“… sometime around now, the rules for living successfully on earth shifted, and an opportunity, unseen before, began to reveal itself. This opportunity is a context-a particular space, or way of being-which unexpectedly creates the possibility for a person’s life to truly make a difference. In this context, the way each of us answers the question, ‘What is my life really going to be about?’ can literally alter the course of humanity.”

—  Werner Erhard

"The Context for Creating a Transformed World: A World That Works for Everyone." 'Article in 'The Graduate Review (April 1980) by Mary Earle & Neal Rogin.

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Werner Erhard 40
Critical Thinker and Author 1935

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“The possibility to create the context in which people’s lives really matter is undoubtedly the most profound opportunity available to anyone, ever.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

The Graduate Review (April 1980)

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“We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family. We can choose to make our love for the world what our lives are really about. Each of us has the opportunity, the privilege, to make a difference in creating a world that works for all of us. It will require courage, audacity and heart. It is much more radical than a revolution – it is the beginning of a transformation in the quality of life on our planet. What we create together is a relationship in which our work can show up as making a difference in people's lives. I welcome the unprecedented opportunity for us to work globally on that which concerns us all as human beings. If not you, who? If not now, when? If not here, where?”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Source: The Graduate Review (1980)

“The problem solver needs to stand back and examine problem contexts in the light of different “Ws” (weltanschauungen). Perhaps he can then decide which “W” seems to capture the essence of the particular problem context he is faced with. This whole process needs formalizing if it is to be carried out successfully. The problem solver needs to be aware of different paradigms in the social sciences, and he must be prepared to view the problem context through each of these paradigms.”

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“The question "What is Life?" is… a linguistic trap. To answer according to the rules of grammar, we must supply a noun, a thing. But life on Earth is more like a verb. It repairs, maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself.”

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“How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.”

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“The illumination that follows does not, of course, flow simply from their being smaller but from the wider scientific picture into which they can now be fitted. That picture gives them a new kind of context, a wider whole within which they can be differently understood. And finding that kind of context is an essential part of what “understanding” means.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

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Context: A particularly strong assumption here has been scientists’ deep reliance on atomization; on finding the meaning of things by breaking them down to their smallest components. Atomizations illustrates the simplest, most literal meaning of the word “reduction”; it works by making things smaller. The illumination that follows does not, of course, flow simply from their being smaller but from the wider scientific picture into which they can now be fitted. That picture gives them a new kind of context, a wider whole within which they can be differently understood. And finding that kind of context is an essential part of what “understanding” means.

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“Transformation does not negate what has gone before; rather, it fulfills it. Creating the context of a world that works for everyone is not just another step forward in human history; it is the context out of which our history will begin to make sense.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

[Lynne Twist, 2003, The Soul of Money: Transforming your Relationship with Money and Life, New York, New York, W.W. Norton., 252, 039305097]
Attributed

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“What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

"De la Ligne" in La Difficulté d’Etre [The Difficulty of Being] (1947)
Context: What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.

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“It is precisely through one's learning about the total context in which the language of a subject is expressed that personality may be altered.”

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Context: It is precisely through one's learning about the total context in which the language of a subject is expressed that personality may be altered. If one learns how to speak history or mathematics or literary criticism, one becomes, by definition, a different person. The point to be stressed is that a subject is a situation in which and through which people conduct themselves, largely in language. You cannot learn a new form of conduct without changing yourself.

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