“Modern humans play so many roles, wear so many masks and assume so many different attitudes in a day it makes sense to sometimes ask people you know very well: Who am I talking to right now?”
"There is something profoundly detached, even removed from reality, about all these deeply agitated agitating people shouting from each their ideological platform, struggling to keep their cause in the limelight of the stock market of public opinion. In this absurd post-modern cacaphony of deep felt and yet shallow involvement some have two platforms and some multiple platforms, and many hold adamant views that differs from other of their own adamant views. Some have literally thousands of causes they support, more or less vigorously, from time to time, when they are done with their duties and their pastimes."
"If you have read ancient history, there is nothing too impressive or hopeful about our current civilization"
History is the study of when, how and why people killed each other. Journalism is largely reports about when, how and why people become history.
“For most people caught between the pit and the pendulum the revolution came too late. Far too late. Time practically stood still for hundreds of years. People cowered to the brutality of the overlords. They let their fellow man be tortured, maimed and murdered. They let them rot. To really understand what this says about mankind and survive - not just physically, but psychologically - requires you to take on the gargantuan task of reshaping human nature.”
Every time a new superman comes along, a couple of millions or more must die.
There are two American Dreams, one about opportunity and the land of the free, the other about Manifest Destiny and transformation of the planet in America's own image. Both are realistically possible, but not at the same time. One has to go. It's Romulus or Remus, Gilgamesh or Enkidu. If USA will convert the world to Americanism, then she must deplete her national ressources, even to the point of starving her own children. It is a great sacrifice, noble if Americans can truly commit to it, and lay themselves on the torture machine for the benefit of the rest of the world. The other option is to remain prosperous, and have longevity as a nation-state. But USA will not remain the dominant superpower throughout the century, by 2050 BRIC will have become the four dominant economic powers. Choose, Achilles.
We are possessed by the ghosts of dinosaurs. Their spirit rages through our blood, marches through our battlefields and manifests in all our mechanical achievements - the car, the tank, the submarine, the airplane and the chopper, all reveal the recognizable shapes of ancient reptilian beasts, and testify to an underlying structure to the planet, which apparently no species that becomes dominant can deviate from.
Watching the ocean installed in men a sense of limitation, spurring the concept of “the earth”, even long before the first photograph of the blue planet seen from space was published. The conceptualization of “the earth” as a limited territory, which must be held and conquered, also ignited the relentless and ongoing battle for dominance between the tribes of Homo sapiens.
Time will destroy all you hold sacred. Only profanity survives.
Today we measure the success of a society in quantifiable terms like lifetime expectancy, productivity or even contentment. It is an intrinsic part of the dominant paradigm in the modern world. But when life becomes a matter of statistical bliss, it also becomes trivial. I am more interested in what people have to say, when they challenge this crude, self-contained materialism. What if we are here for a different reason? What if we are here to discover? And the failures are those who discover nothing?