Mined from the notebooks, Sunday morning, May 17, 2020. Posted Thursday morning, July 16.
Notes from the Department of In Search of Lost Time, Sunday morning, May 17, 2020:
Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ”
---Aristotle, "Politics".
That’s where people get it wrong. Individuals aren’t naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are…well…human beings.---Terry Pratchett, “Men at Arms”.
"Human beings like to be close together, because it makes it easier for us to judge and criticize…”
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