I think the truth of an idea is never determined by the number of people who believe it and that the world is a far more complex place than those who think in black and white would like to believe. I agree with Baudrillard that we invest all the passion in material objects that we're incapable of investing in human relationships. I think curbing or limiting freedom in the name of defending it is a wank - if freedom is the end it must also be the means. I think representative democracy is dead - voting for different factions of the one pro-corporate party isn't anything even remotely like exercising control over your own destiny. In some ways I think if you don't feel a bit disaffected or alienated, then you're not really paying attention. I try to think and act like an active subject of my own needs and desires and not as a passive object to be herded around by the high priests of some ideology or religious orthodoxy who tell you what to think, not how to think. Ever notice how those who have all the answers never really seem to know what the question is?
I hate the small-minded judgmentalism of those of us who project our own self-hatred onto those who represent what we hate and fear most about ourselves, who scapegoat those who present a threat to our ego-slavery and sense of entitlement. I've been a crowning example of that sort of idiocy at times, but I pray to (Spinoza's) God I've learnt my lesson.
I don't have too many problems these days, but one slight problem I do have is living in a vapid, soulless, materialistic, corrupt and unbalanced world on a quickening downward spiral into authoritarianism, economic disaster, environmental chaos and perpetual war, one that likes to suck itself off about how morally upstanding and civilised it is as much as it likes to demonise anyone who asks inconvenient questions like whether or not our propensity to defer responsibility for the consequences of our actions as individuals and as members of society in favour of being told what to think and how to act by those in high places isn't the reason why we're all in this shitty, god-awful mess in the first place.
Here are some quotes copied from my Facebook profile:
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. - Albert Einstein
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. - Albert Einstein
Jealous cowards try to control, rise above, we've gotta rise above.
- Black Flag
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
- Dune
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but don't consider the beam that is in your own eye? - Matthew 7:3
If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest. - Exodus 22:25-27
We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population....In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity....To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives....We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. - George Kennan. Director of Policy Planning U.S. State Department 1948
Most historians would agree that the part played by impulses of Selfish, individual aggression in the holocausts of history was small; first and foremost, the slaughter was meant as an offering to the gods, to king and country, or the future happiness of mankind. The crimes of a Caligula shrink to insignificance compared to the havoc wrought by Torquemada. The number of victims of robbers, highwaymen, rapists, gangsters and other criminals at any period of history is negligible compared to the massive numbers of those cheerfully slain in the name of the true religion, just policy or correct ideology.
- Arthur Koestler
We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar. - Charles Bukowski
So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, "Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!" And so it will be to the end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down before idols just the same.
- Dostoyevsky
