Geology

"The Anthropocene makes for an easy story. Easy, because it does not challenge the naturalized inequalities, alienation, and violence inscribed in modernity’s strategic relations of power and production. It is an easy story to tell because it does not ask us to think about these relations at all. The mosaic of human activity in the web of life is reduced to an abstract Humanity: a homogeneous acting unit. Inequality, commodification, imperialism, patriarchy, racial formations, and much more, have been largely removed from consideration. ... Are we really living in the Anthropocene, with its return to a curiously Eurocentric vista of humanity, and its reliance on well-worn notions of resource- and technological-determinism? Or are we living in the Capitalocene, the historical era shaped by relations privileging the endless accumulation of capital?"

"Our planetary impacts have increased since our earliest ancestors stepped down from the trees, at first by hunting some animal species to extinction. Much later, following the development of farming and agricultural societies, we started to change the climate. Yet Earth only truly became a “human planet” with the emergence of something quite different. This was capitalism, which itself grew out of European expansion in the 15th and 16th century and the era of colonisation and subjugation of indigenous peoples all around the world."

"Driven by the Anthropocene engine, human population has grown exponentially, and individual societies have approached collapse multiple times over the past 8,000 years. The disappearance of the Easter Island civilization and the collapse of the Mayan empire, for example, have been linked to the depletion of environmental resources as populations rose. The dramatic decline of the European population during the Black Death in the 1300s was a direct consequence of crowded and unsanitary living conditions that facilitated the spread of Yersenia pestis, or plague."

"Through our predatory behaviors, systems of exploitation, and growth-oriented societies, we have lived in contradiction to one another, other species, and the planet for so long that we have brought about a new geologic epoch. We have hastened the end of the Holocene Era, which endured over the last ten thousand years, and thereby have precipitated the arrival of the Anthropocene Era–whose very name proclaims our global dominance and the severe environmental impact of Homo sapiens. In our current Anthropocene period of runaway climate change, the crisis in earth's history, resource scarcity, global capitalism, aggressive neoliberalism, economic crashes, increasing centralization of power, rampant militarism, chronic warfare, and suffering and struggle everywhere, we have come to a historical crossroads where momentous choices have to be made and implemented."

"... the cause of the sixth mass extinction is a very different type of cataclysm: expansion of one element of biodiversity to planetary dominance. In short, that is, expansion of the human enterprise—the explosion of the numbers of Homo sapiens and their domesticates and the near-instantaneous (in terms of geological time) burst of ecosystem altering and destroying technologies. That expansion has created a new geological epoch, dubbed the Anthropocene ... The term Anthropocene, meant to replace the formal, geologically accepted label of the Holocene epoch, encapsulates the consequences of humanity's activities on Earth's life-support systems. Indeed, humanity's planetary impact includes alterations of geological processes so profound as to leave stratigraphic signatures in multiple structures of the Earth's surface. These new structures are technofossils like plastics, metal junk, radioactive wastes and other synthetic material footprints ... Therefore, the term Anthropocene is increasingly penetrating the lexicon of not only the academic socio-sphere, but also society more generally (e.g. it is now an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary) and is useful for discussion of the sixth mass extinction."

"The geometric growth rate of humans is unprecedented and never in the history of the earth has a single species grown to such bloated proportions, completely out of balance with living systems. The problem is only worsening. On conservative estimates the human population is expected to swell upwards to 8-10 billion by 2050, and perhaps expand significantly by 2100. Human population growth represents a crisis of the highest order, but of course it is only one aspect of multiple crises -- including species extinction and climate change -- merging together in a perfect storm of catastrophe that forms the daunting challenges facing humanity in the Anthropocene."

"Sergeant Calhoun: What is this? [sees sign] Nesquik-sand!? Fix-It Felix, Jr: Quicksand? Oh, I'll hop out and grab you one of those vines. [tries unsuccessfully to hop] I can't hop. I'm hopless. This is hopeless! We're gonna drown here! Sergeant Calhoun: Stop thrashing. Stop—stop, you're making us sink faster. [Felix continues thrashing] Get ahold of yourself! [hits Felix]"

"The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity—and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand."

"Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."

