society

This place is like the Army: the shark ethic prevails, eat the wounded. In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught.

The only way for human civilization to survive is to find a way to make our brains a million times more effective than they are now.

Great self-destruction follows upon unfounded fear.

This looks like a fascinating paper on the way that residents of small towns in Nigeria refuse polio vaccination as a way of negotiating with the government for better local services.

All of humanity’s problems come from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

The counterculture light was so bright it began to attract moths (people who sadly were not intellectually or spiritually prepared to meaningfully assimilate transformative multi-dimensional data streams from hyperspace) and stinging stink bugs (the thugs that invariably invade every utopia) in such great numbers that they eventually crowded out the butterflies (the educated middle class truth-seekers who switched on the light in the first place). That's an oversimplification, of course, but it's good to bear in mind that like it or not, enlightenment has always been, even in a golden age, pretty much limited to an elite. In America, the relatively finite psychedelic culture was shoved aside by the burgeoning boogie culture, whose drugs of choice were booze, speed, and cocaine; and whose goal was not to attain spiritual bliss, deeper understanding, or an end to war and repression but rather to get thoroughly fucked up.

We humans have always defined ourselves by narration. What's happening today is that we're allowing multi-national corporations to tell our stories for us. The theme of corporate stories (and millions drink them in every day) seldom varies: to be happy you must consume, to be special you must conform.

Perry names his avatar of white, middle-class, heterosexual males “Default Man,” observing how, “with their colorful textile phalluses hanging around their necks,” Default Men run the world, taking up 77 percent of seats in the U.K. government, and making up 92 percent of executive directors of British companies.

Men are “conditioned to be something that is no longer needed,” primed for conflict and dominance and aggression in societies that are evolving to prize tolerance and emotional intelligence instead.

Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.