[Close to the mis-attributed "Be the change you seek in the world."]
If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Gandhi
[from an article about snakebites (1913)]
[Close to the mis-attributed "Be the change you seek in the world."]
If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.
[Close to the mis-attributed "Be the change you seek in the world."]
If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.
Alphabetical author list
- Saul Alinsky on sociology
- Dennis Altman anti-gay bigotry: origins and fighting it
- James Baldwin racism
- Jacques Barzun on significance and difficulty
- Gregory Bateson on the social "sciences"
- Gregory and Mary Bateson syllogism of metaphor
- Alison Bechdel on delayed gay teenage years
- Daniel Bell what history should focus on
- H. E. Booker on Bachelors and Doctors degrees
- Jorge Luis Borges on aging
- Samuel Butler on prayer
- Jorge Castañeda U.S. / Mexico relations
- Noam Chomsky domino theory; U.S. media
- Arthur C. Clarke Clarke's Laws
- Harvey Cox on specialization
- Steve Cuno on quarantine economy
- Samuel R. (Chip) Delany mainstream fiction vs. SF; civilization's built-in enemies
- Annie Dillard profligate nature
- Cory Doctorow on non-voters
- Ralph Waldo Emerson "Language is fossil poetry."
- Timothy Ferris on blind belief vs. evidence and science
- R. Buckminster Fuller on genius
- Gandhi ~ be the change...
- Adam Gopnik Christianity invented religious intolerance
- Tim Gowers on collaboration
- G. H. Hardy science is said to be useful if ...
- Eric Hoffer the learners vs. the learned
- Aldous Huxley channeling power into learning
- Ivan Illich on cars
- Molly Ivins on undeserving rich
- Gary Kasparov on propaganda
- Christina Anne Knight defining religion
- Donald E. Knuth on teaching computers
- Thomas Kuhn on reading apparent absurdities
- Timothy Leary on age
- Ursula LeGuin secret desires; endless growth; "I don't believe in evolution, I accept it."
- Ursula LeGuin on suicide
- Georg C. Lichtenberg on determinism / free will
- Robert T. Lundy logic, reason, confusion, fear
- Scott McNealy zero privacy
- HarveyMilk coming out
- Candida Moss Christianity violently opposes pluralism of thought
- Catherine Nixey Christianity invented religious intolerance
- Thomas Paine
- Robert Pastor U.S. / Mexico relations
- Thomas Piketty on non-voters
- Cecil Rhodes on the lottery of life
- Richard Rorty on worship and on social goals
- Richard Rorty objectivity; physics vs. psychology
- Richard Rorty personhood, awareness, civil rights
- Jane Rule inventing heaven and hell
- Joanna Russ "Women ought to run things ... "
- Martha Shelley having to keep being gay secret
- Michael Shermer "overidentify patterns and causation"
- Baruch Spinoza
- Neal Stephenson on agreeing on facts
- Adlai Stevenson "That's not enough..."
- Jonathan Symons anti-gay bigotry: origins and fighting it
- William Irwin Thompson on entertainment
- William Irwin Thompson on sociology
- William Irwin Thompson on political virtual reality
- William Irwin Thompson on just war
- Mark Twain on bad habits
- Gore Vidal "do as I advise"
- Tim Wu on economic concentration
- William Butler Yeats fed the heart on fantasies
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
R. Buckminster Fuller
[NASA speech (1966)]
There is no such thing as genius, some children are just less damaged than others.
There is no such thing as genius, some children are just less damaged than others.
Friday, May 18, 2018
Ivan Illich
[Energy and Equity (1974)]
The typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly instalments. He works to pay for petrol, tolls, insurance, taxes and tickets, He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it.
And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy.
The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only three to eight per cent of their society's time budget to traffic, instead of 28 per cent.
What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry.
[paragraph breaks added]
The typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly instalments. He works to pay for petrol, tolls, insurance, taxes and tickets, He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it.
And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy.
The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only three to eight per cent of their society's time budget to traffic, instead of 28 per cent.
What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry.
[paragraph breaks added]
Arthur C. Clarke
Clarke's Laws:
Every revolutionary idea — in science, politics, art, or whatever — seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Every revolutionary idea — in science, politics, art, or whatever — seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:
(1) "It's completely impossible — don't waste my time";
(2) "It's possible, but it's not worth doing";
(3) "I said it was a good idea all along."
(2) "It's possible, but it's not worth doing";
(3) "I said it was a good idea all along."
Monday, April 16, 2018
Richard Rorty
From Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
Once upon a time, we felt a need to worship something which lay beyond the visible world. Later we tried to substitute a love of truth for a love of God. Later, a love of ourselves. We should try to get to the point where we no longer worship anything.
The point of social organization is to let everybody have a chance at self-creation to the best of his or her abilities. That goal requires peace, wealth, and freedom.
Once upon a time, we felt a need to worship something which lay beyond the visible world. Later we tried to substitute a love of truth for a love of God. Later, a love of ourselves. We should try to get to the point where we no longer worship anything.
- - - - - -
The point of social organization is to let everybody have a chance at self-creation to the best of his or her abilities. That goal requires peace, wealth, and freedom.
William Irwin Thompson
From The American Replacement of Nature: The Everyday Acts and Outrageous Evolution of Economic Life
[In America,] history is replaced by movies, education is replaced with entertainment ... Entertainment has now replaced education as the basic process of socialization.
Disneyism is the world's cleverest and most successful new religion.... Attacks ... are, like the Ghost Dance of the Plains Indians against the railroads, just simply not powerful enough to stop the electronic spread of Disneyism, Hollywood movies and TV programs, rock and roll, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds.
[In America,] history is replaced by movies, education is replaced with entertainment ... Entertainment has now replaced education as the basic process of socialization.
- - - - - - -
Disneyism is the world's cleverest and most successful new religion.... Attacks ... are, like the Ghost Dance of the Plains Indians against the railroads, just simply not powerful enough to stop the electronic spread of Disneyism, Hollywood movies and TV programs, rock and roll, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds.
Jane Rule
[From A Hot-Eyed Moderate]
We are as much rule- as tool-making creatures because few of our behavior patterns are handed to us in our genes.
...
The human appetite for justice is so often thwarted in life that one of the chief activities of fantasy is to punish or reward those people who deserve but seem to receive neither in life. We are so frustrated by not only the lack of plot but also by lunatic accident that we invent heaven and hell to correct the meaninglessness and error in this world.
We are as much rule- as tool-making creatures because few of our behavior patterns are handed to us in our genes.
...
The human appetite for justice is so often thwarted in life that one of the chief activities of fantasy is to punish or reward those people who deserve but seem to receive neither in life. We are so frustrated by not only the lack of plot but also by lunatic accident that we invent heaven and hell to correct the meaninglessness and error in this world.
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