"This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilising drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

"Making the best of things is … a damn poor way of dealing with them.... My whole life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand."

"With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand…hopeless from the start."

"A quicksand of deceit."

"Henry "Mutt" Williams-Jones III: What is it, quicksand? Marion Ravenwood: I'm calm. Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr.: No, it's a drysand pit. Marion: I'm sinking, but I'm calm. "Indiana": Quicksand is a mix of sand, mud and water and depending on the viscosity it's not as dangerous as people sometimes think. Marion: For Pete's sake, Jones, we're not in school! "Indiana": Don't worry. There's nothing to worry about unless there's a… [suddenly there is a void collapse] …a void collapse."

"I have died a thousand days Just to feel this quicksand And every movement is embraced By this sweet frustration"

"Our mother's philosophy It feels like quicksand And if she sinks I'm going down with her"

"Should I kiss the viper's fang Or herald loud the death of Man I'm sinking in the quicksand of my thought And I ain't got the power anymore"

"Your father's gone a-hunting In the quicksand and the clay And a woman cannot follow him Although she knows the way"

"Slow, sinking feeling Kills the mood you're conveying And it pulls me far down below"

"'Cause the world waits around But I keep slipping and losing ground"

"Stop you're talking down I lack the strength to sit or stand I lost my self confidence in the quicksand In the quicksand In the quicksand In the quicksand"

"Our love is quicksand So easy to drown They steal the gravity, yeah From moving ground"

"As If I ever had a choice All in the hands of the energy Once again feel the quicksand swallow me Tonight, I won't struggle"

"Some people fall in love and touch the sky Some people fall in love and find quicksand"

"Nothing but a castle built on top of a swamp of quicksand"

"I'm running in quicksand Something's haunting me The guilty past I've buried My mind won't let me sleep"

"Figure eighting in quicksand"

"That someone is you That someone is you That someone has pulled me up and out of cartoon quicksand Pulled me up and out of me"

"Feet first into the quicksand Every day we are surrendering Never straying from the game plan I keep hoping you will take my hand and stand up"

"Quicksand's got no sense of humour I'm still laughing like hell"

"You're nothing but a history A second here and then you're gone Quicksand, quicksand all around Turn the corner just beyond"

"Time's like quicksand Soon again, I'm standing naked in Wonderland"

"Deviate all by means in name 'Cause we all crawl in quicksand the same"

"The quicksand of time You know it makes me want to cry"

"These hands disappear as I wave farewell This gentle quicksand turns into hard times"

"You're dancing in quicksand"

"How does it happen that once a crystal is started, it permits only a particular kind of atom to join on? It happens because the whole system is working toward the lowest possible energy. A growing crystal will accept a new atom if it is going to make the energy as low as possible. But how does it know that a silicon—or an oxygen—atom at some particular spot is going to result in the lowest possible energy? It does it by trial and error. In the liquid, all of the atoms are in perpetual motion. Each atom bounces against its neighbors about 1013 times every second. If it hits against the right spot of growing crystal, it has a somewhat smaller chance of jumping off again if the energy is low. By continually testing over periods of millions of years at a rate of 1013 tests per second, the atoms gradually build up at the places where they find their lowest energy. Eventually they grow into big crystals."

"Any life form in any realm – mineral, vegetable, animal, or human – can be said to undergo “enlightenment.” It is, however, an extremely rare occurrence since it is more than an evolutionary progression: It also implies a discontinuity in its development, a leap to an entirely different level of Being and, most important, a lessening of materiality. What could be heavier and more impenetrable than a rock, the densest of all forms? And yet some rocks undergo a change in their molecular structure, turn into crystals, and so become transparent to the light. Some carbons, under inconceivable heat and pressure, turn into diamonds, and some heavy minerals into other precious stones.... Since time immemorial, flowers, crystals, precious stones, and birds have held special significance for the human spirit. Like all lifeforms, they are, of course, temporary manifestations of the underlying one Life, one Consciousness. Their special significance and the reason why humans feel such fascination for and affinity with them can be attributed to their ethereal quality."

