William Irwin Thompson
William Irwin Thompson
William Irwin Thompsonis known primarily as a social philosopher and cultural critic, but he has also been writing and publishing poetry throughout his career and received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986. He describes his writing and speaking style as "mind-jazz on ancient texts". He is the founder of the Lindisfarne Association...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth16 July 1938
CountryUnited States of America
William Irwin Thompson quotes about
unique unity quality
What is at the higher levels of meaning consciousness is like a hyperspace in which each point is equidistant from the other and where 'the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere'? The mythologies of the occult seem like baroque music: there is an overall similar quality of sound and movement, but, upon examination, each piece of music is unique; Vivaldi and Scarlatti are similar and different.
moon unity earth
The planets are not hunks of stuff out there but nodes of vibration that resonate in multiple dimensions that enfold themselves into one another in patterns of complex recursiveness in which Sun, Moon, and Saturn are also modalities of Earth.
history-of-life fairy-tale natural
Fairy tales and myths are forms of cultural storage for the natural history of life.
race growth generations
We are the climactic generation of human cultural evolution, and in the microcosm of our lives the macrocosm of the evolution of the human race is playing itself out.
purpose chaos conscious
The conscious purpose of science is control of Nature; its unconscious effect is disruption and chaos.
imagination domain feels
Catastrophes are often stimulated by the failure to feel the emergence of a domain, and so what cannot be felt in the imagination is experienced as embodied sensation in the catastrophe.
black shadow cop
In the domain of cops and robbers, an interdiction serves to structure a black market and a shadow economy.
chaos abstract
The more chaos there is, the more science holds on to abstract systems of control, and the more chaos is engendered.
mean reality artist
If a person is open to a new world view, it can often mean that he is not firmly rooted in the reality of the old world view; as a lunatic or alienated artist, his own neurotic traits can become magnified as they tremble with the new energy pouring in from the universal source.
change years civilization
With the emergence of civilization, the rate of change shifted from hundreds of thousands of years to millennia. With the emergence of science as a way of knowing the universe, the rate of change shifted to centuries.
knowing belief
The future is beyond knowing, but the present is beyond belief.
independent purpose conscious
Unconscious Polities emerge independent of conscious purpose.
world process institutions
A World is not an ideology nor a scientific institution, nor is it even a system of ideologies; rather, it is a structure of unconscious relations and symbiotic processes.
maps world process
Ideologies do not map the complete living processes of a World.