Rachel Carson was born May 27, 1907. Her iconic book "Silent Spring”, published in 1962, highlighted the harmful effects of pesticide use in the USA, specifically DDT, on nature & humanity and is widely regarded as having ignited the modern global environmental movement.

“The ultimate purpose of The Megamachine is not human liberation but the perpetuation of its own power and control, turning individuals into cogs in a colossal, indifferent engine.” ~ Lewis Mumford (‘The Myth Of The Machine Vol. 1’ 1967)

“The human species is behaving frighteningly like a sort of disease of the biosphere — a wild, malignant growth — and if we manage to destroy the system, we shall also very likely destroy ourselves.” ~ Marston Bates (‘Biology for the Future Citizen and the Future Biologist’ 1962)

“Birth, 𝘯. The first and direst of all disasters.” -- Ambrose Bierce ('The Devil's Dictionary' 1911)

“There is a moral of all human tales; 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, First freedom, and then glory; when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarism at last. And history, with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page.” ~ Lord Byron (‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ 1818)

“Almost anything that consoles us is a fake.” ~ Iris Murdoch (‘The Sovereignty of Good’ 1970)

“[H]appiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.” ~ Thomas Hardy (‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ 1886)

“To bear children into this world is like carrying wood to a burning house.” ~ Peter Wessel Zappfe (‘The Last Messiah’ 1933)

“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.” ~ Fernando Pessoa (‘The Book of Disquiet’ 1982)

"If man is the more normal, healthy and happy, the more successfully he can repress, displace, deny, rationalize, dramatize himself and deceive others, then it follows that the suffering of the neurotic comes... from painful truth." ~ Otto Rank (‘Wahrheit und Wirklichkeit’ 1929)

“Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is - a purely egoistic cause.”

#DolorEtMorsInevitables #PainAndDeathAreUnavoidable

#TheOuroboros #BirthDecayDeathRebirth #CycleOfFutility

“Sleep and everything which induces sleep […] is in itself pleasurable. […] There is no greater pleasure (nor greater happiness) in life, than not to feel life.” ~ Giacomo Leopardi (‘Zibaldone’ written between 1817 and 1832)

“Life has been thrown into the world, light into darkness, the soul into the body. It expresses the original violence done to me in making me be where I am and what I am, the passivity of my choice-less emergence into an existing world which I did not make and whose law is not mine.”

"The problem of meaning: We work in order to live. And we live in order to work. But the question of meaning of the quote 'work-life totality:' Of...why am I working? I who am living. Why am I living? If it is in order just to work." ~ Jean-Paul Sartre ('Being and Nothingness' 1943)

"...the universe itself—and the Mind behind it—is insane." -- Philip K. Dick ('VALIS' 1981)

"This world is the world of error, and it is the place of confusion. It is not the place of truth, but a shadow of the truth." -- attributed to Valentinus (2nd century Gnostic theologian) ('Gospel Of Truth' est. 140-180)

“Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting...By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it.” -- Marilynne Robinson ('Housekeeping' 1980)

"It is impossible to contemplate without terror the extent of the evil which [we are] capable of causing and undergoing. [...] It is right to ponder on this evil with horror and without any consolation at all." -- Simone Weil ('The Notebooks of Simone Weil' 1956)

youtu.be/_LXHrCcGmTc?... 'The Evil Demon' Kane B

"The world is perhaps ultimately to be defined as a place of suffering. [We are] subject to ceaseless anxiety and pain and fear, subject to the rule of what the Buddhists call 𝒹𝓊𝓀𝒽𝒶, the endless unsatisfied anguish of a being who passionately desires only illusory goods."

"'Tis not that dying hurts us so - / 'Tis living - hurts us more -" -- Emily Dickinson (‘Tis not that Dying hurts us so' 19th century, exact date unknown)

"[T]o give birth to those / Who can but suffer many years, and die - / [I Think] is merely propagating Death and multiplying murder." -- Lord Byron ('Cain: A Mystery' 1821)

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." -- Oscar Wilde ('The Soul Of Man Under Socialism' 1891)

"The good things of this life are less good, than the evil things are an evil." -- Pierre Bayle ('Historical and Critical Dictionary' 1697)

"Everything exists to cease to exist." -- Phillip Mainländer ('Die Philosophie Der Erlösung' 1875)

“The young can no longer save the world, the world can no longer be saved. The idea of salvation is nothing but a false idea, and we shall pay for our countless errors. It is too late to redeem anything. The time of redemptions is expired and the time of reformations is over.”