Culture
Human kindness has never weakened the stamina, or softened the fiber, of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.
-FDR
The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may line in ease.
-Helen Keller
We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, all have their roots in Greece.
-From Hellas (1821), Written by Percy Shelley a 19th Century Poet
Is not peace in the last analysis basically a matter of human rights? The right to live out our lives without fear of devastation. The right to breathe air as nature provided it. The right of future generations to a healthy existence.
-John F. Kennedy - Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963
Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.
-Al Capone
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
-Voltaire
When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are ruled by criminals.
-Anonymous
War becomes perpetual when it is used as a rationale for peace.
-Norman Soloman
You seem to find no tranquility in anything. You struggle against the inevitable. You thrive on combat. Your selfish, yet you value loyalty. Your rash, quick to judge, slow to change. It's amazing that you [the human race] have survived. Be that as it may, as a species we have no common ground. Your too aggressive, too hostile, too militant.
-Inter-dimensional Being Named Nagelum, Star Trek The Next Generation, Season 2 Episode 2
"I did what I did for the realm"-Varys
"The realm? Do you know what the realm is? It's the thousand blades of Aegon's enemies. A story we agree to tell each other over, and over, until we forget that it is a lie."-Littlefinger
"But what do we have left once we abandon the lie? Chaos. A gaping pit waiting to swallow us all."-Varys
"Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail, and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given the chance to climb, but they refuse. They cling to the realm, or the gods, or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is."-Littlefinger
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
-Kurt Vonnegut
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
-Aristotle
If you are neutral on situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
-Desmond Tutu
We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics, is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
-Plato
The man who has his millions will want every thing he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.
-Samuel Gompers
Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much, while so many have so little.
-Senator Bernie Sanders
I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.
-Eugene V. Debs
War is organized murder, and nothing else.
-Harry Patch, Last surviving soldier of WWI
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.
-John Maynard Keynes
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
-Ansel Adams
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
-John Galbraith
People who say the system works, work for the system.
-Russell Brand
Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.
-Mark Twain
Every major metropolitan newspaper supported the invasion of Iraq. This is what you can do with the politics of fear. Bush took this whole nation, and the whole media establishment, by the ear and led us all into the sword. In the land of free speech and a free press.
-Phil Donahue on Democracy Now! Broadcast 11-12-14
What Brad Werner said, though, is that the capitalist system is so rapacious in its consumption of earth’s resources and the measures that have thus far been imposed so ineffectual, that the only hope we have of saving the planet is for action to come from outside of the system.
-Quoted from Revolution by Russell Brand
Why is it that if you take advantage of a tax break and you're a corporation you're a smart businessman, but if you take advantage of something that you need to not be hungry, you're a moocher?
-Jon Stewart
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable..."
-H.L. Mencken
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.
-Frank Herbert, Dune
The one who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before.
-Albert Einstein
Warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights, for no one has the right to take another life. The warrior, for us, is the one who sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves, and above all, the children, the future of humanity.
-Sitting Bull
What if the American people woke up, and understood that the official reasons for going to war are almost always based on lies and promoted by war propaganda in order to serve special interests?
-Ron Paul
If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
-Henry David Thoreau
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.
-George Orwell - 1984
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
-Franklin Roosevelt - January 20, 1937
If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.
-Mark Twain
I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand...By and by you sober down, and then you perceive that you have been drunk on the smell of somebody else's cork.
-Mark Twain
Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.
-Assata Shakur
The statesman will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
-Mark Twain
We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and banks destroy the economy.
-Chris Hedges
There can never be peace among nations until it is first known that true peace is within the souls of men.
-Sioux Proverb
The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution: millions of unconscious individuals not taking responsibility for their inner space.
-Eckhart Tolle
Presidents are selected, not elected.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
Wall Street owns the country. It's no longer a government of the people, by the people and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.
-Mary Lease, “The Problem of Civilization Solved” (1895)
Nations are invented, borders are invisible, and prejudice is learned.
-Abby Martin
It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes.
-Teddy Roosevelt
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
-Woodrow Wilson 28th U.S. President
A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.
-Judge Murray Gurfein, Pentagon Papers case, June 17, 1971
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
-Margaret Mead
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
-Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
When the rich rob the poor, it is called business. When the poor fight back, it is called violence.
-Mark Twain
By portraying themselves as victims of the 'main stream media,' politicians can get conservative voters to be protective of them, instead of critical of them.
-Amanda Marcotte
Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country. Many a time freedom has been rolled back - and always for the same reason: Fear.
-Molly Ivins
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
-Maximilien Robespierre
Some people say, "I wish we had a third party." I wish we had a second one.
-Jim Hightower
I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.
-Albert Einstein
Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt they can't afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a disciplinary technique.
-Noam Chomsky
Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an’ death’s the other.
-Tennessee Williams
This country was built on gangs, you know I think this country still is run on gangs. Republicans, Democrats, The Police Department, The FBI, The CIA, those are gangs"
-Tupac Shakur
No matter if you vote Republican or Democrat, it's impossible to vote against the interests of Raytheon, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto, Exxon Mobile or Big Pharma.
-Chris Hedges
Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress.
-Charles Darwin
Too many people are doing the man's work for the man.
-Terence McKenna
DECAY OF THE HUMAN RACE: As the philosopher ponders about all the possibilities the future might hold for the human race, he will, at some point, stumble upon one of the greatest problems that our civilization is currently facing; the gradual decay of the human race. For hundreds of years dogmatic religions have poisoned mens souls. Like a bird whose wings have been clipped, so for two thousand years the dominant religious institutions have clipped the minds of men. And like the bird who is not able to fly, so the human being is not able to properly apply his mental energies. As a result the human being has descended into materialism - he has been led astray from that which he is in truth. As we look into the world it becomes evident that those best fitted to reproduce do not, while those least fitted to reproduce consummate the world with human beings of such low quality that they simply cannot exist in the natural dimensions of existence. As a result of this oblique ratio our planet is slowly but certainly being taken over by inferior minds. If the human race wishes not only to simply survive, but strives to achieve the highest echelon our civilization can possibly attain, it is ineluctable that drastic measurements have to be taken; the pure pagan religions have to be restored to their former glory. As long as the three major religions have sway in the minds of men the human race shall know no peace.
-Manly P Hall
Our economy is based on a crazy idea - the crazy idea being that we're gonna have infinite growth on a finite planet.
-Paul Guilding
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later, is the people versus the banks.
-Lord Acton
When society reaches a stage where property confers rank, where wealth becomes the only source of virtue, passion the sole bond between man and wife, falsehood the source of success in life, sex the only means of enjoyment, and when outer trappings are confused with inner religion…then we are in the Kali Yuga—the Dark Age.
-The Vishnu Purana, condensation of a long descriptive passage in Book IV, ch. 24, translation by H.H. Wilson (London, 1840)
Money, hoes, and clothes, all a nigga knows.
-The Notorious B.I.G. (Summarizes popular culture in America, and what is wrong with our peculiar consumeristic materialistic society)
Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophers, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and these commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from there evils, nor the human race itself.
-Plato, The Republic trans. B Jewett (New York 1937), 473
Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.
-Aldous Huxley
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
-Oscar Wilde
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
-Albert Camus
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them.
-Gene Roddenberry
If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?
-Tuco, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly movie
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
White men are a minority on this planet yet the history of violence against women, people of color, indigenous sovereignty, and against justice is disproportionately rooted in the ways they have used dominance, force, capital, religion, trade to justify every unjust treaty, law and attack on humanity itself for the protection of their own rights to exploit, murder, enslave, and betray any and every other group that is not them for greater and greater power. I have used every ounce of courage and creative expression and every platform I have had access to, to not only point this out, but also to inspire a greater courage, a more honest observation, a more rebellious spirit to withstand whatever calling that allows members of this group and those they inspire (including men of color-also hungry for power, misled into thinking that their example is the one to follow; including the white women who support them) to continue to pursue unjust causes for personal gain.
