Nature is an expert in cost-benefit analysis,' she says. 'Although she does her accounting a little differently. As for debts, she always collects in the long run.
Interpretation
Nature balances its elements through a long-term perspective, teaching us about consequences and accountability.
In this quote, Margaret Atwood emphasizes nature's inherent ability to evaluate the costs and benefits of its processes, illustrating that while immediate results may vary, nature ultimately ensures a balance in the long run. It serves as a reminder that all actions have repercussions, and that time can reveal the true outcomes of our choices.
In practice
In a speech on environmental responsibility.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
[...] endless action and reaction. Those beautifully rounded pebbles which you gather on the sand and which you hold in your hand and marvel at their exceeding smoothness, were chiseled into their varies and graceful forms by the ceaseless action of countless waves. Nature is herself a great worker and never tolerates, without certain rebuke, any contradiction to her wise example. Inaction is followed by stagnation. Stagnation is followed by pestilence and pestilence is followed by death.
By confronting us with irreducible mysteries that stretch our daily vision to include infinity, nature opens an inviting and guiding path toward a spiritual life.
What do we plant when we plant a tree? _x000D_ A thousand things that we daily see, _x000D_ We plant the spire that out-towers the crag, _x000D_ We plant the staff for our country's flag; _x000D_ We plant the shade from the hot sun free, _x000D_ We plant all these when we plant the tree.
The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.
What freezings I have felt, what dark days seen,_x000D_ _x000D_ What old December's bareness everywhere!
Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.
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