Loren Eiseley's Prescriptive for Our Times

"Let it be admitted that the world’s problems are many and wearing, and that the whirlpool runs fast. 
If we are to build a stable cultural structure above that which threatens to engulf us by changing our lives more rapidly than we can adjust our habits, it will only be by flinging over the torrent a structure as taut and flexible as a spider’s web, a human society deeply self-conscious and undeceived by the waters that race beneath it, a society more literate, more appreciative of human worth than any society that has previously existed. 
That is the sole prescription, not for survival — which is meaningless — but for a society worthy to survive."
Loren Eiseley,  Firmament of Time
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