Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Reading Gregory Bateson

On the whole, it was not the crudest, the simplest, the most animalistic and primitive aspects of the human species that were reflected in the natural phenomena.  It was, rather, the most complex, the aesthetic, the intricate, and the elegant aspects of people that reflected nature.  It was not my greed, my purposiveness, my so-called "animal," so-called "instincts," and so forth that I was recognizing on the other side of that mirror, over there in "nature."  Rather, I was seeing there the roots of human symmetry, beauty, and ugliness, aesthetics, the human being's very aliveness and a little bit of wisdom.  His wisdom, his bodily grace, and even his habit of making beautiful objects are just as "animal" as his cruelty. 

from Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity

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