If we are part of nature, then we are synonymous with it at the metaphysical level, every bit as much as the first all-but-inorganic animalcules that ever formed a chain of themselves in the blow hole of a primordial sea vent. There is no magic rod that comes down three hundred thousand years ago and divides our essence from the material world that produced us. This means that we cannot speak in essential terms of nature__either of its brutality nor of its beauty__nd hope to say anything true, if what we say isn__ true of ourselves.The importance of that proposition becomes clear only when it__ reversed: What__ true of us is true of nature. If we are conscious, as our species seems to have become, then nature is conscious. Nature became conscious in us, perhaps in order to observe itself. It may be holding us out and turning us around like a crab does its eyeball. Whatever the reason, that thing out there, with the black holes and the nebulae and whatnot, is conscious. One cannot look in the mirror and rationally deny this. It experiences love and desire, or thinks it does. The idea is enough to render the Judeo-Christian cosmos sort of quaint. As far as Rafinesque was concerned, it was just hard science. That part is mysterious. __he lives her life not as men or birds,_ said Rafinesque, __ut as a world.

It's not evil, Rand. I know something evil when I smell it. This isn't evil, it's just incredibly stupid.

To be wicked is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that you are; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil from stupidity.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Evil isn__ the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it__ a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.