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Non-inspirational quotes, with substance and rhetoric to fulfill your unfulfillable desires.
Each individual has his own particular ideal of man in general; these ideals are different in degree, though not in kind; each tries by his own ideal every being whom he recognizes as a man. By this fundamental impulse each is prompted to seek in others a likeness to his own ideal; he inquires, he observes on all sides, and when he finds men below this ideal, he strives to elevate them to it. In this struggle of mind with mind, he always triumphs who is the highest and best man;—and thus from the idea of Society arises that of the perfection of the race, and we have thus also discovered the ultimate purpose of all Society as such. When it appears as if the higher and better man had no influence on the low and uncultivated, we are partly deceived in our judgement, since we often expect to find the fruit already ripe, before the seed has had time to germinate and unfold;—and it may partly arise from this, that the better man perhaps stands at too high an elevation above the uncultivated,—that they have too few points of contact with each other, and hence cannot sufficiently act upon each other;—a state which retards civilization to an incredible extent, and the remedy for which we shall point out at the proper time. But on the whole, the ultimate triumph of the better man is certain:—a calming and consoling thought for the friend of humanity and of truth when he looks out upon the open war of light with darkness. The light shall surely triumph at last;—we cannot indeed predict the time,—but it is already a pledge of victory, of near victory, when darkness is compelled to come forth to an open encounter. She loves concealment,—she is already lost when forced out into the open day.
Fichte, The Vocation of the Scholar.
We walk through the world as the spectator walks through a great factory: he does not see the details of machines and working operations, or the comprehensive connections between the different departments which determine the working processes on a large scale….We see the polished surface of our table as a smooth plane; but we know that it is a network of atoms with interstices much larger than the mass particles, and the microscope already shows not the atoms but the fact that the apparent smoothness is not better than the “smoothness” of the peel of a shriveled apple. We see the iron stove before us as a model of rigidity, solidity, immovability; but we know that its particles perform a violent dance, and that it resembles a swarm of dancing gnats more than the picture of solidity we attribute to it. We see the moon as a silvery disk in the celestial vault, but we know it is an enormous ball suspended in open space. We hear the voice coming from the mouth of a singing girl as a soft and continuous tone, but we know that this sound is composed of hundreds of impacts a second bombarding our ears like a machine gun….We do not see the things, not even the concreta, as they are but in a distorted form; we see a substitute world—not the world as it is, objectively speaking.
Hans Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction.
Even if you could overthrow the Government tomorrow and establish Anarchism, the same system would soon grow up again.
This objection is quite true, except that we do not propose to overthrow the Government tomorrow. If I (or we as a group of anarchists) came to the conclusion that I was to be the liberator of humanity, and if by some means I could manage to blow up the King, the Houses of Lords and Commons, the police force, and, in a word, all persons and institutions which make up the Government—if I were successful in all this, and expected to see the people enjoying freedom ever afterwards as a result, then, no doubt, I should find myself greatly mistaken.
The chief results of my action would be to arouse an immense indignation on the part of the majority of the people, and a reorganisation by them of all the forces of government. The reason why this method would fail is very easy to understand. It is because the strength of the Government rests not with itself, but with the people. A great tyrant may be a fool, and not a superman. His strength lies not in himself, but in the superstition of the people who think that it is right to obey him. So long as that superstition exists it is useless for some liberator to cut off the head of tyranny; the people will create another, for they have grown accustomed to rely on something outside themselves.
Suppose, however, that the people develop, and become strong in their love of liberty, and self-reliant, then the foremost of its rebels will overthrow tyranny, and backed by the general sentiment of their age their action will never be undone. Tyranny will never be raised from the dead. A landmark in the progress of humanity will have been passed and put behind for ever.
So the Anarchist rebel when he strikes his blow at Governments understands that he is no liberator with a divine mission to free humanity, but he is a part of that humanity struggling onwards towards liberty.
If, then, by some external means an Anarchist Revolution could be, so to speak, supplied ready-made and thrust upon the people, it is true that they would reject it and rebuild the old society. If, on the other hand, the people develop their ideas of freedom, and then themselves get rid of the last stronghold of tyranny—the Government—then indeed the Revolution will be permanently accomplished.
George Barrett, Objections to Anarchism.
Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World.
Cultures have tried to teach a malign and apparently persuasive lie: that the most important metric of a good life is wealth and the luxury and power it brings. The rich think they live better when they are even richer. In America and many other places they use their wealth politically, to persuade the public to elect or accept leaders who will do that for them. They say that the justice we have imagined is socialism that threatens our freedom. Not everyone is gullible: many people lead contented lives without wealth. But many others are persuaded; they vote for low taxes to keep the jackpot full in case they too can win it, even though that is a lottery they are almost bound to lose. Nothing better illustrates the tragedy of an unexamined life: there are no winners in this macabre dance of greed and delusion. No respectable or even intelligible theory of value supposes that making and spending money has any value or importance in itself and almost everything people buy with that money lacks any importance as well. The ridiculous dream of a princely life is kept alive by ethical sleepwalkers. And they in turn keep injustice alive because their self-contempt breeds a politics of contempt for others. Dignity is indivisible.
Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs.
http://telegra.ph/Guerilla-Open-Access-Manifesto-11-03
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Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and was amazed. Then he spoke thus:
‘The human is a rope, fastened between beast and Overhuman—a rope over an abyss.
‘A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous shuddering and standing still.
‘What is great in the human is that it is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in the human is that it is a going-over and a going-under.
‘I love those who do not know how to live except by going under, for they are those who go over and across.
‘I love the great despisers, for they are the great reverers and arrows of yearning for the other shore.
‘I love those who do not first seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and be sacrifices, but who sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may one day belong to the Overhuman.
‘I love him who lives in order to understand, and who wants to understand so that one day the Overhuman may live. And thus he wills his going-under.
‘I love him who works and invents, that he may build a house for the Overhuman and prepare earth and animal and plant for its sake: for thus he wills his going-under.
‘I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is the will to go under and an arrow of yearning.
‘I love him who holds back not one drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus he strides as spirit across the bridge.
‘I love him who makes of his virtue his addiction and his undoing: thus he wills for his virtue’s sake to live on and to live no more.
‘I love him who would not have too many virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, because it has more knots for one’s undoing to latch on to.
‘I love him whose soul squanders itself, who wants no thanks and does not give back again: for he always bestows and would not preserve himself.
‘I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then asks: Have I been playing falsely then?—for he wills his own perishing.
‘I love him who casts golden words before his deeds and always keeps even more than he promises: for he wills his going-under.
‘I love him who justifies those to come in the future and redeems those gone in the past: for he wants to perish by those in the present.
‘I love him who chastens his God because he loves his God: for the wrath of his God must be his perishing.
‘I love him whose soul is deep even in being wounded, and who can perish from the smallest experience: thus he goes gladly over the bridge.
‘I love him whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his going-under.
‘I love him who has a free spirit and a free heart: then his head is simply the entrails of his heart, yet his heart drives him to his going-under.
‘I love all those who are as heavy drops, falling singly from the dark cloud that hangs over the human: they herald the coming of the lightning, and as heralds they also perish.
‘Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called Overhuman.’—
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody.
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It's significant that their answer did not make any mention either of "society" or states (though kings and governments certainly existed in early India). Instead, they fixed on debts to gods, to sages, to fathers, and to "men." It wouldn't be at all difficult to translate their formulation into more contemporary language. We could put it this way. We owe our existence above all:
1. To the universe, cosmic forces, as we would put it now, to Nature. The ground of our existence. To be repaid through ritual: ritual being an act of respect and recognition towards all that beside which we are small.
2. To those who have created the knowledge and cultural accomplishments that we value most, that give our existence its form, its meaning, but also its shape. Here we would include not only the philosophers and scientists who created our intellectual tradition but everyone from William Shakespeare to that long-since-forgotten woman, somewhere in the Middle East, who created leavened bread. We repay them by becoming learned ourselves and contributing to human knowledge and human culture.
3. To our parents, and their parents—our ancestors. We repay them by becoming ancestors.
4. To humanity as a whole. We repay them by generosity to strangers, by maintaining that basic communistic ground of sociality that makes human relations, and hence life, possible.
Set out this way, though, the argument begins to undermine its very premise. These are nothing like commercial debts. After all, one might repay one's parents by having children, but one is not generally thought to have repaid one's creditors if one lends the cash to someone else.
David Graeber, Debt. (Part 2 of 3)
There is no single thing so like another, so closely corresponding to it, as are all of us to one another.
Consequently, to take something away from someone else — to profit by another's loss — is more unnatural than death, or destitution, or pain, or any other physical or external blow. To begin with, this strikes at the roots of human society and fellowship. For if we each of us propose to rob or injure one another for our personal gain, then we are clearly going to demolish what is more emphatically nature's creation than anything else in the whole world: namely, the link that unites every human being with every other. … Nature's law promotes and coincides with the common interest. … If people claim (as they sometimes do) that they have no intention of robbing their parents or brothers for their own gain, but that robbing their compatriots is a different matter, they are not talking sense. For that is the same as denying their common interest with their fellow-countrymen, and all the legal or social obligations that follow there-from: a denial which shatters the whole fabric of national life. Another objection urges that one ought to take account of compatriots but not of foreigners. But people who put forward these arguments subvert the whole foundation of the human community — and its removal means the annihilation of all kindness, generosity, goodness and justice.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Good Life.
