The eye is not open when it is limited to the passive role of a mirror... if it has only the capacity to reflect.
But when we observe, we are forced to pay attention. We have to move from passive absorption to active awareness. We have to engage.
Keeping one's eyes open, listening, watching, being quiet, adopting some of the techniques of the psychoanalyst in talking to people, will bring you that surface from which something more comes.
Life cannot be seen by an unmoved spectator.
Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known.
Generally speaking, if people are prepared to stick their heads above the power pit, like Zinn says, and absorb what's going on around them, it makes them think.
I'm one of those parents who are quite careful about documenting their children's upbringing. I really try to actively observe. I write down the little things that happen.
One secret of leadership is that the mind of a leader never turns off. Leaders even when they are sightseers or spectators, are active; not passive observers.
Don't look at the world with your hands in your pockets. To write about it you have to reach out and touch it.
An intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than many another in a life of heroic vigils".
To find out what happens to a system when you interfere with it you have to interfere with it (not just passively observe it).
