Mark Elvin Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 5 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Mark Elvin.
Famous Quotes By Mark Elvin
One of the most momentous, yet all but invisible, psychological changes in human history has been the intensification of a sense of insecurity and alienation from the world around us that arose when we became no longer able easily to get food in a few hours just by gathering it, or hunting it, but had to organize ourselves in a purposeful fashion simply to survive. This change is undocumented, though occasional clues can be gained about it from the comments of the few still alive who have lived through a version of it, such as old Australian Aboriginals. Its essence is subjection to a pervasive but unacknowledged, indeed unnamed, fear. It is the foundation of civilization. — Mark Elvin
Perhaps the most overpowering contrast [with the West] is the virtual absence in premodern China of the idea of a transcendent creator God who is distinct from Nature in a fundamental qualitative sense. The Chinese had notions of a supreme god in various guises (that is, 'hypatotheism'), and also, as we have seen, of a somewhat demiurge-like 'transformer' constantly reshaping the cosmos. — Mark Elvin
It must be remembered: fields end freedom. Whatever the astonishing subsequent achievements of civilization, it had a little recognized price: humanity itself became one of its own domesticated species. We enslaved ourselves to conquer. — Mark Elvin
[There is a] gulf that can exist between different emotional and perceptual worlds - all 'Chinese' - in recent times [post-Deng Xiaoping]. — Mark Elvin