When [mind] labors to extricate itself from the bewilderment [the vague and misleading 'truths'] set up, it falls into fresh contradictions, and may very well burst out with the assertion that the question is settled, that so and so is the truth, and that the other views are sophistries. For 'sophistry' is a slogan used by ordinary common sense against educated reason, just as expression 'visionary dreaming' sums up, once and for all, what philosophy means to those who are ignorant of it.—Since the man of common sense makes his appeal to feeling, to an oracle within his breast, he is finished and done with anyone who does not agree; he only has to explain that he has nothing more to say to anyone who does not find and feel the same in himself. In other words, he tramples underfoot the roots of humanity. For it is the nature of humanity to press onward to agreement with others; human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds. The anti-human, the merely animal, consists in staying within the sphere of feeling, and being able to communicate only at that level.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit.
In science a situation as complicated as this is difficult to treat theoretically. We do not understand all the factors that influence our society and, therefore, cannot make reliable predictions on what changes are desirable. There are too many complex interactions. Ecology has been called the subversive science because every time a serious effort to preserve a feature of the environment is made, it runs into enormous numbers of social or economic vested interests. The same is true every time we attempt to make a major change in anything that is wrong; the change runs through society as a whole. It is difficult to isolate small fragments of the society and change them without having profound influences on the rest of society.
When theory is not adequate in science, the only realistic approach is experimental. Experiment is the touchstone of science on which the theories are framed. It is the court of last resort. What is clearly needed are experimental societies!
There is good biological precedent for this idea. In the evolution of life there are innumerable cases when an organism was clearly dominant, highly specialized, perfectly acclimatized to its environment. But the environment changed and the organism died. It is for this reason that nature employs mutations. The vast majority of mutations are deleterious or lethal. The mutated species are less adaptive than the normal types. But one in a thousand or one in ten thousand mutants has a slight advantage over its parents. The mutations breed true, and the mutant organism is now slightly better adapted.
Social mutations, it seems to me, are what we need. Perhaps because of a hoary science-fiction tradition that mutants are ugly and hateful, it might be better to use another term. But social mutation–a variation on a social system which breeds true, which, if it works, is the path to the future–seems to be precisely the right phrase. It would be useful to examine why some of us find the phrase objectionable.
We should be encouraging social, economic, and political experimentation on a massive scale in all countries. Instead, the opposite seems to be occurring. In countries such as the United States and the Soviet Union the official policy is to discourage significant experimentation, because it is, of course, unpopular with the majority. The practical consequence is vigorous popular disapproval of significant variation. Young urban idealists immersed in a drug culture, with dress styles considered bizarre by conventional standards, and with no prior knowledge of agriculture, are unlikely to succeed in establishing Utopian agricultural communities in the American Southwest–even without local harassment. Yet such experimental communities throughout the world have been subjected to hostility and violence by their more conventional neighbors. In some cases the vigilantes are enraged because they themselves have only within the previous generation been accepted into the conventional system.
We should not be surprised, then, if experimental communities fail. Only a small fraction of mutations succeed. But the advantage social mutations have over biological mutations is that individuals learn; the participants in unsuccessful communal experiments are able to assess the reasons for failure and can participate in later experiments that attempt to avoid the causes of initial failure.
There should be not only popular approval for such experiments, but also official governmental support for them. Volunteers for such experiments in Utopia–facing long odds for the benefit of society as a whole–will, I hope, be thought of as men and women of exemplary courage. They are the cutting edge of the future. One day there will arise an experimental community that works much more efficiently than the polyglot, rubbery, hand-patched society we are living in. A viable alternative will then be before us.
Carl Sagan, The Cosmic Connection. (Part 2 of 2)
It is not possible to study primitive mankind without being deeply impressed by the sociability it has displayed since its very first steps in life. Traces of human societies are found in the relics of both the oldest and the later stone age; and, when we come to observe the savages whose manners of life are still those of neolithic man, we find them closely bound together by an extremely ancient clan organization which enables them to combine their individually weak forces, to enjoy life in common, and to progress. Man is no exception in nature. He also is subject to the great principle of Mutual Aid which grants the best chances of survival to those who best support each other in the struggle for life. These were the conclusions arrived at in the previous chapters.
However, as soon as we come to a higher stage of civilization, and refer to history which already has something to say about that stage, we are bewildered by the struggles and conflicts which it reveals. The old bonds seem entirely to be broken. Stems are seen to fight against stems, tribes against tribes, individuals against individuals; and out of this chaotic contest of hostile forces, mankind issues divided into castes, enslaved to despots, separated into States always ready to wage war against each other. And, with this history of mankind in his hands, the pessimist philosopher triumphantly concludes that warfare and oppression are the very essence of human nature; that the warlike and predatory instincts of man can only be restrained within certain limits by a strong authority which enforces peace and thus gives an opportunity to the few and nobler ones to prepare a better life for humanity in times to come.
And yet, as soon as the every-day life of man during the historical period is submitted to a closer analysis—and so it has been, of late, by many patient students of very early institutions—it appears at once under quite a different aspect. Leaving aside the preconceived ideas of most historians and their pronounced predilection for the dramatic aspects of history, we see that the very documents they habitually peruse are such as to exaggerate the part of human life given to struggles and to underrate its peaceful moods. The bright and sunny days are lost sight of in the gales and storms. Even in our own time, the cumbersome records which we prepare for the future historian, in our Press, our law courts, our Government offices, and even in our fiction and poetry, suffer from the same one-sidedness. They hand down to posterity the most minute descriptions of every war, every battle and skirmish, every contest and act of violence, every kind of individual suffering; but they hardly bear any trace of the countless acts of mutual support and devotion which every one of us knows from his own experience; they hardly take notice of what makes the very essence of our daily life—our social instincts and manners. No wonder, then, if the records of the past were so imperfect. The annalists of old never failed to chronicle the petty wars and calamities which harassed their contemporaries; but they paid no attention whatever to the life of the masses, although the masses chiefly used to toil peacefully while the few indulged in fighting. The epic poems, the inscriptions on monuments, the treaties of peace—nearly all historical documents bear the same character; they deal with breaches of peace, not with peace itself. So that the best-intentioned historian unconsciously draws a distorted picture of the times he endeavours to depict; and, to restore the real proportion between conflict and union, we are now bound to enter into a minute analysis of thousands of small facts and faint indications accidentally preserved in the relics of the past; to interpret them with the aid of comparative ethnology; and, after having heard so much about what used to divide men, to reconstruct stone by stone the institutions which used to unite them.
Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid - A Factor of Evolution.
You can define a net in one of two ways, depending on your point of view. Normally, you would say that it is a meshed instrument designed to catch fish. But you could, with no great injury to logic, reverse the image and define a net as a jocular lexicographer once did: he called it a collection of holes tied together with string.
You can do the same with a biography. The trawling net fills, then the biographer hauls it in, sorts, throws back, stores, fillets and sells. Yet consider what he doesn't catch: there is always far more of that. The biography stands, fat and worthy-burgherish on the shelf, boastful and sedate: a shilling life will give you all the facts, a ten-pound one all the hypotheses as well. But think of everything that got away, that fled with the last deathbed exhalation of the biographee. What chance would the craftiest biographer stand against the subject who saw him coming and decided to amuse himself?
Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot.
The primary form of power that really confronts us today, however, is not so dramatic or demonic but rather earthly and mundane. We need to stop confusing politics with theology. The pre-dominant contemporary form of sovereignty—if we still want to call it that—is completely embedded within and supported by legal systems and institutions of governance, a republican form characterized not only by the rule of law but also equally by the rule of property. Said differently, the political is not an autonomous domain but one completely immersed in economic and legal structures. There is nothing extraordinary or exceptional about this form of power. Its claim to naturalness, in fact its silent and invisible daily functioning, makes it extremely difficult to recognize, analyze, and challenge. Our first task, then, will be to bring to light the intimate relations between sovereignty, law, and capital.
We need for contemporary political thought an operation something like the one Euhemerus conducted for ancient Greek mythology in the fourth century BC. Euhemerus explained that all of the myths of gods are really just stories of historical human actions that through retelling have been expanded, embellished, and cast up to the heavens. Similarly today the believers imagine a sovereign power that stands above us on the mountaintops, when in fact the dominant forms of power are entirely this-worldly. A new political Euhemerism might help people stop looking for sovereignty in the heavens and recognize the structures of power on earth.
Once we strip away the theological pretenses and apocalyptic visions of contemporary theories of sovereignty, once we bring them down to the social terrain, we need to look more closely at how power functions in society today. In philosophical terms we can think of this shift in perspective as a move from transcendent analysis to transcendental critique. Immanuel Kant's 'Copernican revolution' in philosophy puts an end to all the medieval attempts to anchor reason and understanding in transcendent essences and things in themselves. Philosophy must strive instead to reveal the transcendental structures immanent to thought and experience. 'I call all cognition transcendental that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of objects insofar as this is to be possible a priori.' Kant’s transcendental plane thus occupies a position not wholly in the immediate, immanent facts of experience but not wholly outside them either. This transcendental realm, he explains, is where the conditions of possibility of knowledge and experience reside.
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Commonwealth.
