Imagination, Understanding, and the Virtue of Liberality, ch. 4
“Confucius saw the human self as a node, not an entity.”
The World's Religions (1991)
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Huston Smith 29
Religious studies scholar 1919–2016Related quotes

“The human being is not a local entity. He is everywhere.”
1960s, Freedom From The Known (1969)
Context: I think there is a difference between the human being and the individual. The individual is a local entity, living in a particular country, belonging to a particular culture, particular society, particular religion. The human being is not a local entity. He is everywhere. If the individual merely acts in a particular corner of the vast field of life, then his action is totally unrelated to the whole. So one has to bear in mind that we are talking of the whole not the part, because in the greater the lesser is, but in the lesser the greater is not. The individual is the little conditioned, miserable, frustrated entity, satisfied with his little gods and his little traditions, whereas a human being is concerned with the total welfare, the total misery and total confusion of the world.

“Everywhere networks go, intermediaries follow. The more nodes, the more middlemen.”
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)
Source: An Approach to Cybernetics (1961), p. 103-104, partly cited in: Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson, Alessio Cavallaro (2004) Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History.

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (1999)
"Time Is the Mercy of Eternity" - The title of this poem is derived from a line by William Blake : "Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness Which is the swiftest of all things, all were eternal torment.")
In Defense of the Earth (1956)

An introduction to this book
The Religion of God (2000)