If war is politics by other means and the first casualty of war is the truth, it is because the first casualty of politics is the truth.

"Eventually private behaviours congealed into a debased neoliberalism, the sociopathic operating system that has dominated Boomer politics, Right and Left, for more than three decades. The Boomers' ersatz neoliberalism emphasizes consumption over production, dogmatic deregulation instead of thoughtful oversight, permanent deficits instead of fiscal prudence, and capitalism liberated from the bounds of the state, though always free to replenish itself at the federal trough in the event "sub-prime mortgages," "junk bonds," or "collateralized debt obligations" somehow lived up to their names."

- Quote from: "A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America" by Bruce Cannon Gibney

Bydlo

 

 

“Let me give you an example, my friend.  If you want to lead a young person onto the right educational path, you will make sure not to disturb his naively trusting, direct and personal relationship to nature.  Forest and stone, the storm, the vulture, the single flower, butterfly and meadow and mountainside must speak to him in their own tongue—he must be able to see himself in them as though in countless mirrors and reflections, in a colorful whirlpool of ever changing appearances, and he will unconsciously feel the metaphysical oneness of all things in the great symbol of Nature, while also drawing peace from its eternal perseverance and necessity.  But how many young people can be permitted to grow up like this, so close to nature, in an almost personal relationship with it?  Most must learn a different truth, and learn it early: how to place nature under their yoke.  The naïve metaphysics comes to an end; botany, zoology, geology, and inorganic chemistry force an entirely different view of nature onto young men.  What is lost as a result of this compulsory new view is not some poetical phantasmagoria but the one true, instinctive understanding of nature; what takes its place is clever calculation and the drive to outwit and defeat nature. Only the truly educated person is granted the priceless treasure of being allowed to remain faithful to the one contemplative instincts of his childhood, and so he attains a peace, unity, communion, and harmony that those raised for the struggle for survival cannot even dream of.”

-         Nietzsche "On the Future of Our Educational Institutions" presently in print in English as "Anti-Education" (p.56)

Opaline

 

NH

Yesterday's heroes are tomorrow's villains.

"Our educational institutions, originally built upon entirely different foundations, are presently dominated by two tendencies, apparently opposed but equally ruinous in effect and ultimately converging in their end results.  One is to expand education as much as possible; the other is the drive to narrow and weaken it.  The first pushes to extend education and culture to an ever-wider circle; the second expects education to give up its highest claim to autonomy and submit to serve another form of life, the state. Given these disastrous tendencies toward over inflation and weakening, one might well succumb to hopeless despair--were it not possible to help two opposing forces to eventual victory, These opposing tendencies, thoroughly German and full of promise for the future, are the drive to narrow and concentrate education, counteracting its ever-increasing expansion, and the drive to make education strong and self-sufficient, counteracting its diminishment.  What justifies our faith in the possibility of victory is the knowledge that the first two tendencies, to inflation and weakening, run counter to Nature's eternally invariable intention, just as concentrating education in the few is a necessary law of that same Nature -indeed a truth, while the other two tendencies can only create a culture of lies."

- Nietzsche's introduction to "On the Future of Our Educational Institutions" presently in print in English as "Anti-Education" (p.92)

 

Les Yeux sans Visage

Android 207

"Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else."

- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

The Four Stage Strategy For Dealing With Corona Virus

The Language of Orwellian Economics

Debt is Wealth
Homelessness is Accomodation
Gentrification is a Housing Plan
Urban Densification is Eco-Friendly
Population Increase is Sustainable
Inflation is Wage Increase
Economic Growth is the Road to Equality
Extinction is Progress

It seems that suicide from environmental destruction through permanent economic expansion and endless population increase is the ultimate manifestation of Human Civilization's inherent Death Drive.  It also proves that humans are inherently irrational and critically flawed as a species.