Beware: Ignorance Protects itself. Ignorance Promotes suspicion. Suspicion Engenders fear. Fear quails, Irrational and blind, Or fear looms, Defiant and closed. Blind, closed, Suspicious, afraid, Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows.
Interpretation
Ignorance breeds fear and suspicion, which can lead to a cycle of closed-mindedness and growth of ignorance.
In this quote, Octavia Butler highlights the dangerous cycle that ignorance can create. When individuals remain uninformed, they become suspicious of the unknown, which in turn fosters fear. This fear can either manifest as withdrawal from understanding or as hostility towards those who appear different or threatening. Ultimately, this cycle perpetuates ignorance, leading to a society that is increasingly resistant to knowledge and understanding.
In practice
During a community meeting, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of education and understanding to overcome prejudice.
What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.
Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.
Slow thinking has the feeling of something you do. It's deliberate.
I can focus on writing, or I can get lost in wonderfully fun but endless conversations and produce nothing new at all. I count on those people who enjoy my work to understand this.
Perhaps when the light of heaven shows us clearly the pitfalls and dangers of the earth road that led to the heavenly city, our sweetest songs of gratitude will be not for the troubles we have conquered, but for those we have escaped.
But I'm kind of comfortable with getting older because it's better than the other option, which is being dead. So I'll take getting older.
Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.
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