#soc

It is the beginning of wisdom when you recognize that the best you can do is choose which rules you want to live by, and it's persistent and aggravated imbecility to pretend you can live without any. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#conduct-of-life #life #rules #society #life

Love is our most unifying and empowering common spiritual denominator. The more we ignore its potential to bring greater balance and deeper meaning to human existence, the more likely we are to continue to define history as one long inglorious record of man’s inhumanity to man. ↗

— Aberjhani

#agape-love #community #existence #history #human-nature

Sucking the marrow out of life doesn't mean choking on the bone. ↗

— Tom Schulman

#life

It's not me but the world that's deranged. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#life #society #world #life

Prove it. I'll measure your words against your actions, and from that I will determine your worth. ↗

— Jackie Kessler

#life #social-integrity #truths #life

Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I would be a pauper, intellectually and spiritually. ↗

— James A. Michener

#knowledge #libraries #society #life

Power in the hands of the reformer is no less potentially corrupting than in the hands of the oppressor. ↗

— Derrick A. Bell

#oppression #power #reformers #social-justice #life

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings? ↗

— Stephen King

#humanity #humanity-and-society #life #life

The real enemy" is the totality of physical and mental constraints by which capital, or class society, or statism, or the society of the spectacle expropriates everyday life, the time of our lives. The real enemy is not an object apart from life. It is the organization of life by powers detached from it and turned against it. The apparatus, not its personnel, is the real enemy. But it is by and through the apparatchiks and everyone else participating in the system that domination and deception are made manifest. The totality is the organization of all against each and each against all. It includes all the policemen, all the social workers, all the office workers, all the nuns, all the op-ed columnists, all the drug kingpins from Medellin to Upjohn, all the syndicalists and all the situationists. ↗

— Bob Black

#neo-situationism #philosophy #political-philosophy #political-science #post-left-anarchy

I wrote Unwind for lots of reasons, and it poses questions about a lot of subjects. To state it briefly, I wanted to point out how when people take intractable positions on an issue, and stick to extreme sides, sometimes the result is a compromise that is worse than either extreme. I meant it as a wake up call to society -- and to point out that sometimes the problem IS that we take sides on an issue, when a different sort of approach is needed. It's also to pose questions about what it means to be alive. Where does life begin, where does it end -- and point out that there is no single answer to these questions. The problem is people who think there are simple answers. People who see things as simple black-and-white right-and-wrong are the type of people who will end up with a world like the world in Unwind. ↗

— Neal Shusterman

#dystopian #morality #sanctity-of-life #social-commentary #unwind