Future in the Age of the Apocalypse, pp. 176-177
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)
“Throughout most of our history, nothing – not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons – has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed.”
The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
Context: Christians, and some Jews, claim we're in the "end times," but they've been saying this off and on for more than two thousand years. According to Hindu cosmology, we're in the Kali Yuga, a dark period when the cow of history is balanced precariously on one leg, soon to topple. Then there are our new-age friends who believe that this December we're in for a global cage-rattling which, once the dust has settled, will usher in a great spiritual awakening.
Most of this apocalyptic noise appears to be just wishful thinking on the part of people who find life too messy and uncertain for comfort, let alone for serenity and mirth. The truth, from my perspective, is that the world, indeed, is ending – and is also being reborn. It's been doing that all day, every day, forever. Each time we exhale, the world ends; when we inhale, there can be, if we allow it, rebirth and spiritual renewal. It all transpires inside of us. In our consciousness, in our hearts. All the time.
Otherwise, ours is an old, old story with an interesting new wrinkle. Throughout most of our history, nothing – not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons – has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed. The new wrinkle is that escalating advances in technology are nourishing the narcissistic ego the way chicken manure nourishes a rose bush, while exploding worldwide population is allowing its effects to multiply geometrically. Here's an idea: let's get over ourselves, buy a cherry pie, and go fall in love with life.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Tom Robbins 250
American writer 1932Related quotes

Funeral oration for John Peter Altgeld (14 March 1902); published in an appendix to The Story of My Life (1932)

Writings of July 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore
Context: Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.

Speaking of one who has never heard of the Golden Rule, as mentioned in John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding
[Shermer, Science of Good and Evil, 2004, 25]

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1918/apr/16/clause-2-power-by-order-in-council-to#column_320 in the House of Commons (16 April 1918). The Irish Nationalist MP John Dillon interrupted: "We are agreed at last on one thing."

In Dagbladet (6 October 2004) http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2004/10/06/410404.html

Source: The Incredible Shrinking Apple http://nytimes.com/2019/04/03/opinion/apple-steve-jobs.html in The New York Times (3 April 2019)