#list

The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRls). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism. ↗

— Mark Fisher

#capitalist-realism #individualism #mental-health #mental-illness #mental-health

Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#easier #familiar #glorified #hours #listen

Stories in which the destruction of society occurs are explorations of social fears and issues that filmmakers, novelists, playwrights, painters have been examining for a long time. ↗

— J. J. Abrams

#destruction #examining #fears #filmmakers #issues

I have always seen the United States as a force of good. And I have learned that there is the idealistic part about what we can do at the U.N. and there is a doable part. And I have learned what is more doable. ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#always #force #good #i #i have learned

I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen. ↗

— Alan Alda

#assumed #badly #because #box #corner

I was quite excited, but I was sure I wouldn't win the race. I am a realist. ↗

— Jean Alesi

#excited #i #i am #quite #race

The Flower of My Secret is definitely more based in true emotions. I also wanted to make something more realistic, but not naturalistic or simple. ↗

— Pedro Almodovar

#based #definitely #emotions #flower #i

Idealist: a cynic in the making. ↗

— Irving Layton

#idealist #making

But if subjective pietism is not the real crux of this all-important Gospel, if it is instead belief in the plan of salvation, how are we not dealing with "salvation by (cognitive) works" and Gnosticism (salvation by special knowledge)? Fundamentalists hotly deny it, but isn't it finally a matter of believers in the right religion being saved and everyone else being disqualified? ↗

— Robert M. Price

#gnosticism #salvation #religion

It was understood that they shared the same thresholds--the same inexhaustible appetite for wasting time, for discussing lofty ideas, for dissecting trivial things, for driving to nowhere in particular, for listening to music, for talking about books, for obsessing over pop culture, but mostly for laughing, talking, and simply being together. There was nothing one could say that the other would find too cruel or too kind. And on those rare occasions when they did tire of each other, they needed only go a day without talking before they yearned to reconnect. ↗

— Galt Niederhoffer

#books #cruel #discussing #dissecting #driving