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@theunderliner
Society requires a phenomenal level of terrorization to prepare children for what constitutes 'life' in the modern world: an endless series of hurdles that must be jumped so that we are channeled into one or another version of socially-approved behavior.
Robert J. Burrowes, A Critique of Human Society since the Neolithic Revolution, The Citizen is Curious
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Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked: 'How do I maintain authority over my security force after the Event?' The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr Robot hack that takes everything down. This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed in time.
Douglas Rushkoff, How tech's richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse, The Guardian
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The global elite is so insane that its members believe that killing and exploiting fellow human beings and destroying the biosphere are simply good ways to make a profit. ... In response to elite-driven imperatives then, such as ‘you are what you own’ to encourage very profitable over-consumption, most people are delusionarily ‘happy’ while utterly trapped behaving exactly as elites manipulate them – they are devoid of the psychological capacity to critique and resist – and the elite-preferred behavior quickly acquires the status of being ‘the only and the right way to behave’, irrespective of its dysfunctionality. ... Virtually all humans fearfully adopt dysfunctional social behaviors such as over-consumption and profit-making at the expense of the biosphere, rather than intelligently, conscientiously and courageously analyzing the total situation (including the moral and ecological dimensions of it) and behaving appropriately in the context. ... Each child, from birth, is terrorized (again: what we like to call ‘socialized’) until they become a slave willing to work and, in industrialized countries at least, to over-consume as directed. ... Earth’s sixth mass extinction is already advancing rapidly as we destroy habitat and, on our current trajectory, all species will soon enter the fossil record. Why? Because we live in a world in which the political, economic, military, legal and social structures and processes of human society are utterly incapable of producing either functional human beings or governance mechanisms that take into account, and respect, the ecological realities of Earth’s biosphere.
Robert J. Burrowes, Destruction of the Biosphere, Timeframe of Global Climate Change: A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival, GlobalResearch
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From an intellectual, scientific standpoint, I think psychiatry is facing a deep crisis. There is an understanding, within psychiatric research circles, that the DSM diagnoses haven’t, in fact, been validated. And, at the very least, there is a recognition that psychiatry’s drug treatments are inadequate. ... Psychiatry’s three domains, in the marketplace, were diagnostics, research and the prescribing of drugs. Now, 34 years later, we see that its diagnostics are being dismissed as invalid; its research has failed to identify the biology of mental disorders to validate its diagnostics; and its drug treatments are increasingly being seen as not very effective or even harmful. ... Psychiatry, all along, knew that the evidence wasn’t really there to support the chemical imbalance notion, that it was a hypothesis that hadn’t panned out, and yet psychiatry failed to inform the public of that crucial fact. ... By doing so, psychiatry allowed a “little white lie” to take hold in the public mind, which helped sell drugs and, of course, made it seem that psychiatry had magic bullets for psychiatric disorders. That is an astonishing betrayal of the trust that the public puts in a medical discipline; we don’t expect to be misled in such a basic way.
Robert Whitaker, interview by Bruce E. Levine, truthout
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There is a huge lack of balance between the discursive capital, the ability to speak and be taken seriously, between men and women, and then also between whites and nonwhites. So, those who have more power have a broader range of possibilities. So Kavanaugh can go in and pretty much lose his mind, and people think that he’s still credible, whereas Dr. Ford had to walk a very, very narrow line to be found to be credible. . . Kate Manne called that 'himpathy.'
Kimberlé Crenshaw: How Society Embraces Male Denials, from Clarence Thomas to Brett Kavanaugh, interview by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
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The real purpose of ‘the war on terror’ is defense of transnational globalization, the unimpeded flow of financial capital around the world, dollar hegemony and access to oil; it has nothing to do with repressing terrorism which it generates, perpetuates and finances to provide cover for its real agenda. ... [The economic elite] are devoid of a legal or moral framework to guide their actions, whether in relation to business, fellow human beings, war or the environment and climate. ... All [institutions] are fully responsive to elite control and are designed to misinform, deceive, disempower, intimidate, repress, imprison (in a jail or psychiatric ward), exploit and/or kill (depending on the constituency) the rest of us. ... 'It is a world of financial institutions run amok, where the answer to economic collapse is to print more money through quantitative easing, flooding the population with trillions of new inflation-producing dollars. It is a world of permanent war, whereby spending for destruction requires further spending to rebuild, a cycle that profits the Giants and global networks of economic power. It is a world of drone killings, extrajudicial assassinations, death, and destruction, at home and abroad.' ... ‘This concentration of protected wealth leads to a crisis of humanity, whereby poverty, war, starvation, mass alienation, media propaganda, and environmental devastation are reaching a species-level threat.’ ... The global power elite is extraordinarily violent and utterly insane: content to kill people in vast numbers (whether through starvation or military violence) and destroy the biosphere for profit, with zero sense of humanity’s now limited future. ... The death and destruction inflicted by elites is highly profitable, centuries-old and ongoing. It will take powerful, strategically-focused nonviolent campaigns (or societal collapse) to compel the necessary changes in elite behavior.
