Quote Only Thread

[Bruce Dazzling]

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:

"Poverty and pollution serve as plausibly-deniable eugenics in scientific fascism."

[justdrew]

The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, in Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era (1970).

PDF

[Allegro]

.

In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill… All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.

~ Alexander King, Bertrand Schneider, founder and secretary, respectively, of the Club of Rome. Refer The First Global Revolution.

[stefano]

They were fabulously well-to-do, and descended from Americans who had all but wrecked the planet with a form of Idiot's Delight—obsessively turning money into power, and then power back into money again, and then money back into power again.

Kurt Vonnegut in Slapstick

[justdrew]

“What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”

Philip K. Dick

[Jeff]

"You know, we got ourselves into this. No one made us chew Chew-Z."

Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

[Allegro]

The only thing that makes life possible is a permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next. [Refer.] Ursula K. Le Guin.

[wha?]

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.

--Erich Fromm

[Gouda]

“In the same way, we need approaches to financial regulation that seek to make the world safer for ignorance and cupidity, which are inevitable, rather than relying on our ability to correct them."

~ Lawrence Summers, director of Obama's National Economic Council, speaking at the Economist magazine’s annual Buttonwood Gathering in NYC in October 2009.

[Allegro]

War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretense must be made for expenditure. In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes…. [Refer.]

[barracuda]

Q. Is there a certain language that is commonly
used for users of 4chan?
A. In what sense?
Q. Certain terms, have a meaning unique to 4chan?
A. Yes.
Q. Like “OP,” what is “OP”?
A. OP means original poster.
Q. Are you familiar these terms, having been the
founder and administrator of the 4chan site?
A. Yes.
Q. What would “lurker” mean?
A. Somebody who browses but does not post, does
not contribute.
Q. What do the words “caps” mean?
A. Screenshots.
Q. And is there any significance to “new fags”?
A. That is the term used to describe new users to
the site.
Q. What about “b tard”?
A. It’s a term that users of the /b/- Random
board use for themselves.
Q. What about “troll”?
A. Troublemaker.
Q. “404″?
A. 404 is the status code for not found. It
means essentially gone or not found.
Q. Not found on where, the 4chan site?
A. 404 is the http status code for not found, a
page not found by the Web server.
Q. In what about “peeps”?
A. People.
Q. “Rickroll”?
A. Rickroll is a mean or Internet kind of trend
that started on 4chan where users — it basically a bait
and switch. Users link you to a video of Rick Astley
performing Never Gonna Give You Up.
Q. What about “white night”? Does that have a
unique meaning on 4chan?
A. On 4chan I am not sure. White night in
general, I guess, would mean a do gooder.
Q. And the term “rickroll” you said it tries to
make people go to a site where they think it is going to
be one thing, but it is a video of Rick Astley, is that
right?
A. Yes.
Q. He was some kind of singer?
A. Yes.
Q. It’s a joke?
A. Yes.

- Moot, giving testimony during the the trial of David Kernell

[Bruce Dazzling]

America has transformed itself from a nation of earnest, muscular, upright citizens to a land of overfed barbarous morons ruled by grifters.

~ James Howard Kunstler

http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/08/the-queasy-season.html

[Allegro]

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.[Wiki and WikiQuote.]

[Allegro]

…there is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham… (from chapter 13, last paragraph) [Refer.]

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving he can outwit Nature, and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. [WikiQuote.]

I like this quote although I think differently after reading the reference.

You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion, or challenge the ideology of a violet. [Refer.]

[justdrew]

To me it was as if, in wandering through the place of doom, my blood turned to tears by its sights, and my spirit attuned to sorrow, pity, and despair, I had happened in some glade upon a merry party of roisterers. I sat in silence until Edith began to rally me upon my sombre looks, What ailed me? The others presently joined in the playful assault, and I became a target for quips and jests. Where had I been, and what had I seen to make such a dull fellow of me?

"I have been in Golgotha," at last I answered. "I have seen Humanity hanging on a cross! Do none of you know what sights the sun and stars look down on in this city, that you can think and talk of anything else? Do you not know that close to your doors a great multitude of men and women, flesh of your flesh, live lives that are one agony from birth to death? Listen! their dwellings are so near that if you hush your laughter you will hear their grievous voices, the piteous crying of the little ones that suckle poverty, the hoarse curses of men sodden in misery turned half-way back to brutes, the chaffering of an army of women selling themselves for bread. With what have you stopped your ears that you do not hear these doleful sounds? For me, I can hear nothing else."