I know that this may be somewhat cheesy advice, but I genuinely believe that, in order to have a love for life, one MUST have a love for the living. It’s almost impossible to be happy without embracing the world around you. Of course, this wide world of ours is still worthy of fear and respect, but let that not divert us from our love for it. It seems as though modern living has forced into a more insular way of life, and into a certain state of self idolatry. Although I’m certain that these luddite arguments sound well wrung out to anyone who reads them, there’s no avoiding the relationship between our digital world and our ever increasing loneliness rates. And yet the wheel keeps turning. Although expecting any reversals in our technological growth, of course, is unreasonable, (and frankly, reactionary) our culture has yet to find a suitable response for this advancement. I believe, however, that this cultural progress is being stymied by certain forces in our society that thrive off of cultural regression: The same sort of organizations that thrive off exploitation. In a world of unfathomably quick progress, it seems unreasonable to be a capitalist. Why is this? Because capitalism, unfortunately, has a long history of muddying the waters of such things. The system thrives off of regression, because, in such a system, only the immoral can ascend. And these regressives, as we have taken to calling them, have not only stolen the autonomy of people. They have stolen the sanctity of the world which we love. And that, more than any other offense, is their greatest crime.
Although they are not explicitly connected, one must address the intimate connection between these "regressives" and faith. Although belief in a higher power is not, as many assume, inherently constraining, it becomes problematic when it is used as a basis for social and cultural development. Organized faith, through its unbreakable tenets, is often used to justify outdated practices. Personally, I’ve never really understood it, at least one particular aspect of it. How can it be that someone can be faithful, without being an environmentalist? How can one worship the creator, without worshipping the creation? It seems to me that, faithful or not, due reverence should guide one to a similar philosophy. Any other system, as I see it, is death worship.
@Nucleonimbus (@FoundAgain).
Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land. For if one portion of the earth’s surface may justly become the possession of an individual, and may be held by him for his sole use and benefit, as a thing to which he has an exclusive right, then other portions of the earth’s surface may be so held; and eventually the whole of the earth’s surface may be so held; and our planet may thus lapse altogether into private hands. Observe now the dilemma to which this leads. Supposing the entire habitable globe to be so enclosed, it follows that if the landowners have a valid right to its surface, all who are not landowners, have no right at all to its surface. Hence, such can exist on the earth by sufferance only. They are all trespassers. Save by the permission of the lords of the soil, they can have no room for the soles of their feet. Nay, should the others think fit to deny them a resting-place, these landless men might equitably be expelled from the earth altogether. If, then, the assumption that land can be held as property, involves that the whole globe may become the private domain of a part of its inhabitants; and if, by consequence, the rest of its inhabitants can then exercise their faculties—can then exist even—only by consent of the landowners; it is manifest, that an exclusive possession of the soil necessitates an infringement of the law of equal freedom. For, men who cannot “live and move and have their being” without the leave of others, cannot be equally free with those others.
Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, or The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed.
But today's society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual's value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler's program, that is to say, 'mercy' killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch.
Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.
Between the serf, the farmer, the tenant, and the mortgagee, the difference is rather one of form than of substance. Whether the peasant belongs to me, or the land on which he has to get a living; whether the bird is mine, or its food, the tree or its fruit, is a matter of little moment; for, as Shakespeare makes Shylock say:
You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live.
Slavery and poverty, then, are only two forms, I might almost say only two names, of the same thing, the essence of which is that a man's physical powers are employed, in the main, not for himself but for others; and this leads partly to his being over-loaded with work, and partly to his getting a scanty satisfaction for his needs. For Nature has given a man only as much physical power as will suffice, if he exerts it in moderation, to gain a sustenance from the earth. No great superfluity of power is his. If, then, a not inconsiderable number of men are relieved from the common burden of sustaining the existence of the human race, the burden of the remainder is augmented, and they suffer.
But the more remote cause of [evil] is luxury. In order, it may be said, that some few persons may have what is unnecessary, superfluous, and the product of refinement—nay, in order that they may satisfy artificial needs—a great part of the existing powers of mankind has to be devoted to this object, and therefore withdrawn from the production of what is necessary and indispensable. Instead of building cottages for themselves, thousands of men build mansions for a few. Instead of weaving coarse materials for themselves and their families, they make fine cloths, silk, or even lace, for the rich, and in general manufacture a thousand objects of luxury for their pleasure. A great part of the urban population consists of workmen who make these articles of luxury; and for them and those who give them work the peasants have to plough and sow and look after the flocks as well as for themselves, and thus have more labour than Nature originally imposed upon them. Moreover, the urban population devotes a great deal of physical strength, and a great deal of land, to such things as wine, silk, tobacco, hops, asparagus and so on, instead of to corn, potatoes and cattle-breeding. Further, a number of men are withdrawn from agriculture and employed in ship-building and seafaring, in order that sugar, coffee, tea and other goods may be imported. In short, a large part of the powers of the human race is taken away from the production of what is necessary, in order to bring what is superfluous and unnecessary within the reach of a few. As long therefore as luxury exists, there must be a corresponding amount of over-work and misery, whether it takes the name of poverty or of slavery. The fundamental difference between the two is that slavery originates in violence, and poverty in craft. The whole unnatural condition of society—the universal struggle to escape from misery, the sea-trade attended with so much loss of life, the complicated interests of commerce, and finally the wars to which it all gives rise—is due, only and alone, to luxury, which gives no happiness even to those who enjoy it, nay, makes them ill and bad-tempered.
