#society

Can you be happy with the movies, and the ads, and the clothes in the stores, and the doctors, and the eyes as you walk down the street all telling you there is something wrong with you? No. You cannot be happy. Because, you poor darling baby, you believe them. ↗

— Katherine Dunn

#eyes #happiness #judgement #movies #society

And it's beyond my energy to explain why I don't think that four-letter word that everyone's so obsessed over and that gets everyone into so much trouble and pretty much makes everyone behave like an ass can live in a place like this. Somewhere during dry cleaning, details, and missed meals, it flakes away and what you're left with is married people with a tolerable affinity for each other. That little four-letter word can exist only in poetry, or movies of 2 to 3 hours in length. Maybe in a mini-series. This place of dull details and irksome obligations is a home only to other four-letter words, which are used much more frequently. ↗

— Kendare Blake

#kendare-blake #love #realistic #sleepwalk-society #love

It ain’t about keeping real, it’s about keeping it right. ↗

— Jeff Chain in "Can't Stop Won't Stop A History of the Hip-Hop Generation "

#music #society-thinking #music

If blues culture had developed under the conditions of oppressive, forced labor, hip-hop culture would arise from the conditions of no work ↗

— Jeff Chain in "Can't Stop Won't Stop A History of the Hip-Hop Generation "

#music #society-thinking #music

Hip Hop Generation “captures the collective hopes and nightmares, ambitions and failures of those who would otherwise be described as “post-this” or “post-that.” ↗

— Jeff Chain in "Can't Stop Won't Stop A History of the Hip-Hop Generation "

#hip-hop #music #society #society-thinking #music

On my way out I didn't look at the dark guy, the suicide bomber, again. I think I didn't look at him because I didn't believe he was a terrorist, but maybe I didn't look at him because I didn't want to embarrass him. ↗

— Assaf Gavron

#etiquette #human-nature #society #nature

This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#philosophy #society #nature

Human beings appear to be sufficiently selfish and calculating to be capable of indefinitely greater harmony and social homeostasis. This statement is not self-contradictory. True selfishness, if obedient to the other constraints of mammalian biology, is the key to a more nearly perfect social contract. - pg. 157 ↗

— Edward O. Wilson

#society #nature

Toute transformation sociale (...) s'est fondée sur de nouvelles bases métaphysiques et idéologiques; ou plutôt, sur des émotions et intuitions plus profondes, dont l'expression rationalisée prend la forme du cosmos et de la nature de l'homme. ↗

— Lewis Mumford

#lewis-mumford #society #nature

The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. ↗

— John Rawls

#distribution #justice #philosophy #society #nature