Silence followed my words. A passion of pity had shaken me as I spoke, but when I looked around upon the company, I saw that, far from being stirred as I was, their faces expressed a cold and hard astonishment, mingled in Edith's with extreme mortification, in her father's with anger. The ladies were exchanging scandalized looks, while one of the gentlemen had put up his eyeglass and was studying me with an air of scientific curiosity. When I saw that things which were to me so intolerable moved them not at all, that words that melted my heart to speak had only offended them with the speaker, I was at first stunned and then overcome with a desperate sickness and faintness at the heart. What hope was there for the wretched, for the world, if thoughtful men and tender women were not moved by things like these! Then I bethought myself that it must be because I had not spoken aright. No doubt I had put the case badly. They were angry because they thought I was berating them, when God knew I was merely thinking of the horror of the fact without any attempt to assign the responsibility for it.

I restrained my passion, and tried to speak calmly and logically that I might correct this impression. I told them that I had not meant to accuse them, as if they, or the rich in general, were responsible for the misery of the world. True indeed it was, that the superfluity which they wasted would, otherwise bestowed, relieve much bitter suffering. These costly viands, these rich wines, these gorgeous fabrics and glistening jewels represented the ransom of many lives. They were verily not without the guiltiness of those who waste in a land stricken with famine. Nevertheless, all the waste of all the rich, were it saved, would go but a little way to cure the poverty of the world. There was so little to divide that even if the rich went share and share with the poor, there would be but a common fare of crusts, albeit made very sweet then by brotherly love.

The folly of men, not their hard-heartedness, was the great cause of the world's poverty. It was not the crime of man, nor of any class of men, that made the race so miserable, but a hideous, ghastly mistake, a colossal world-darkening blunder. And then I showed them how four fifths of the labor of men was utterly wasted by the mutual warfare, the lack of organization and concert among the workers. Seeking to make the matter very plain, I instanced the case of arid lands where the soil yielded the means of life only by careful use of the watercourses for irrigation. I showed how in such countries it was counted the most important function of the government to see that the water was not wasted by the selfishness or ignorance of individuals, since otherwise there would be famine. To this end its use was strictly regulated and systematized, and individuals of their mere caprice were not permitted to dam it or divert it, or in any way to tamper with it.

The labor of men, I explained, was the fertilizing stream which alone rendered earth habitable. It was but a scanty stream at best, and its use required to be regulated by a system which expended every drop to the best advantage, if the world were to be supported in abundance. But how far from any system was the actual practice! Every man wasted the precious fluid as he wished, animated only by the equal motives of saving his own crop and spoiling his neighbor's, that his might sell the better. What with greed and what with spite some fields were flooded while others were parched, and half the water ran wholly to waste. In such a land, though a few by strength or cunning might win the means of luxury, the lot of the great mass must be poverty, and of the weak and ignorant bitter want and perennial famine.

Let but the famine-stricken nation assume the function it had neglected, and regulate for the common good the course of the life-giving stream, and the earth would bloom like one garden, and none of its children lack any good thing. I described the physical felicity, mental enlightenment, and moral elevation which would then attend the lives of all men. With fervency I spoke of that new world, blessed with plenty, purified by justice and sweetened by brotherly kindness, the world of which I had indeed but dreamed, but which might so easily be made real. But when I had expected now surely the faces around me to light up with emotions akin to mine, they grew ever more dark, angry, and scornful. Instead of enthusiasm, the ladies showed only aversion and dread, while the men interrupted me with shouts of reprobation and contempt. "Madman!" "Pestilent fellow!" "Fanatic!" "Enemy of society!" were some of their cries, and the one who had before taken his eyeglass to me exclaimed, "He says we are to have no more poor. Ha! ha!"

"Put the fellow out!" exclaimed the father of my betrothed, and at the signal the men sprang from their chairs and advanced upon me.

It seemed to me that my heart would burst with the anguish of finding that what was to me so plain and so all important was to them meaningless, and that I was powerless to make it other. So hot had been my heart that I had thought to melt an iceberg with its glow, only to find at last the overmastering chill seizing my own vitals. It was not enmity that I felt toward them as they thronged me, but pity only, for them and for the world.

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25439
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward