Fluidity of memory and a capacity to forget is perhaps the most haunting trait of our species. As history confirms, it allows us to come to terms with any degree of social, moral, or environmental degradation.
Author: Wade Davis | Source: Rolling Stone | Subjects: Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology
Those who claim that the wealth they have accumulated is theirs to pass on without returning anything back to the American system show a shocking lack of appreciation for all that the system and public monies did to help them create wealth.
Author: Bill Gates Sr. | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy
The capacity to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower. It’s shocking to realise how readily we set aside even our greatest ambitions in life, merely to avoid easily tolerable levels of unpleasantness.
Author: Oliver Burkeman | Source: The Guardian | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Orthodoxy is also enforced by social pressure, nowhere more intensely than on Twitter, where the specter of being shamed or “canceled” produces conformity as much as the prospect of adding to your tribe of followers does. This pressure can be more powerful than a party or state, because it speaks in the name of the people and in the language of moral outrage, against which … [ Read more ]
Author: George Packer | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Social Media
We are living with a new kind of regime that didn’t exist in Orwell’s time. It combines hard nationalism—the diversion of frustration and cynicism into xenophobia and hatred—with soft distraction and confusion: a blend of Orwell and Huxley, cruelty and entertainment. The state of mind that the Party enforces through terror in 1984, where truth becomes so unstable that it ceases to exist, we now … [ Read more ]
Author: George Packer | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Concepts, Information, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Unfreedom today is voluntary. It comes from the bottom up.
Author: George Packer | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society
Orwell never intended his novel to be a prediction, only a warning. And it’s as a warning that 1984 keeps finding new relevance.
Author: George Packer | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Literature | Arts, Politics & Public Policy
Where self-advancement cannot, or is not allowed to, serve as a driving force, other sources of enthusiasm have to be found if momentous changes, such as the awakening and renovation of a stagnant society or radical reforms in the character and pattern of life of a community, are to be realized and perpetuated.
Author: Eric Hoffer | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change, Concepts, Leadership, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
It is better to be bossed by men of little faith, who set their hearts on toys, than by men animated by lofty ideals who are ready to sacrifice themselves and others for a cause.
Author: Eric Hoffer | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Life & Society
By giving voice to everybody, the internet unintentionally gave voice back to the uglier sub-cultures of society that were once barred from any mainstream attention: the bigots, the conspiracy theorists, and the cranks. In our idealism of giving the whole world a way to express themselves, we forgot that most people say really awful shit.
Author: Mark Manson | Subjects: Communication, IT | Technology, Life & Society
In the final analysis, the progress of our civilization will be retarded if any large body of citizens falls behind. Without the help of thousands of others, any one of us would die, naked and starved.
Author: Franklin D. Roosevelt | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
The golden age of consumerism […] has built a global economy by continually robbing us of the sense of meaning and selling it back to us at the price of the product.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Life & Society
Our collective memory always tends toward amnesia and erasure — especially of periods scarred by civilizational shame.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: History, Life & Society
We are — as individuals, as a species, as a society — unfinished and incomplete, our story unwritten. Darwin and [Rachel] Carson both intimated that while there is disorientation in accepting ourselves as increments in advancement the arc of which far exceeds our lifetimes, there is also transcendence, for a story yet unfinished is a story with myriad possible endings — a story that forestalls … [ Read more ]
Author: Maria Popova | Subjects: Concepts, Life & Society, Meaning, Personal Improvement
The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost.
Author: G. K. Chesterton | Subjects: Concepts, Love, Personal Improvement
In the same way as men cannot for long tolerate a sense of spiritual meaninglessness in their individual lives, so they cannot for long accept a society in which power, privilege, and property are not distributed according to some morally meaningful criteria.
Author: Irving Kristol | Subjects: Life & Society, Religion
We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say “It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.” Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.
Author: Fred Rogers | Subject: Life & Society
Self-love is the only enduring form of passion.
Author: Lawrence Sanders | Source: McNally’s Trial (book) | Subjects: Concepts, Love
We deceive ourselves about love — about who; and how; and when; and whether. We also discover and correct our self-deceptions. The forces making for both deception and unmasking here are various and powerful: the unsurpassed danger, the urgent need for protection and self-sufficiency, the opposite and equal need for joy and communication and connection. Any of these can serve either truth or falsity, as … [ Read more ]
Author: Martha Nussbaum | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Love
Nowhere is our capacity for enchantment, nor our capacity for self-deception, greater than in love — the region of human experience where the path to truth is most obstructed by the bramble of rationalization and where we are most likely to be kidnapped by our own delicious delusions. There, it is perennially difficult to know what we really want; difficult to distinguish between love and … [ Read more ]
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Love