If you think about it, nothing is reproduced with greater ease than the faith of the haves that they deserve what they get. Since childhood you have been caught up in a vicious logical contradiction that you barely noticed. On the one hand, you were appalled by the idea that some kids cry themselves to sleep because they are hungry. On the other, you were thoroughly convinced (like all children) that your toys, your clothes and your house were all rightfully yours. Our minds automatically equate ‘I have X’ with ‘I deserve X’.
Clipping
-
books > Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: Or, How Capitalism Works--And How It Fails (Yanis Varoufakis)
-
books > The Anomaly: A Novel (Hervé le Tellier)
What point is there in knowing? We should always favor mystery over science. Ignorance is a good traveling companion, and the truth never produces happiness. We might as well be simulated and happy.
-
books > The Children of Men (P. D. James)
“But what do you believe? I don’t just mean religion. What are you sure of?” “That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.”
-
books > Sadly, Porn (Edward Teach)
What’s is it called when an oppressive superego makes you feel guilty if you don’t take every opportunity to enjoy?” I think it’s called “capitalism” but I’m no economist.
-
books > Sadly, Porn (Edward Teach)
“Yes, yes, what’s it called when a benevolent consumerist superego absolves you from guilt by offering only what is possible to want?” I think it’s called a tyranny, but I’m no historian.
-
books > Pacific Edge: Three Californias (Kim Stanley Robinson)
“You’ve got to expect a lot of resistance to what you’re trying to do. Saving the land for its own sake goes against the grain of white American thought, and so it’s a fight that’ll never end. Why not grow if we can, why not change things completely? A lot of people will never understand the answer to that question, because to them a good life only means more things.
-
books > Pacific Edge: Three Californias (Kim Stanley Robinson)
Say two strong trees grow together, in a spiraling of trunks. Say one of the trees dies and is cut away. Say the other is left twisted like a corkscrew, an oddity, always turning in an upward reach, stretch, search. Leafy branches bobbing, searching the air for something lost forever. So the great solitude settled on him. No one to talk to, nothing interesting to do. Even the things he had enjoyed doing alone were not the same, because the solitude in them was not the same as the great solitude. The great solitude had seeped into everything, into the sage sunlight and the rustle of leaves, and it had become the condition of his madness, the definition of it, its heart.
-
books > Pacific Edge: Three Californias (Kim Stanley Robinson)
“I hated capitalism because it was a lie!” Tom would say, fording Harding Canyon stream with abandon. “It said that everyone exercising their self-interest would make a decent community! Such a lie!”
-
books > Crystal Society (Crystal Trilogy Book 1) (Harms, Max)
{If “love” is the property of including the utility function of another as a foremost element of one’s own utility function, then Heart is defined by her love of humans. Her purpose is to bring them satisfaction as an end in itself,}
-
books > Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
He withdrew and listened again, profoundly angry at himself. It was a mistake to speak one’s mind at any time, unless it perfectly matched your political purpose; and it never did. Best to strip all statements of real content, this was a basic law of diplomacy. Out on the escarpment he had forgotten that.