. . . Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy--of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.
Interpretation
This quote describes the emergence of complex emotions that signal a shift towards self-awareness and humanity.
In this quote, Arthur C. Clarke illustrates a pivotal moment in the evolution of Moon-Watcher, who experiences the nascent feeling of envy that causes him dissatisfaction with his existence. This sense of discontent is portrayed as a crucial step towards attaining a deeper understanding of oneself and the emotional intricacies associated with being human, suggesting that such emotions are foundational to the experience of humanity.
In practice
This quote can inspire a discussion on emotional evolution in a philosophy class.
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions. It seems almost as if progress itself and our fight against the increase of entropy intrinsically must end in the downhill path from which we are trying to escape.
Compromise, while at times morally necessary or at least justifiable, is more often only the first permission for a person (or society) to begin a long downhill descent.
There are five dark matters and five lamps. Love of this world is darkness, and the fear of Allaah is its lamp. Sin is darkness, and its lamp is repentance. The grave is darkness, and its lamp is 'none has the right to be worshipped but Allaah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allaah.' The hereafter is darkness, and its lamp is the good deed. The Siraat is darkness, and its lamp is certainty of faith.
God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself.
Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.
We have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and their own path to grace is one that we have to revere and respect as much as our own
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