The level of disappointment that we are forced to live with, make sense of, and fight against is abominable. Yesterday I watched a woman put her life and intimacy on the world stage only to be rebutted by an angry, immature, entitled, dishonest man who flaunted his right to privilege and unwarranted entitlements in the face of his own criminality. Today I am forced to observe the acts of men who will use this opportunity to further retard and repress the possibility of justice for women, this country, and humanity itself. The fact that their wives do not leave them, that their children do not turn against them, is enough to make one question what is the true role of democracy and the potentiality of justice when it is so blatantly thwarted by the desire to repress the voices of an overwhelming majority?
The character assassination of a man born into unrivaled privilege who balks at the audacity of a woman to get in his way as he rides the coat-tails of his colonial and imperial ancestors into the judicial seat of power is the truth our society and the world needs to end the relentless worship of heroes who kill. These men are the worst of us. And throughout history, the death of us. They are the death of justice and democracy. They are the result of every repeated lie taught as history, every misogynistic law taught as religious code, and every unanswered question about the role of capitalism, imperialism, profit, free labor, rare metals and the corruption around their mining and exploitation, the silencing of women, the rights of workers, the imprisonment of people of color, the cause of war, the colonial roots of “free trade”, and the backbone of our financial systems.
When we say “Fuck the System” we mean it in direct and immediate relation to all that is evident and on display in the US government today.
-Saul Williams (Facebook Post After Confirmation Hearing on Brett Kavenaugh becoming a Supreme Court Justice 9/28/18)
In a society like ours, organized to promote the conformist, the mediocre and the obedient, the sensitivity and ability of extraordinary perception of the hero, or the protagonist, end up being an impediment.
-Doris Lessing
The war isn’t even over, and already there’s dissension and Jews are regarded as lesser beings. Oh, it’s sad, very sad that the old adage has been confirmed for the umpteenth time: What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does reflects on all Jews.
-Anne Frank
Even in our sleep,
pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
-Robert Kennedy quoting Aeschylus's Agamemnon after Martin Luther King was assassinated
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
-Robert Kennedy quoting Aeschylus's Agamemnon after Martin Luther King was assassinated
If one is conforming obviously there is no freedom. And without freedom there is no intelligence.
-Krishnamurti
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
-Aristotle
Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of earth all one's lifetime.
-Mark Twain
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
-Isaac Asimov
When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may 'ride the storm and direct the whirlwind'.
-Alexander Hamilton, Objections and Answers Respecting the Administration, 18 August 1792
At present, we educate people only up to the point where they can earn a living and marry; then education ceases altogether, as though a complete mental outfit had been acquired. Vast numbers of men and women thus spend their entire lives in complete ignorance of the most important things.
-Carl G. Jung
Where there is Peace, there is Culture; Where there is Culture, there is Peace. Cease speaking of enemies when an achievement can kindle a great light. Solitude will transmit the message better than the murmurs of crowds.
-Nichlas Roerich, Leaves Of Morya's Garden
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.
-Alvin Toffler
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.
-Antonio Gramsci
Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
The Higher We Soar, the Smaller We Appear to Those Who Can't Fly.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Ubuntu is a concept that we have in our Bantu languages at home. Ubuntu is the essence of being a person. It means that we are people through other people. We cannot be fully human alone. We are made for interdependence, we are made for family. When you have ubuntu, you embrace others. You are generous, compassionate.
If the world had more ubuntu, we would not have war. We would not have this huge gap between the rich and the poor. You are rich so that you can make up what is lacking for others. You are powerful so that you can help the weak, just as a mother or father helps their children...
~Bishop Tutu
I am just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being human... The great lie is that it is civilization. It's not civilized. It has been literally the most blood thirsty brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet.. Every human being is a raindrop. And when enough of the raindrops become clear and coherent they then become the power of the storm. Everything that has ever happened to us is there to make us stronger.
-John Trudell
The Waste Land, let us say then, is any world in which (to state the problem pedagogically) force and not love, indoctrination, not education, authority, not experience, prevail in the ordering of lives, and where the myths and rites enforced and received are consequently unrelated to the actual inward realizations, needs, and potentialities of those upon whom they are impressed.
-Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology (Vol. IV of The Masks of God)
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
-Martin Niemöller
Friends and family, weeping, surround you.
Eyeing your wealth and possessions, they offer prayers and enshroud you.
Unprepared, you pass away. Helpless and alone.
-The 7th Dalai Lama, 1708-1757
All sentient beings want to lead a happy life and a happy life means a peaceful life. So, we have to think about how to make our world more peaceful and harmonious. We are social animals. We depend on the community in which we live. From the moment we’re born, we depend on the care and affection of our mother and our family to survive. This is nothing to do with religious practice, it’s simply natural behavior.
-The 14th Dalai Lama, Facebook Post, 11/2020
Brotherhood and Understanding: Thoughts by Chief Dan George
I am a native North American. In the course of my life I have lived in two distinct cultures.
I was born into a culture that lived in communal houses. My grandfather’s house was 80 feet long; it was called a smoke house and it stood down by a beach along the inlet. All my grandfather’s sons and their families lived in this large dwelling. Their sleeping apartments were separated by blankets made of bulrush reeds. But one open fire in the middle served the cooking needs for all. In houses like these, throughout our tribe, people learned to live with one another; they learned to serve one another and they learned to respect the rights of one another. Our children shared the thoughts of the adult world and found themselves surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins who loved them. My father was born in such a house and learned from infancy how to love people and be at home with them.
And beyond this acceptance of one another there was a deep respect for everything in nature that surrounded them. My father really loved the earth and all its creatures. The earth was his second mother. The earth and everything it contained was a gift from See-see-am … and the way to thank this great spirit was to use his gifts with respect.
I remember, as a little boy, fishing with him up Indian Arm and I can still see him as the sun rose above the mountain top in the morning … I can see him standing by the water’s edge with his arms raised above his head while he softly cried …
“Thank You. Thank You.” It left a deep impression on my young mind. And I shall never forget his disappointment when once he caught me gaffing for fish “just for the fun of it.”
“My son,” he said. “the Great Spirit gave you those fish to be your brothers, to feed you when you are hungry. You must respect them. You must not kill them just for the fun of it.” This, then, was the culture I was born into and for some years the only one I really knew or tasted. This is why I find it hard to accept many of the new things I see around me.
I see people living in smoke houses hundreds of times bigger than the one I knew, but these people in one apartment do not even know the people in the next and care less about them.
It is also difficult for me to understand the deep hate that exists among people. It is hard to understand a culture that justifies the killing of millions in the past wars and is, at the very moment, preparing to drop bombs to kill even greater numbers. It is hard for me to understand a culture that spends more on wars and weapons to kill than it does on education and welfare to help and develop jobs for mankind.
It is hard for me to understand how men not only hate and fight their brothers, but even attack nature and abuse her. I see my white brother going about blotting out nature from his cities … I see him strip the hills bare, leaving ugly wounds on the face of mountains. I see him tearing things from the bosom of mother earth as though she were a monster who refused to share her treasures with him. I see him throw poisons in her waters, indifferent to the life he kills, and he chokes the air with deadly fumes.
I know that my white brother does many things well, but I wonder if he has ever really learned how to love. Perhaps he loves the things that are his own but has never learned to love the things outside and beyond him. This is not love at all! For man must love all creation or he will love none of it. It is the power of love that makes him the greatest of them all … for he alone of all animals is capable of love.
My friends, how desperately do we need to be loved and to love. When Christ said that man does not live by bread alone, He spoke of a hunger. This hunger was not the hunger of the body … it was not the hunger for bread. He spoke of a hunger that begins in the very depths of man … a hunger for love. Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak. Without love our self esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world … Instead we turn inwardly and begin to feed upon our own personalities and little by little we destroy ourselves.
