Complementary Feeding Quotes

Misha had appeared chez Viktor a year before, when the zoo was giving hungry animals away to anyone able to feed them. Viktor had gone along and returned with a king penguin. Abandoned by his girlfriend the week before, he had been feeling lonely. But Misha had brought his own kind of loneliness, and the result was now two complementary lonelinesses, creating an impression more of interdependence than of amity.

In fact, this book is anchored by two complementary themes: The Internet can turbocharge generosity and Generosity can transform the Internet. Each theme feeds the other. If we see the Internet as a scary, inhuman mass of strangers ready to judge and exploit us, it will be hard for us to trust it with our good intentions. But without people making efforts to connect with others online in a generous spirit, the Internet can’t deliver its potential as a force for good.

It is of interest that ‘brands’ came into being in the 19th century to protect the public from contaminated, adulterated or falsely described food. Cheating our fellow human beings existed long before industrialisation. Watering the milk or making bread with contaminated flour goes back to ancient times.2 Brands were established to indicate trust in product quality because the buyer could trace the provider. However the current use of brand power by big food corporations is not driven by the quest to improve nutrition but to manipulate the psychological perceptions of the consumer in order to maximise profits. That initial trust of the ‘brand’ has been exploited to extremes and has become a worshipped marketing tool.

All life depends upon the opportunistic interplay between elemental forces, the mysterious dualities of the numinous universe. Ying and yang forces of the natural world (lightness and darkness, fire and water, expansion and contraction) create tangible dualities that are complementary, interconnected, and independent. Without the firmament in the midst of the waters, without both sunshine and water, no life forms could subsist on this rocky orb. Without the rich soil surrounded by a canopy of an illimitable sky how could we feed ourselves, how could we breathe?