead
Similar quotes
Ripe vegetables were magic to me. Unharvested, the garden bristled with possibility. I would quicken at the sight of a ripe tomato, sounding its redness from deep amidst the undifferentiated green. To lift a bean plant's hood of heartshaped leaves and discover a clutch of long slender pods handing underneath could make me catch my breath.
Michael PollanRead
The morrow was a bright September morn; The earth was beautiful as if newborn; There was nameless splendor everywhere, That wild exhilaration in the air, Which makes the passers in the city street Congratulate each other as they meet.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowRead
I feel most at home in the water. I disappear. That's where I belong.
Michael PhelpsRead
The earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.
Chief SeattleRead
When you're on one of the Caribbean islands, sometimes it's hard to picture how they fit in with the rest, but when you see them all joined together like a necklace from space, you see the natural geographic connectedness of them all.
Chris HadfieldRead
The truth is, natural organisms have managed to do everything we want to do without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet or mortgaging the future.
Janine BenyusRead