Geography

There are people who say that you should be able to be happy wherever you are, and how happiness is completely a matter of choice. I don't buy that. Cacti don't grow in Alaska and cedar trees don't grow in Arizona. I don't pretend to know the laws of nature, but it's clear to me that some things do better in some places and other things do better in others. I don't see why people should be any different... I prefer not to have anyone blow sunshine up my ass about happiness being total choice.

Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.

"At one time, the earth was supposed to be flat.  Well, so it is, even today, from Paris to Asnieres.  But that fact doesn't prevent science from proving that the earth as a whole is spherical.  No one nowadays denies it.  Well...we are still at the stage of believing that life itself is flat, the distance from birth to death.  Yet the probability is that life, too, is spherical and much more extensive and capacious than the hemisphere we know."