Arthur Schopenhauer, Government.
Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict. In these pages it is our open political purpose to cooperate with the great law of change; to want otherwise would be like King Canute's commanding the tides and waves to cease.
A word about my personal philosophy. It is anchored in optimism. It must be, for optimism brings with it hope, a future with a purpose, and therefore, a will to fight for a better world. Without this optimism, there is no reason to carry on. If we think of the struggle as a climb up a mountain, then we must visualize a mountain with no top. We see a top, but when we finally reach it, the overcast rises and we find ourselves merely on a bluff. The mountain continues on up. Now we see the 'real' top ahead of us, and strive for it, only to find we've reached another bluff, the top still above us. And so it goes on, interminably.
Knowing that the mountain has no top, that it is a perpetual quest from plateau to plateau, the question arises, 'Why the struggle, the conflict, the heartbreak, the danger, the sacrifice. Why the constant climb?' Our answer is the same as that which a real mountain climber gives when he is asked why he does what he does. 'Because it's there.' Because life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles in the valleys in a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of an illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the unknown. Paradoxically, they give up the dream of what may lie ahead on the heights of tomorrow for a perpetual nightmare—an endless succession of days fearing the loss of a tenuous security.
Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals.
Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spake thus:
‘Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss.
‘A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.
‘What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING.
‘I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.
‘I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.
‘I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.
‘I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.
‘I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeketh he his own down-going.
‘I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing.
‘I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge.
‘I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination and destiny: thus, for the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more.
‘I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one’s destiny to cling to.
‘I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself.
‘I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then asketh: “Am I a dishonest player?”—for he is willing to succumb.
‘I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and always doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going.
‘I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present ones.
‘I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he must succumb through the wrath of his God.
‘I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.
‘I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.
‘I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.
‘I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and succumb as heralds.
‘Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN.—
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody.
To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity "labor power" cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately or even left unused, without affecting the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man's labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity of "man" attached to the tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw material destroyed.
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation.
Myself, I wonder: Couldn't that really be the point? Perhaps what the authors of the Brahmanas were really demonstrating was that, in the final analysis, our relation with the cosmos is ultimately nothing like a commercial transaction, nor could it be. That is because commercial transactions imply both equality and separation. These examples are all about overcoming separation: you are free from your debt to your ancestors when you become an ancestor; you are free from your debt to the sages when you become a sage, you are free from your debt to humanity when you act with humanity. All the more so if one is speaking of the universe. If you cannot bargain with the gods because they already have everything, then you certainly cannot bargain with the universe, because the universe is everything—and that everything necessarily includes yourself. One could in fact interpret this list as a subtle way of saying that the only way of "freeing oneself" from the debt was not literally repaying debts, but rather showing that these debts do not exist because one is not in fact separate to begin with, and hence that the very notion of canceling the debt and achieving a separate, autonomous existence was ridiculous from the start. Or even that the very presumption of positing oneself as separate from humanity or the cosmos, so much so that one can enter into one-to-one dealings with it, is itself the crime that can be answered only by death. Our guilt is not due to the fact that we cannot repay our debt to the universe. Our guilt is our presumption in thinking of ourselves as being in any sense an equivalent to Everything Else that Exists or Has Ever Existed, so as to be able to conceive of such a debt in the first place.
Or let us look at the other side of the equation. Even if it is possible to imagine ourselves as standing in a position of absolute debt to the cosmos, or to humanity, the next question becomes: Who exactly has a right to speak for the cosmos, or humanity, to tell us how that debt must be repaid? If there's anything more preposterous than claiming to stand apart from the entire universe so as to enter into negotiations with it, it is claiming to speak for the other side.
If one were looking for the ethos for an individualistic society such as our own, one way to do it might well be to say: we all owe an infinite debt to humanity, society, nature, or the cosmos (however one prefers to frame it), but no one else could possibly tell us how we are to pay it. This at least would be intellectually consistent. If so, it would actually be possible to see almost all systems of established authority—religion, morality, politics, economics, and the criminal-justice system—as so many different fraudulent ways to presume to calculate what cannot be calculated, to claim the authority to tell us how some aspect of that unlimited debt ought to be repaid. Human freedom would then be our ability to decide for ourselves how we want to do so.