Robert J. Burrowes, Exposing the Giants: The Global Power Elite. Prof. Peter Phillips, Global Research
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Capitalism, Durkheim wrote, is antithetical to creating and sustaining the relationships that are vital to social bonds. Capitalism rewards those for whom relationships are transactional and temporary. Relationships under capitalism are mercenary. They are part of the scheme for personal self-advancement and require the oily manipulation of others. To advance in a capitalist system it is necessary to build and then discard a series of ultimately hollow relationships. These empty relationships—and you can see them on display at any business gathering—contribute to the collective anomie and disintegration of social bonds. ... Capitalism rewards single-minded narcissists and often con artists devoid of empathy and incapable of remorse. It rewards those focused exclusively on personal gain and self-aggrandizement. These dedicated capitalists often lack the capacity to form meaningful bonds, seeing in other people tools for commodification and exploitation.
Chris Hedges, American Anomie, truthdig (more)
History, such as it has hitherto been written, is almost entirely a description of the ways and means by which theocracy, military power, autocracy, and, later on, the richer classes' rule have been promoted, established, and maintained.
Peter Kropotkin, Wikiquote
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Many government officials, scientists and journalists take as given that (corrupt) profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. There is the premise that water, seeds, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to powerful transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity. These natural assets (‘the commons’) should be under common stewardship and managed in the common interest by local people assisted by public institutions and governments acting on their behalf because that’s the bottom line where genuine choice is concerned.
Colin Todhunter, GMO Agriculture and the Narrative of Choice, Counterpunch
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When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions. ... The history of the American kings of capital and authority is the history of repeated crimes, injustice, oppression, outrage, and abuse, all aiming at the suppression of individual liberties and the exploitation of the people. A vast country, rich enough to supply all her children with all possible comforts, and insure well-being to all, is in the hands of a few, while the nameless millions are at the mercy of ruthless wealth gatherers, unscrupulous lawmakers, and corrupt politicians. ... The reign of these kings is holding mankind in slavery, perpetuating poverty and disease, maintaining crime and corruption; it is fettering the spirit of liberty, throttling the voice of justice, and degrading and oppressing humanity. It is engaged in continual war and slaughter, devastating the country and destroying the best and finest qualities of man; it nurtures superstition and ignorance, sows prejudice and strife. ... Revolution is the negation of the existing, a violent protest against man's inhumanity to man with all the thousand and one slaveries it involves. It is the destroyer of dominant values upon which a complex system of injustice, oppression, and wrong has been built up by ignorance and brutality. It is the herald of new values, ushering in a transformation of the basic relations of man to man, and of man to society. ... The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and wellbeing. ... The people are asleep; they remain indifferent. They forge their own chains and do the bidding of their masters to crucify their Christs. ... The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.
Emma Goldman, Wikiquote
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When the skies are filled with black vapors, when fog and sand and sea are confounded in a brew in which they become indistinguishable, when gleaming flashes wheel treacherously in these skyey swamps, the pilot purges himself of the phantoms at a single stroke. He lights his lamps. He brings sanity into his house as into a lonely cottage on a fearsome heath.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman’s Odyssey
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Human anguish is the product of the loss by man of his true identity. ... In life there are no solutions. There are only motive forces and our task is to set them acting—then the solutions follow. ... What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. … To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. . .It is to feel, when setting one’s stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world. ... It is only when we become conscious of our part in life, however modest, that we shall be happy. Only then will we be able to live in peace and die in peace, for only this lends meaning to life and to death.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman’s Odyssey (more)
Thousands of years ago the question was asked: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society. Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe to myself. What would you think of me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death? ... You are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder. You need to know that you were not created to work and produce and impoverish yourself to enrich an idle exploiter. You need to know that you have a mind to improve, a soul to develop, and a manhood to sustain. ... [T]he class which has the power to rob upon a large scale has also the power to control the government and legalize their robbery. ... While there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. ... I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.
Eugene V. Debs, Wikiquote
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The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today … We're all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination. ... We shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for. ... In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell. ... There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you. ... Our inner lives, our inner landscape is just like that sky out there — it's full of smog. We really don't know what we believe anymore, we're nervous about everything.
Norman Mailer, Wikiquote
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It's actually safe to create a universe in your basement. It would not displace the universe around it even though it would grow tremendously. It would actually create its own space as it grows and in fact in a very short fraction of a second it would splice itself off completely from our Universe and evolve as an isolated closed universe growing to cosmic proportions without displacing any of the territory that we currently lay claim to.
Alan Guth, Parallel Universes, BBC Horizon
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There’s no such thing as a good, moral idea that capital can’t co-opt and turn into something horrendous.
David Harvey, interview by Daniel Denvir, Why Marx's Capital Still Matters, Jacobin
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To cling to civility is to allow the powerful to commit crimes, as long as they do so with a smile and a handshake.
Sarah Leonard, Against Civility, The Nation (more)