treading watts, milling about

A culture that invents escalators and stairmasters is a culture that needs to assess what it's actually talking about. [...]

And that's fine to have projects: to lose weight or to exercise; if you like it, do it. But to actually go to a hall of mirrors -- in the middle of an energy crisis, -- to have all the healthy people in the culture go to a hall of mirrors and run on an actual metaphor for effort going nowhere, and then plug that thing in so it's an electric treadmill that actually draws power! -- that is a culture that needs to step back and look at itself.

[...]

If you look at a testimony of love from two thousand years ago it can still exactly speak to you, whereas medical advice from only 100 years ago was ridiculous. How does that happen? [...] I don't put science really as the way I get to any of my answers. It's just helpful. It's poetry that I look to -- it's the clatter of recognition. You know it's fine -- everybody has different ways, but I attest that poetry works pretty well. It's... it's got a good heart.

-- Jennifer Michael Hecht, interview on Point of Inquiry

Point of Inquiry is the podcast from the Center for Inquiry, (A Global Federation Committed to Science, Reason, Free Inquiry, Secularism, and Planetary Ethics.) I had found their anti-religion slant overly religious, but I gave the podcast another try at Ilya's recommendation of this episode.