David Graeber, Debt. (Part 3 of 3)
What makes the concept of society so deceptive is that we assume the world is organized into a series of compact, modular units called "societies," and that all people know which one they're in. Historically, this is very rarely the case. Imagine I am a Christian Armenian merchant living under the reign of Genghis Khan. What is "society" for me? Is it the city where I grew up, the society of international merchants (with its own elaborate codes of conduct) within which I conduct my daily affairs, other speakers of Armenian, Christendom (or maybe just Orthodox Christendom), or the inhabitants of the Mongol empire itself, which stretched from the Mediterranean to Korea? Historically, kingdoms and empires have rarely been the most important reference points in people's lives. Kingdoms rise and fall; they also strengthen and weaken; governments may make their presence known in people's lives quite sporadically, and for many people in history, it was not at all clear whose government they were actually in. Even until quite recently, many of the world's inhabitants were not quite sure of what country they were citizens, or why it should matter.
However, if we are born with an infinite debt to all those people who made our existence possible, but there is no natural unit called "society"—then who or what exactly do we really owe it to? Everyone? Everything? Some people or things more than others? And how do we pay a debt to something so diffuse? Or, perhaps more to the point, who exactly can claim the authority to tell us how we can repay it, and on what grounds?
If we frame the problem that way, the authors of the Brahmanas are offering a quite sophisticated reflection on a moral question that no one has really ever been able to answer any better before or since. As I say, we can't know much about the conditions under which those texts were composed, but such evidence as we do have suggests that the crucial documents date from sometime between 500 and 400 BC—that is, roughly the time of Socrates—which in India appears to have been just around the time that a commercial economy and institutions like coined money and interest-bearing loans were beginning to become features of everyday life. The intellectual classes of the time were, much as they were in Greece and China, grappling with the implications. In their case, this meant asking: What does it mean to imagine our responsibilities as debts? To whom do we owe our existence?
David Graeber, Debt. (Part 1 of 3)
How we behave in the world is profoundly influenced by how we experience the world, which is profoundly influenced by how we perceive the world, which is profoundly influenced by what we believe about the world.
Our collective behavior is killing the planet.
It's not altogether irrelevant, then, to ask what sorts of beliefs (perceptions, experiences) might be leading to these destructive behaviors, and to ask how we can change these beliefs such that we will stop, not further, the murder of the planet.
We have been taught, in ways large and small, religious and secular, that life is based on hierarchies, and that those higher on these hierarchies dominate those lower, either by right or by might. We have been taught that there are myriad literal and metaphorical food chains where the one at the top is the king of the jungle.
But what if the point is not to rule, but to participate? What if life less resembles the board games Risk or Monopoly, and more resembles a symphony? What if the point is not for the violin players to drown out the oboe players (or worse, literally drown them or at least drive them from the orchestra, and take their seats for more violin players to use), but to make music with them? What if the point is for us to attempt to learn our proper role in this symphony, and then play that role?
Derrick Jensen, The Myth of Human Supremacy.
It is one of the fundamental impulses of man to be necessitated to assume the existence around him of reasonable beings like himself; but he can only assume their existence under the condition of entering into Society with them, according to the meaning of that word as above explained. The Social Impulse thus belongs to the fundamental impulses of man. It is man’s vocation to live in Society—he must live in Society;—he is no complete man, but contradicts his own being, if he lives in a state of isolation.
You see how important it is not to confound the abstract idea of Society, with that particular empirically conditioned form of Society, which we call the State. Political Society is not a part of the absolute purpose of human life (whatever a great man may have said to the contrary); but it is under certain conditions, a possible means towards the formation of a perfect Society. Like all human institutions, which are merely means to an end, the State constantly tends towards its own annihilation; the ultimate aim of all government is to make government superfluous. That age is of a surety not now present with us,—and I know not how many myriads, or perhaps myriads of myriads of years may elapse before it arrive,—(we have not now to deal with a practical rule of life, but with the vindication of a speculative principle);—that age is not now, but it is certain that in the a priori, fore-ordered course of the human race such a period does exist, when all political combinations shall have become unnecessary. That is the time when, in place of strength or cunning, Reason alone shall be acknowledged as the supreme judge of all;—acknowledged I say, for although men may even then go astray, and by their errors do hurt to their fellow-men, yet they will then be open to conviction of their error, and when convinced of it, will be willing to return and make amends for their fault. Until this age shall arrive, we cannot be true men.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The Vocation of the Scholar.
There is probably no epoch in the history of mankind that has undergone so much and so many varieties of change as the present time. Two hundred years ago, information could be sent from one city to another no faster than by horse. Today, the information can be sent via telephone, telegraph, radio, or television at the velocity of light. In two hundred years the speed of communication has increased by a factor of thirty million. We believe there will be no corresponding future advance, since messages cannot, we believe, be sent faster than the velocity of light.
