[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.
Showing posts with label Social problems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social problems. Show all posts
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.
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
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]
Monday, April 16, 2018
Martha Shelley
From "Gay Is Good" (1970) in Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation
Understand this — that the worst part of being a homosexual is having to keep it secret. Not the occasional murders by police or teenage queer-beaters, not the loss of jobs or expulsion from schools or dishonorable discharges — but the daily knowledge that what you are is so awful that it cannot be revealed. The violence against us is sporadic. Most of us are not affected. But the internal violence of being made to carry — or choosing to carry — the load of your straight society's unconscious guilt — this is what tears us apart, what makes us want to stand up in the offices, in the factories and schools and shout out our true identities.
Understand this — that the worst part of being a homosexual is having to keep it secret. Not the occasional murders by police or teenage queer-beaters, not the loss of jobs or expulsion from schools or dishonorable discharges — but the daily knowledge that what you are is so awful that it cannot be revealed. The violence against us is sporadic. Most of us are not affected. But the internal violence of being made to carry — or choosing to carry — the load of your straight society's unconscious guilt — this is what tears us apart, what makes us want to stand up in the offices, in the factories and schools and shout out our true identities.
Gregory Bateson
From Steps to an Ecology of Mind
About 50 years of work in which thousands of clever men have had their share have, in fact, produced a rich crop of several hundred heuristic concepts, but, alas, scarcely a single principle worthy of a place in the list of fundamentals. It is all too clear that the vast majority of the concepts of contemporary psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, sociology, and economics are totally detached from the network of scientific fundamentals....
[E]xcessive preference for induction ... must always lead to something like the present state of the behavioral sciences — a mass of quasi-theoretical speculation unconnected with any core of fundamental knowledge.
About 50 years of work in which thousands of clever men have had their share have, in fact, produced a rich crop of several hundred heuristic concepts, but, alas, scarcely a single principle worthy of a place in the list of fundamentals. It is all too clear that the vast majority of the concepts of contemporary psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, sociology, and economics are totally detached from the network of scientific fundamentals....
[E]xcessive preference for induction ... must always lead to something like the present state of the behavioral sciences — a mass of quasi-theoretical speculation unconnected with any core of fundamental knowledge.
William Irwin Thompson
From Passages About Earth
American social science, so lavishly supported by the Ford Foundation, was simply ideological camoflage for the spread of a world view congenial to the growth of American-based multi-national corporations.
American social science, so lavishly supported by the Ford Foundation, was simply ideological camoflage for the spread of a world view congenial to the growth of American-based multi-national corporations.
Dennis Altman and Jonathan Symons
From Queer Wars
We seek to answer two questions: first, why, as homosexuality has become more visible globally, have reactions to sexual and gender diversity become so polarized? [My answer: religion and opportunists] ... The book's second question is: what is to be done? [My answer: come out, encourage others to come out, and patience]
We seek to answer two questions: first, why, as homosexuality has become more visible globally, have reactions to sexual and gender diversity become so polarized? [My answer: religion and opportunists] ... The book's second question is: what is to be done? [My answer: come out, encourage others to come out, and patience]
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'[Q]ueer rights' ... is more inclusive, but overly academic.
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In reality, the goal of campaigns for 'queer rights' is the universal application of human rights, irrespective of sexual orientation or gender identity, and many have argued that this is better pursued through building protection for the 'sexual freedom and rights' of all people. The very concept of 'sexual rights' was born from a feminist critique which rightly saw the subordination of women and the denial of the right to control their bodies as central to both social justice and genuine 'development'.
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[A]lmost all religious and cultural traditions impose strict rules around what is and is not appropriate behavior. The rules differ enormously; what seems also true is that hypocrisy is a common element of most sexual regimes.
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One of the few issues on which religious fundamentalists of all faiths can agree is opposition to homosexuality....
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Is speaking out strongly for gay rights ... helpful — or does it, in practice, help fuel, even create, more political homophobia?
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[A] gay identity and community are both a product of and a marker of a certain sort of modernity.
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[C]ultural shift must usually be the first step in any successful strategy to expand sexual freedom.
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"The contempt for homosexuality and homosexual men ... is part of the ideological package of hegemonic masculinity"
-- R.W. Connell
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[What is to be done?] There are no simple answers.... [L]asting social progress can ultimately only emerge from within societies. [emphasis added]
James Baldwin
From I Am Not Your Negro
White people are astounded by Birmingham. Black people aren't. White people are endlessly demanding to be reassured that Birmingham is really on Mars. They don't want to believe, still less to act on the belief, that what is happening in Birmingham is happening all over the country. They don't want to realize that there is not one step, morally or actually, between Birmingham and Los Angeles.
White people are astounded by Birmingham. Black people aren't. White people are endlessly demanding to be reassured that Birmingham is really on Mars. They don't want to believe, still less to act on the belief, that what is happening in Birmingham is happening all over the country. They don't want to realize that there is not one step, morally or actually, between Birmingham and Los Angeles.
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I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know we have a Christian church which is white and a Christian church which is black.... I can't afford to trust most white Christians, and I certainly cannot trust the Christian church. I don't know whether the labor unions or their bosses really hate me ... but I know I'm not in their union. I don't know whether the real estate lobby has anything against black people, but I know the real estate lobby is keeping me in the ghetto. I don't know if the board of education hates black people, but I know the textbooks they give my children to read and the schools we have to go to. Now, this is evidence.
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You never had to look at me. I had to look at you. I know more about you than you know about me.
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What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a "nigger" in the first place. I'm not a nigger, I'm a man. But if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need him.... If I'm not the nigger here and you invented him, ... then you've got find out why.
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