There are some people, who place enormous value on their home and feel that it defines them, that a stain on the carpet is a personal defilement. There are others, and I think I am one of them, who are entirely indifferent to where they live.
Interpretation
The quote contrasts individuals' differing values regarding their homes and personal identity.
J. G. Ballard's quote highlights the dichotomy between those who find their identity intertwined with their living spaces and those who prioritize experiences over material surroundings. It suggests that for some, a home is a reflection of self-worth, while for others, it holds little significance regarding personal identity. This perspective invites contemplation on what truly defines us in terms of possessions and living environments.
In practice
During a philosophical discussion about identity and possessions, this quote can serve to illustrate differing perspectives.
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.
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
Everyone has to find what is right for them, and it is different for everyone. Eating for me is how you proclaim your beliefs three times a day. That is why all religions have rules about eating. Three times a day, I remind myself that I value life and do not want to cause pain to or kill other living beings. That is why I eat the way I do.
Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone
Many have become chess masters - no one has become the master of chess.
Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.
Men really need sea-monsters in their personal oceans. An ocean without its unnamed monsters would be like a completely dreamless sleep.
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