You and I need the strength and joy that comes from knowing that we are loved. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others. There have been many times when we all wanted so desperately to feel a reassuring hand upon us … there have been lonely times when we wanted a strong arm around us … I cannot tell you how deeply I miss my wife’s presence when I return home from a trip. Her love was my greatest joy, my strength, my greatest blessing.
I am afraid my culture has little to offer yours. But my culture did praise friendship and companionship. It did not look on privacy as a thing to be clung to, for privacy builds up walls and walls promote distrust.
My culture lived in big family communities, and from infancy people learned to live with others
My culture did not prize the hoarding of private possessions; in fact, to hoard was a shameful thing among my people. The Indian looked on all things in nature as belonging to him and he expected to share them with others and to take only what he needed.
Everyone likes to give as well as receive. No one wishes only to receive all the time. We have taken much from your culture; I wish you had taken something from ours, for there are some beautiful and good things in it. Soon it will be too late to know my culture, for integration is upon us and soon we will have no values but yours. Already so many of our young people have forgotten the old ways. And many have been ashamed of their Indian ways by scorn and derision. My culture is like a wounded stag that has crawled away into the forest to bleed and die alone.
The only thing that can truly help us is genuine love. You must truly love us, be patient with us and share with us. And we must love you with a genuine love that forgives and forgets ... a love that forgives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours when it swept over us like a wave crashing along a beach … with a love that forgets and lifts up its head and sees in your eyes an answering look of trust and understanding. ◆
This story was included in our 50th Anniversary Issue, published Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2019. Click here for more stories from this special edition of the North Shore News.
It’s Time to Defund the Republican Party
In yesterday‘s rant, I laid out all the reasons why Democrats should put at the top of their priority list “defunding the Republican Party.“ Here’s a little background, and how to do it.
Back in 1981, the Republican Party decided to defund the Democratic Party. While the Republican party had principally been funded by rich people and big business since the 1920s, the Democrats were largely reliant on the labor unions.
So Ronald Reagan, as part of his “Reagan Revolution,“ figured the best way to destroy the Democratic Party was to destroy America’s unions. His first shot was to destroy Patco, the air traffic controller‘s union, and he did it in less than a week in August, 1981.
He, with Republicans in Congress and conservatives on the Supreme Court than embarked on an eight-year campaign to eliminate unions from the American landscape, thus wiping out the Democratic Party’s ability to win elections.
It worked, and by 1992 American union membership, and their ability to fund elections, had collapsed so severely that Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party had to take money from giant corporations and billionaires to prevail in that election year.
Reagan’s plan not only kneecapped the Democratic Party for the next 40 years, but also changed the party at its core, turning it from LBJ’s Great Society Party into Bill Clinton’s corporate-friendly DLC/New Democrat Party, now in bed with big banks, insurance companies, etc.
If Democrats want to defund the Republican party, which may force it to start focusing on the needs of regular people rather than just billionaires and corporations, there are a few obvious steps they should pursue. They include:
End Red State welfare. Kentucky gets $2.41 for every dollar they send to Washington DC. Most other Red States are similarly “taker“ states, so let’s fight for a law limiting states to no more than $1.50 for every dollar they sent to DC in tax revenues. Call it Welfare Reform!
End corporate welfare that gets recycled to GOP politicians. This includes $600 billion a year to fossil fuel companies, and over $1 trillion a year we give to big Pharma, insurance companies (like subsidies for the “Medicare Advantage” scam), and “Big Ag“ support.
End corporate monopolies. Break up giant corporations and make America safe again for small businesses while rejuvenating local economies. From airlines to tech to banking and retail, giant monopolies rip off working class Americans and use some of that money to fund the GOP.
Bring back Eisenhower‘s 91% top tax rate. America’s strongest economy was 1950 to 1980, with a top tax rate of 91% to 74%. We built highways, schools, hospitals, and put men on the moon. Reagan cut that to 25%, and the billionaires it produced now pour money into the GOP.
Follow Europe’s example and impose a 1% tax on great fortunes. Average Americans pay a wealth tax every year: the property tax on their largest store of wealth, their homes. Billionaires should pay a similar annual tax on their money bins.
End campaign contributions from corporations, end SuperPACs and limit billionaires’ ability to skew our politics. We did this in the 1970s after the Nixon bribery scandals, but the Supreme Court blew it up. There are multiple ways around that, and the Democratic Party should make this job one.
These simple “Contract with America“ steps, along with restoring the ability of American workers to unionize, will not only revive the Democratic Party, but also restore America to economic greatness and give us a far more honest political system.
-Thom Hartmann 12/10/2020, Facebook Post
I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace.
-Federico Garcia Lorca
Consider for a moment what our planet is and what it might be. At present, for most, there is toil and hunger, constant danger, more hatred than love. There could be a happy world, where cooperation was more in evidence than competition, and monotonous work is done by machines, where what is lovely in nature is not destroyed to make room for hideous machines whose sole business is to kill, and where to promote joy is more respected than to produce mountains of corpses. Do not say this is impossible: it is not. It waits only for men to desire it more than the infliction of torture. There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.
-Bertrand Russell, Last Essay: “1967”
This is the last paragraph of Bertrand Russell's last manuscript. Untitled, it was annotated “1967” by Russell, at the age of 95, two or three years before he died. Ray Monk published it first in The Independent of London on the 25th anniversary of the Russell Archives. The essay's politics are uncannily prescient.
I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing.
-Bertrand Russell, Free Thought and Official Propaganda (1922)
Any idiot can face a crisis; it's this day-to-day living that wears you out.
-Anton Chekhov, 29 January, 1860
Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.
-Erich Fromm
Communism is not democratic. What it calls the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is in fact the dictatorship of a small minority, who become an oligarchic governing class. All history shows that government is always conducted in the interests of the governing class, except in so far as it is influenced by fear of losing its power. This is the teaching not only of history, but of Marx.
-Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Communist (1934)
Taking a close look at what's around us, there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of... overwhelming and collective murder.
-Werner Herzog
I am not against leaders per se. On the contrary, I know how necessary they are. They will be necessary so long as men are insufficient unto themselves. As for myself, I need no leader and no god. I am my own leader and my own god. I make my own bibles. I believe in myself—that is my whole credo.
-Henry Miller
Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.
-Werner Herzog
George Carlin's wife died early in 2008 and George followed her, dying in July 2008. It is ironic George Carlin - comedian of the 70's and 80's - could write something so very eloquent and so very appropriate. An observation by George Carlin:
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.
Remember to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.
Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.
Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.
Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.
Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.
And always remember, life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by those moments that take our breath away.
George Carlin
I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.
-Werner Herzog
In moments like this I never know what to say other than that our hearts go out to everyone struck by this terrible tragedy. Because I don't have any answers. Not immediately. The only answer that comes to mind is a simple, but strangely difficult one these days. And that's not to hate each other.
To recognize our common humanity. To acknowledge were a nation of immigrants. We might believe different things; we may not look the same, but we are all Americans. We share a common belief that all men are created equal. It is that belief itself that makes people want to come here.
-Stephen Colbert, After Asian-American shootings in Atlanta GA, and thousands of other incidents of violence across the world related to the COVID-19 virus which had a source in Asia
Everybody has a superficial side and a deep side, but this culture doesn’t place much value on depth — we don’t have shamans or soothsayers, and depth isn’t encouraged or understood. Surrounded by this shallow, glossy society we develop a shallow side, too, and we become attracted to fluff. That’s reflected in the fact that this culture sets up an addiction to romance based on insecurity — the uncertainty of whether or not you’re truly united with the object of your obsession is the rush people get hooked on...
-Joni Mitchell
People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds...Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.
-Jonathan Haidt
A large part of the evil that man unleashes on himself and his world stems not from a wickedness in his heart, but from the way he was conditioned to see the world and to seek satisfaction in it. He blindly follows out his unconscious urges in the frantic activity of daily life…He fits himself into the bureaucratic-industrial machines of our day and gives his uncritical allegiance to the nation-states that run these machines.
-Ernest Becker
My father always said, “early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
It was lights out at 8 p.m. in our house and we were up at dawn to the smell of coffee, frying bacon and scrambled eggs. My father followed this general routine for a lifetime and died young, broke, and, I think, not too wise.
Taking note, I rejected his advice and it became, for me, late to bed and late to rise. Now, I’m not saying that I’ve conquered the world but I’ve avoided numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some common pitfalls and have met some strange, wonderful people one of whom was myself—someone my father never knew.
-Charles Bukowski
Humans smile with so little provocation.
-Spock
On their feet and mobile, the people affect a cool demeanor, more supple, very contemporary, adapted to the "structure" of a "modern" space. Seated in their corner, which is precisely not one, they exhaust themselves secreting an artificial solitude, remaking their "bubble". Therein is also a great tactic of deterrence: one condemns them to using all their energy in the individual defense. Curiously, one thus finds the same contraction that characterizes the Beaubourg thing: a mobile exterior commuting, cool and modern-an interior shriveled by the same old values.
This space of deterrence, articulated on the ideology of visibility, of transparency, of polyvalency, of consensus and contact, and sanctioned by the blackmail to security, is today, virtually, that of all social relations. All of social discourse is there, and on this level as well as on that of the treatment of culture, Beaubourg flagrantly contradict its explicit objectives, a nice monument to our modernity. It is nice to think that the idea did not come to some revolutionary spirit, but to the logicians of the established order, deprived of all critical intelligence, and thus closer to the truth, capable, in their obstinacy, of putting in place a machine that is fundamentally uncontrollable, that in its very success escapes them, and that is the most exact reflection, even in its contradictions, of the current state of things.
-Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard (Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser), Page 62
Someplace between apathy and anarchy is the stance of the thinking human being; he does embrace a cause; he does take a position, and can’t allow it to become business as usual. Humanity is our business.
-Rod Serling
The radio, I know I’m its father, but I don’t like it. I just don’t like it. It’s a nuisance. I never listen to it. The radio is a distraction and keeps you from concentrating. There are too many distractions in this life for quality of thought, and it’s quality of thought, not quantity, that counts.
–Nikola Tesla, “Father Of Radio, Who Hated It.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1943.
Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque.
-U.G. Krishnamurti
I go into solitude so as not to drink out of everybody's cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think. After a time it always seems as if they want to banish my self from myself and rob me of my soul.
-Nietzsche
We defend with our lives the petty principles which divide us. The common principle, which is the establishment of the empire of man on earth, we never lift a finger to defend. We are frightened of any urge which would lift us out of the muck. We fight only for the status quo, our particular status quo. We battle with heads down and eyes closed.
-Henry Miller
Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.
-Jodi Picoult (Book: My Sister's Keeper https://amzn.to/3Ab84Gc)
Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.
-Christopher Hitchens-Book: Letters to a Young Contrarian
Those who read the press of their group and listen to the radio of their group are constantly reinforced in their allegiance. They learn more and more that their group is right, that its actions are justified; thus their beliefs are strengthened. At the same time, such propaganda contains elements of criticism and refutation of other groups, which will never be read or heard by a member of another group...
Thus we see before our eyes how a world of closed minds establishes itself, a world in which everybody talks to himself, everybody constantly views his own certainty about himself and the wrongs done him by the Others - a world in which nobody listens to anybody else.
-Jacques Ellul
I have read somewhere of an old Chinese curse: 'May you be born in an interesting time!' This is a VERY interesting time: there are no models for ANYTHING that is going on. It is a period of free fall into the future, and each has to make his or her own way. The old models are not working; the new have not yet appeared. In fact, it is we who are even now shaping the new in the shaping of our interesting lives. And that is the whole sense (in mythological terms) of the present challenge: we are the 'ancestors' of an age to come, the unwitting generators of its supporting myths, the mythic models that will inspire its lives.
-Joseph Campbell
All of life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
-Martin Luther King
Each element of the cosmos is positively woven from all the others. There is no dichotomy in this universe.
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest-theologian and a distinguished geologist-paleontologist, who was born in France in 1881 and died in New York City in 1955.