[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"$fTSxplGcJiWXgwdcowGszQNDiJzf7aCxWMcW3YXr_bZM":3,"$f4DVnXcePZf_PhlsocbUF653SyMJQnuAW4_5EGsTg3hE":16},{"author":4,"tags":11},{"author_id":5,"author_name":6,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"bio":9,"short_bio":9,"bio_jsonld":9,"slug":10,"image_url":9},54971,"Roberto Mangabeira Unger","R",14,null,"roberto-mangabeira-unger",[12],{"tag_id":13,"tag_name":14,"tag_count":15},24,"life",5,{"quotes":17,"pagination":133},[18,26,32,38,44,50,57,81,99,119],{"id":19,"quote_text":20,"author_id":5,"source_id":21,"has_image":22,"author":23,"source":24,"quote_tag":25,"commentary":9},3391273,"The road back to reality, we suggest, begins by making two affirmations about nature: the uniqueness of the universe and the reality of time. These together have an immediate consequence which is the central hypothesis of our program: that the laws of nature evolve, and they do so through mechanisms that can be discovered and probed experimentally because they concern the past.",6,false,{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[],{"id":27,"quote_text":28,"author_id":5,"source_id":21,"has_image":22,"author":29,"source":30,"quote_tag":31,"commentary":9},3391259,"Our desires are insatiable. We seek from the limited the unlimited. We must fail. Our insatiability is a third incurable defect in human life.",{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[],{"id":33,"quote_text":34,"author_id":5,"source_id":21,"has_image":22,"author":35,"source":36,"quote_tag":37,"commentary":9},3391250,"In such a view, time is not emergent. It is, in fact, the only aspect of reality that cannot emerge from a more fundamental background. We register its reality, always and everywhere, by recognizing the differential character of change: some things change relative to other things. However, the kinds of things that there are also change, and so do the ways in which they change. That is what time is: the transformation of transformation.",{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[],{"id":39,"quote_text":40,"author_id":5,"source_id":21,"has_image":22,"author":41,"source":42,"quote_tag":43,"commentary":9},3391246,"To understand your country you must love it. To love it you must, in a sense, accept it. To accept it as it is, however, is to betray it. To accept your country without betraying it, you must love it for that in which it shows what it might become. America – this monument to the genius of ordinary men and women, this place where hope becomes capacity, this long, halting turn of the no into the yes – needs citizens who love it enough to reimagine and remake it.",{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[],{"id":45,"quote_text":46,"author_id":5,"source_id":21,"has_image":22,"author":47,"source":48,"quote_tag":49,"commentary":9},3391234,"Hope is more the consequence of action than its cause. As the experience of the spectator favors fatalism, so the experience of the agent produces hope.",{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[],{"id":51,"quote_text":52,"author_id":5,"source_id":53,"has_image":22,"author":54,"source":55,"quote_tag":56,"commentary":9},676932,"The power worship of the Promethean amounts to a travesty of the enhancement of life.",2,{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[],{"id":58,"quote_text":59,"author_id":5,"source_id":53,"has_image":22,"author":60,"source":61,"quote_tag":62,"commentary":9},651565,"Insofar we are death-bound, existence is urgent and frightful. Insofar as are groundless, it is vertiginous and dreamlike. Insofar as we are insatiable, it is unquiet and tormented.",{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[63,66,71,76],{"id":64,"tag":65},3325988,{"id":13,"tag_name":14},{"id":67,"tag":68},3325990,{"id":69,"tag_name":70},102,"religion",{"id":72,"tag":73},3325987,{"id":74,"tag_name":75},2829,"humanity",{"id":77,"tag":78},3325986,{"id":79,"tag_name":80},6186,"existentialism",{"id":82,"quote_text":83,"author_id":5,"source_id":53,"has_image":22,"author":84,"source":85,"quote_tag":86,"commentary":98},651564,"So we must run back and forth between these two suns in our firmament—the presentiment of death and awareness of life—and avoid being transfixed by either of them. If we are lucky in this uncertain middle distance, we may form attachments and projects that enhance the sentiment of life. However, even as we try our luck, death comes to us, and brings our experiment to a end.",{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[87,90,95],{"id":88,"tag":89},3325985,{"id":13,"tag_name":14},{"id":91,"tag":92},3325983,{"id":93,"tag_name":94},119,"death",{"id":96,"tag":97},3325984,{"id":79,"tag_name":80},"**The Backstory**\n\nThis poignant passage is likely from Roberto Mangabeira Unger's book \"Knowledge and Politics\" (1987), though it might be a paraphrased excerpt from one of his other works or lectures around the same time period. During the late 1980s, Unger was grappling with questions of existential meaning amidst the bleakness of the Cold War era and the rise of neoliberalism.\n\n**The Hidden Insight**\n\nThe key insight here is that Unger is not advocating for living in a state of perpetual denial or distraction from the inevitability of death. Instead, he's pointing out the paradoxical nature of human existence: we must simultaneously acknowledge and navigate between two profound realities – the awareness of our mortality and the promise of life. This dynamic tension creates an \"uncertain middle distance\" where attachments and projects can be formed, yet is inherently ephemeral.\n\n**How to Use This**\n\nTo apply this mindset today, consider embracing a \"temporal humility,\" acknowledging that your current endeavors are finite and exist within the larger context of mortality. This awareness can foster a sense of urgency and clarity in your pursuits, allowing you to prioritize what truly matters and form meaningful attachments during the time you have.",{"id":100,"quote_text":101,"author_id":5,"source_id":53,"has_image":22,"author":102,"source":103,"quote_tag":104,"commentary":9},651563,"The embodied self is the same person who woke to the world in a burst of visonary immediacy, who soon found that he was not the center of that world but on the contrary, a dependent and even hapless creature, and who then discovered that he was doomed to die",{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[105,108,111,116],{"id":106,"tag":107},3325982,{"id":69,"tag_name":70},{"id":109,"tag":110},3325979,{"id":93,"tag_name":94},{"id":112,"tag":113},3325981,{"id":114,"tag_name":115},270,"philosophy",{"id":117,"tag":118},3325980,{"id":79,"tag_name":80},{"id":120,"quote_text":121,"author_id":5,"source_id":53,"has_image":22,"author":122,"source":123,"quote_tag":124,"commentary":9},564823,"If the self remains in its citadel, anxious to control and heavily defended, it declines in the sources of vitality. To lay the citadel open, however, is to court danger: a danger inseparable from the enhancement of life.",{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[125,128],{"id":126,"tag":127},3038165,{"id":13,"tag_name":14},{"id":129,"tag":130},3038166,{"id":131,"tag_name":132},3114,"vitality",{"currentPage":134,"totalPages":53,"totalItems":8,"itemsPerPage":135},1,10]