6 years ago in Quotes
We would rather forgive the evil proliferating all around us than the rebellion against it, which we mistake for the true evil.
 6 years ago in Quotes
This misuse of ā€˜professionalismā€™ to refer to the faux Victorian mannerliness fashionable amongst lesser suits is just one more troubling aspect of loss of conceptual resources inculcated by corporate culture.
 7 years ago in Quotes
Well, Americans
What, nothin' better to do?
Why don't you kick yourself out?
You're an immigrant too

Who's usin' who?
What should we do?
Well, you can't be a pimp
And a prostitute too
"Icky Thump"
 7 years ago in Quotes
The type of personal integration we attain ā€“ or the effective lack thereof ā€“ depends on what possibilities our life situation offers us for the development of autonomy. It is a distorted development that is the root cause of the pathological and, ultimately, evil element in human beings.

The struggle for autonomy heightens our aliveness. Insofar as the socialization process blocks autonomy, however, this process engenders the evil it attempts to prevent. If parental love is so distorted that it demands submission and dependence for its self-confirmation, social adjustment turns into a test of obedience and the childā€™s efforts to comply bring with them the loss of genuine feelings. The human being then becomes the true source of evil.
"The Betrayal of the Self: The Fear of Autonomy in Men and Women"
 8 years ago in Quotes
A person can become free through acts of disobedience by learning to say no to power. But not only is the capacity for disobedience the condition for freedom; freedom is also the condition for disobedience. If I am afraid of freedom, I cannot dare to say "no," I cannot have the courage to be disobedient. Indeed, freedom and the capacity for disobedience are inseparable; hence any social, political, and religious system which proclaims freedom, yet stamps out disobedience, cannot speak the truth.
 8 years ago in Quotes
If kids are studying for a test, they're not going to learn anything. We all know that from our own experience. You study for a test and pass it and you forget what the topic was, you know. And I presume that this is all pretty conscious. How conscious are they? I don't know, but they're reflections of the attitude that you have to have discipline, passivity, obedience, the kind of independence and creativity that we were shown in the '60s and since then - it's just dangerous.
 1 decade ago in Quotes
If you care about other people, thatā€™s now a very dangerous idea. If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. Thatā€™s not going to happen if you care only about yourself. Maybe you can become rich, but you donā€™t care whether other peopleā€™s kids can go to school, or can afford food to eat, or things like that. In the United States, thatā€™s called ā€œlibertarianā€ for some wild reason. I mean, itā€™s actually highly authoritarian, but that doctrine is extremely important for power systems as a way of atomizing and undermining the public.
 1 decade ago in Quotes
Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.
 1 decade ago in Quotes
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
 1 decade ago in Quotes
What you can't see from this picture is the room full of people staring at this with one hand on their chins and super serious expressions. One girl was even taking notes! Sometimes I wish I possessed the requisite attention span to absorb endless amounts of totally pointless bullshit.
 1 decade ago in Quotes
Johnb made the point that "plain language is not enough when the frame of reference is not available to the listener"; correct and important. But the right reaction is not to resort to obscure and needlessly complex verbiage and posturing about non-existent "theories." Rather, it is to ask the listener to question the frame of reference that he/she is accepting, and to suggest alternatives that might be considered, all in plain language. I've never found that a problem when I speak to people lacking much or sometimes any formal education, though it's true that it tends to become harder as you move up the educational ladder, so that indoctrination is much deeper, and the self-selection for obedience that is a good part of elite education has taken its toll. Johnb says that outside of circles like this forum, "to the rest of the country, he's incomprehensible" ("he" being me). That's absolutely counter to my rather ample experience, with all sorts of audiences. Rather, my experience is what I just described. The incomprehensibility roughly corresponds to the educational level. Take, say, talk radio. I'm on a fair amount, and it's usually pretty easy to guess from accents, etc., what kind of audience it is. I've repeatedly found that when the audience is mostly poor and less educated, I can skip lots of the background and "frame of reference" issues because it's already obvious and taken for granted by everyone, and can proceed to matters that occupy all of us. With more educated audiences, that's much harder; it's necessary to disentangle lots of ideological constructions.
 1 decade ago in Quotes
Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.
Tagsobedience
 1 decade ago in Quotes
If you quietly accept and go along no matter what your feelings are, ultimately you internalize what you're saying, because it's too hard to believe one thing and say another. I can see it very strikingly in my own background. Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, "You're an asshole," which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, "That's idiotic," when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job.