Two hundred years ago it took as long to go from Liverpool to London as it now does from the Earth to the Moon. Similar changes have occurred in the energy resources available to our civilization, in the amount of information that is stored and processed, in methods of food production and distribution, in the synthesis of new materials, in the concentration of population from the countryside to the cities, in the vast increase in population, in improved medical practice, and in enormous social upheaval.
Our instincts and emotions are those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors of a million years ago. But our society is astonishingly different from that of a million years ago. In times of slow change, the insights and skills learned by one generation are useful, tried, and adaptive, and are gladly received when passed down to the next generation. But in times like today, when the society changes significantly in less than a human lifetime, the parental insights no longer have unquestioned validity for the young. The so-called generation gap is a consequence of the rate of social and technological change.
Even within a human lifetime, the change is so great that many people are alienated from their own society. Margaret Mead has described older people today as involuntary immigrants from the past to the present.
Old economic assumptions, old methods of determining political leaders, old methods of distributing resources, old methods of communicating information from the government to the people–and vice versa–all of these may once have been valid or useful or at least somewhat adaptive, but today may no longer have survival value at all. Old oppressive and chauvinistic attitudes among the races, between the sexes, and between economic groups are being justifiably challenged. The fabric of society throughout the world is ripping.
At the same time, there are vested interests opposed to change. These include individuals in power who have much to gain in the short run by maintaining the old ways, even if their children have much to lose in the long run. They are individuals who are unable in middle years to change the attitudes inculcated in their youth.
The situation is a very difficult one. The rate of change cannot continue indefinitely; as the example of the rate of communication indicates, limits must be reached. We cannot communicate faster than the velocity of light. We cannot have a population larger than Earth's resources and economic distribution facilities can maintain. Whatever the solutions to be achieved, hundreds of years from now the Earth is unlikely still to be experiencing great social stress and change. We will have reached some solution to our present problems. The question is, which solution?
Carl Sagan, The Cosmic Connection. (Part 1 of 2)
Life, as the totality of ends, has a right in opposition to abstract right. If, for example, it can be preserved by stealing a loaf, this certainly constitutes an infringement of someone's property, but it would be wrong to regard such an action as common theft. If someone whose life is in danger were not allowed to take measures to save himself, he would be destined to forfeit all his rights; and since he would be deprived of life, his entire freedom would be negated. There are certainly many prerequisites for the preservation of life, and if we look to the future, we must concern ourselves with such details. But the only thing that is necessary is to live now; the future is not absolute, and it remains exposed to contingency. Consequently, only the necessity [Not] of the immediate present can justify a wrong action, because its omission would in turn involve committing a wrong – indeed the ultimate wrong, namely the total negation of the existence of freedom. The beneficium competentiae is of relevance here, because links of kinship and other close relationships entail the right to demand that no one should be sacrificed completely for the sake of right.
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right.
...a reply to the question of what can be accomplished in the sciences by someone who cannot devote his entire life to them. A guest in the home of another, how can he help the owner?
If we think of art in the higher sense, we might wish that only masters would practice it, that its students would receive the strictest preparation, and that amateurs would joyfully approach it in a mood of reverence. For the work of art should spring from the creative spirit; the artist should call forth content and form from the depths of his own being, and rule his material in a sovereign way; outer influences should give him only what he needs to accomplish his goal.
But the artist has good reason to honor the dilettante, and this is even truer in scientific matters, where the amateur is in a position to produce something both pleasing and useful. Science is far more dependent on empirical observation than art, and many people are skilled at such observations. Scientific work is collected from many quarters, and needs many hands and heads. Knowledge can be passed on, these treasures can be inherited, and what is accomplished by one will be used by many. Thus none are forbidden to offer what they can to the sciences. We owe much to accident, practical experience, or the observation of a moment. All sorts of people gifted with good sensory skills — women, children — can offer lively and well-placed observations.
Thus science cannot ask those wishing to do something scientific to devote their entire lives to it and learn all there is to know (quite a bit to ask even of the initiated). If we look through the history of the sciences, especially the natural sciences, we will find many accomplishments made by individuals working in some single field, and often by laymen.
Wherever inclination, chance, or opportunity may lead a person, whichever phenomena strike him, engage him, arrest him, occupy him — the results will always serve to advance science. For every new relationship that is discovered, every new technique — even the imperfect, even error itself — will prove useful and stimulating; it will not be wasted.
In this sense, then, the author can take some comfort when he looks back on his work, and this observation may give him the courage to do what remains to be done. Not satisfied, but consoled, he commends his past and future accomplishments to the interest of the world and generations to come.
Multi pertransibunt et augebitur scientia.
Goethe, concluding observation of his scientific studies in Physics.
Prison, with its daily rhythm, with the transfer and the defense, does not leave any time; prison dissolves time: This is the principal form of punishment in a capitalist society.
Negri, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics.