Caring can be learned by all human beings, can be worked into the design of every life, meeting an individual need as well as a pervasive need in society.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONJazz 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.
More Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes
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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 -
Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.
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Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.
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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.
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In many ways, constancy is an illusion.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
As you get up in the morning, as you make decisions, as you spend money, make friends, make commitments, you are creating a piece of art called your life.
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The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.
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Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.
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The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.
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When parents die, all of the partings of the past are reevoked with the realization that this time they will not return.
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Often continuity is visible only in retrospect.
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Solutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.
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Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON