Ambiente

António Palolo, Jardim das Delícias (1970)

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«(…) By attempting to reorder our environment in terms of human goals, we have introduced such a heavy dose of entropy in the planetary ecology that we are making it unfit even for human habitation. Crass consideration for our own survival suggests more subtle values understanding and respect for different communities and cultures, different forms of life, different patterns of energy.»

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Mihaly Csikszentnihalyi, Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things, Domestic Symbols and the Self, Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 12.

E Ser

Elisabetta Sirani, Autoritratto (1658, Museo Pushkin, Moscovo)

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«(…) When we say, “who am I?” we attend to certain bits of information or signs that represent the “I”, and these signs become an object of interpretation. One could never attend to all the feelings, memories, and thoughts that constitute what one is, instead, we use representations that stand for the vast range of experiences that make up and shape the self and enable one to infer what the object of self-awareness is. Because self-awareness is a process occurring in time, the self can never be known directly (…). Self-awareness, resulting from an act of inference, is always open to construction, change and development (…).»
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Mihaly Csikszentnihalyi, Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things, Domestic Symbols and the Self, Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 3.

"Ways we can be"

Brian Dettmer, Old masters (2006)
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«(…) Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agreed to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind – without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.» - William James (1890).

«(…) At a given moment we are incapable of focusing on more than a few bits of information at a time. It requires effort to concentrate, that is, to keep the same information in focus for any length of time. Consequently, there are a limited number of things we can do, a limited number of ways we can be. (…)»
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Mihaly Csikszentnihalyi, Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things, Domestic Symbols and the Self, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 5-6