When I was a little younger than you, I used to think that the world was made up of big people and little people; and that's the way it would always stay. And then I always wondered why sinks were too high and you had to climb up to wash your face. Cupboards, too high. The hole in the toilet was too big. Nothing, nothing was made for us. It was just a world of big people and little people. You never got any older and nobody ever died.
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Ted Chiang on The Lover of Beauty vs. The Lover of Humanity
Reynolds hasn't witnessed the beauty that I have; he's stood before lovely insights, oblivious to them. The sole gestalt that inspires him is the one I ignored: that of the planetary society, of the biosphere. I am a lover of beauty, he of humanity. Each feels that the other has ignored great opportunities.
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Quantum Mechanics, Contingency, and Freedom in Ted Chiang’s “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom”
Sooner or later each of us confronts the question of what it means to be me. Who am I as an individual existing in this time and place, as part of this family and this people? This most basic question is thrown at each of us, and there is no predetermined script.
