“To remain the same in function, animals must change their form.” - Stephen Jay Gould, 1979
Gould wrote the quote above a couple times in different articles. Ryan likes it because he thinks it can apply to systems in general. Thus, to remain the same in function, systems should change their structure provided there are changes in their throughput.
In organisms this happens with changes in scale. To get bigger and taller on Earth’s surface, an animal’s legs must also get thicker. Otherwise, gravitational acceleration will break them as they buckle under the mass of the body above.
But nature does not ask a five gram shrew to stand as tall as a ten foot elephant either. Its muscles could hardly move its legs. Yet sometimes, society asks its citizens to do similar feats by moralizing the damn prosocial empaths into feeling as if they’re not doing enough.
Well, to that, *we* say, “Enough!” Enjoy this bitchfest about personal accountability.
-Dawds
Song: How I’ve Missed You; Artist: TIM
E47: On Margin Haunting - Quo Bros, Margin Haunters, & Secular Gurus
Shorts - E33: The World
Dear Dawdler - E5: To Every Philosophy There Is A Season
E46: 10 Things To Hate About Nonfiction Books
E45: Dawdler Review - Triamonds, Episodic Synchronies, and NME Skeptics!
Dear Dawdler - E4: We Live in a Context (So I See)
Dear Dawdler - E3: We Live in a (Complex) Society
Shorts - E32: Putting Thumbs on a Penguin
Dear Dawdler - E2: We Are All in the Same Boat
Dear Dawdler - E1: We Are All Mutineers
Shorts - E31: The Two Cultures
Shorts - E30: The American Dream
E44: Subjective Chiroptera of Experience - Thomas Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?"
Haunting the Margins - E3: Alan Watts
E43: Rorty's Mirror of Nature Part II - Dividing by Zero
E42: Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature - Part I - An Ironic Kind of Fellow
Shorts - E29: The Great Server
E41: Every Theory of Everything Ever - The Evolution of Religions
Shorts - E28: Science NOW!
Shorts - E27: Luck vs. Karma
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