"Tyndall declared that he saw in Matter the promise and potency of all forms of life, and with his Irish graphic lucidity made a picture of a world of magnetic atoms, each atom with a positive and a negative pole, arranging itself by attraction and repulsion in orderly crystalline structure. Such a picture is dangerously fascinating to thinkers oppressed by the bloody disorders of the living world. Craving for purer subjects of thought, they find in the contemplation of crystals and magnets a happiness more dramatic and less childish than the happiness found by mathematicians in abstract numbers, because they see in the crystals beauty and movement without the corrupting appetites of fleshly vitality."

"I shall never forget the sight. The vessel of crystallization was three quarters full of slightly muddy water—that is, dilute water-glass—and from the sandy bottom there strove upwards a grotesque little landscape of variously colored growths: a confused vegetation of blue, green, and brown shoots which reminded one of algae, mushrooms, attached polyps, also moss, then mussels, fruit pods, little trees or twigs from trees, here, and there of limbs. It was the most remarkable sight I ever saw, and remarkable not so much for its profoundly melancholy nature. For when Father Leverk ¨uhn asked us what we thought of it and we timidly answered him that they might be plants: “No,” he replied, “they are not, they only act that way. But do not think the less of them. Precisely because they do, because they try as hard as they can, they are worthy of all respect.”"

"A crystal is like a class of children arranged for drill, but standing at ease, so that while the class as a whole has regularity both in time and space, each individual child is a little fidgety!"

"When Dr. W.M. Stanley of the Rockefeller Institute's Princeton station crystallized the virus which produces the mosaic disease of tobacco, there was a great hullabaloo among the biologists. And rightly so. Were these crystal alive? Apparently no more so than diamonds, glass, sand or other crystals with which we are familiar. Yet when virus crystals were put on a tobacco leaf, the mosaic disease spread like a slow fire over a whole field just as if it had been infected by living bacteria."

"Maybe tomorrow when He looks down Every green field and every town All of his children, every nation There'll be peace and good, brotherhood… Crystal blue persuasion."

"I feel like a white granular mass of amorphous crystals—my formula appears to be isomeric with Spasmotoxin. My aurochloride precipitates into beautiful prismatic needles. My Platinochloride develops octohedron crystals,—with fine blue florescence. My physiological action is not indifferent. One millionth of a grain injected under the skin of a frog produced instantaneous death accompanied by an orange blossom odor."

"You would, at first sight, think that a low-energy electron would have great difficulty passing through a solid crystal. The atoms are packed together with their centers only a few angstroms apart, and the effective diameter of the atom for electron scattering is roughly an angstrom or so. That is, the atoms are large, relative to their spacing, so that you would expect the mean free path between collisions to be of the order of a few angstroms—which is practically nothing. You would expect the electron to bump into one atom or another almost immediately. Nevertheless, it is a ubiquitous phenomenon of nature that if the lattice is perfect, the electrons are able to travel through the crystal smoothly and easily—almost as if they were in a vacuum. This strange fact is what lets metals conduct electricity so easily; it has also permitted the development of many practical devices. It is, for instance, what makes it possible for a transistor to imitate the radio tube. In a radio tube electrons move freely through a vacuum, while in the transistor they move freely through a crystal lattice."

"Geology is part of that remarkable dynamic process of the human mind which is generally called science and to which man is driven by an inquisitive urge. By noticing relationships in the results of his observations, he attempts to order and to explain the infinite variety of phenomena that at first sight may appear to be chaotic."

"The principle of "uniformitarianism" and the method of "comparative ontology" are examples of geologic rules."

"The increasing number of factors playing a role in the various complexes of natural phenomena are the origin of new, so-called emergent, laws and characteristics. Based on this principle of emergence, a hierarchy of sciences can be distinguished: physics-chemistry-geology-biology-psychology."

"Geology differs from physics, chemistry, and biology in that the possibilities for experiment are limited. As geology is essentially a historical science, the working method of the geologist resembles that of the historian. This makes the personality of the geologist of essential importance in the way he analyzes the past. This subjective element in geologic studies accounts for two characteristic types that can be distinguished among geologists: one considering geology as a creative art, the other regarding geology as an exact science."

"We got a course in picknicking at the university," said Dr. Bourbon. "It's called Geology, but it's really picknicking."