Barbara Ehrenreich - At issue is not only knowledge of the world but our survival as individuals

At issue is not only knowledge of the world but our survival as individuals and as a species. All the basic technologies ever invented by humans to feed and protect themselves depend on a relentless commitment to hard-nosed empiricism: you cannot assume that your arrowheads will pierce the hide of a bison or that your raft will float just because the omens are propitious and you have been given supernatural reassurance that they will. You have to be sure.

- Barbara Ehrenreich

source: Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.148, Macmillan

topic: Commitment, Technology, Issues, Knowledge Of The World, Reassurance, Bison, Empiricism