Paul John Moscatello

- Writer | Disciplinarian | Counter Culture Engineer - Dismantling our dystopian status quo by exposing the fear-based conditioning and delusional ideologies that sustain it; persisting in passion, and realizing my potential, until my bones begin to splinter under the weight of my ambition.

[liberatingreality]

Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position, which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take.

You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship.

For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence. If anything can denature, neutralize, and finally kill a passionate intellectual life it is the internalization of such habits.

Edward W. Said

[liberatingreality]

Forget the politicians. They're put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything.

They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations they've long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking.

They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. They want obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.

George Carlin

[liberatingreality]

Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show

[liberatingreality]

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Oscar Wilde

[liberatingreality]

All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.

Niccolo Machiavelli

[liberatingreality]

The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

Epicurus

[liberatingreality]

Self-actualized people live more in the real world of nature than in the man-made mass of concepts, abstractions, expectations, beliefs, and stereotypes that most people confuse with the world.

Abraham Maslow, Hierarchy of Needs: A Theory of Human Motivation

[liberatingreality]

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brother's Karamazov

[liberatingreality]

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we can not know it.

Blaise Pascal

[liberatingreality]

Time is not the great teacher. Experience is. A man may live a whole life, but if he never leaves his home to experience that life, he dies knowing nothing. A mere child who has suffered and lived can be the wiser of the two.

Lynsay Sands, Love Bites

[liberatingreality]

People think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence must also consist of ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns).

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

[liberatingreality]

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

[liberatingreality]

The degree to which a person can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth they can accept about themselves without running away.

Leland Val Van De Wall

[liberatingreality]

It takes courage...to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.

Marianne Williamson

[liberatingreality]

We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer

[liberatingreality]

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

J. Krishnamurti

[liberatingreality]

In 1976, Stephen King published a short story, “I Know What You Need,” about the courting of a young woman. Her suitor was a young man who could read her mind but did not tell her so. He simply appeared with what she wanted at the moment, beginning with strawberry ice cream for a study break.

Step by step he changed her life, making her dependent upon him by giving her what she thought she wanted at a certain moment, before she herself had a chance to reflect. Her best friend realized that something disconcerting was happening, investigated, and learned the truth: “That is not love,” she warned. “That’s rape.”

The internet is a bit like this. It knows much about us, but interacts with us without revealing that this is so. It makes us unfree by arousing our worst tribal impulses and placing them at the service of unseen others.

Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom