The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories. Mary Catherine Bateson More Quotes by Mary Catherine Bateson More Quotes From Mary Catherine Bateson The past empowers the present, and the sweeping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future. Mary Catherine Bateson pathwaysempoweringpast The critical question about regret is whether experience led to growth and new learning. Some people seem to keep on making the same mistakes, while others at least make new ones. Regret and remorse can be either paralyzing or inspiring. [p. 199] Mary Catherine Bateson regretmistakepeople The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors. Mary Catherine Bateson understandingcutelooks Jazz exemplifies artistic activity that is at once individual and communal, performance that is both repetitive and innovative, each participant sometimes providing background support and sometimes flying free. Mary Catherine Bateson time-fliessupportmusic The caretaking has to be done. "Somebody's got to be the mommy." Individually, we underestimate this need, and as a society we make inadequate provision for it. Women take up the slack, making the need invisible as we step in to fill it. Mary Catherine Bateson donestepsneeds The Christian tradition was passed on to me as a great rich mixture, a bouillabaisse of human imagination and wonder brewed from the richness of individual lives. Mary Catherine Bateson imaginationchristianreligion The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy. Mary Catherine Bateson democracyessentialscommitment Solutions to problems often depend upon how they're defined. Mary Catherine Bateson dependsdefinedproblem I had repeatedly accepted inappropriate burdens, stepping in to do what needed to be done. In retrospect, I think I carried them well, but the cost was that I was chronically overloaded, weary, and short of time for politicking, smoothing ruffled feathers, and simply resting. Mary Catherine Bateson costdonethinking Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members. Mary Catherine Bateson traditionpeacehistory ...a disgruntled reflection on my own life as a sort of desperate improvisation in which I was constantly trying to make something coherent from conflicting elements to fit rapidly changing settings. Mary Catherine Bateson elementsreflectiontrying Rarely is it possible to study all of the instructions to a game before beginning to play, or to memorize the manual before turning on the computer. The excitement of improvisation lies not only in the risk of being involved but in the new ideas, as heady as the adrenaline of performance, that seems to come from nowhere. Mary Catherine Bateson gamesplaylying When any relationship is characterized by difference, particularly a disparity in power, there remains a tendency to model it on the parent-child-relationship. Even protectiveness and benevolence toward the poor, toward minorities, and especially toward women have involved equating them with children. Mary Catherine Bateson differencespeacechildren Orthodox Judaism is a thicket of detailed injunctions, Biblical commandments elaborated during centuries of prohibited proselytizing, functioning to limit interaction with outsiders. At the opposite extreme, Islam, still the most rapidly expanding of faiths, demands little immediate knowledge from those who would convert. The convert is permitted to enter and then to learn by participation, although there are plenty of detailed regulations and abstruse theological ideas to be pursued later, and the regulations do effectively separate believers from nonbelievers. Mary Catherine Bateson biblicaloppositesideas Traditionally in American society, men have been trained for both competition and teamwork through sports, while women have been reared to merge their welfare with that of the family, with fewer opportunities for either independence or other team identifications, and fewer challenges to direct competition. In effect, women have been circumscribed within that unit where the benefit of one is most easily believed to be the benefit of all. Mary Catherine Bateson womenteamworksports Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live. Mary Catherine Bateson discontinuityfluidityreality Often continuity is visible only in retrospect. Mary Catherine Bateson continuityretrospectperspective In many ways, constancy is an illusion. Mary Catherine Bateson illusionmemorableway We do not need to understand other people and their customs fully to interact with them and learn in the process; it is making the effort to interact without knowing all the rules, improvising certain situations, which allows us to grow. Mary Catherine Bateson effortknowingpeople ... as we age we have not only to readdress earlier developmental crises but also somehow to find the way to three affirmations that may seem to conflict. ... We have to affirm our own life. We have to affirm our own death. And we have to affirm love, both given and received. Mary Catherine Bateson threeagelove
