Gregory Bateson on 'stability': (Excerpt from the documentary 'An Ecology of Mind')

“The world in which you have been placed is rather a strange world, because it doesn’t contain anything, it only contains news. Reports of difference, reports of change, preferences for change, preferences for stability, etc. etc. etc. But you know, really; no high wire, no balancing-pole; only states of a balancing pole, states of you on a high wire. From the moment when I saw that the word “stable” refers not to the cat, not to me, not to the object when I say “it is stable.” The moment I discovered that ‘it’ was an error, I was living in a world of ideas. Very important ideas, elegant ideas, to live in a world of ideas is to be alive. So here we are, floating, in a world which consists of nothing but change, because if there isn’t any change, there isn't any knowledge that there isn’t- only by the creation of change can I perceive something. And in this world we float, we talk, and we talk as if, you know, there were a static element in the world.”