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In the face of technology, everything becomes a little atavistic.
Don Delillo
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote suggests that advancements in technology can evoke primitive or ancient instincts within humans.

Don DeLillo's quote reflects on how the rapid pace of technological advancement can lead individuals to exhibit more primal or instinctual behaviors. As we become increasingly surrounded by technology, it may prompt us to revert to our basic human nature, contrasting the complexities and demands of modern life with the simplicity of our earlier existence. Essentially, in the face of innovation, our essential humanity and atavistic traits can surface, reminding us of our roots.

Themes

TechnologyAtavisticInstinctsHuman NatureModern Life

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used in a discussion about how smartphones influence our social behaviors.

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