My friend Peter sent me some links back in ... uh ... months ago. I only got to reading them just now. I posted some comments on Mastodon but thought I might as well keep them on my blog. If you see a lot of ellipses in my quotes please remember that I’m limited to about 500 characters in my Mastodon posts so that’s why.
«A flock is a social structure designed to promote other-awareness. It has no goals, no coordinating purpose other than communication. A flock simply IS. A pack, on the other hand, is a social structure designed to harness self-aware animals in service to some goal requiring joint action — the raising of cubs, the hunting of meat, etc.» – Sheep Logic
«This is the Age of the High-Functioning Sociopath. … We have to survive it, but we don’t have to succumb to it. How do we Resist? Not by switching out blue Missionaries for red Missionaries or red Missionaries for blue Missionaries. … We resist … by carving out local spheres of action where we are relentlessly honorable and charitable, relentlessly un-sheeplike. We resist by Making America Good Again, … which is a hell of a lot harder than making America great ever was.» – Sheep Logic
«Here’s a chart from Deutsche Bank showing … the gains of the really rich have mirrored the losses of the non-rich, which means that the well-off and merely rich (the remaining 9.9% of American households) haven’t seen much of a change one way or another.» – Pecking Order
«There is an autonomy inherent in rejecting the lure of the Nudging State and the Nudging Oligarchy, an autonomy that can power a life well lived. It doesn’t mean rejecting the world as it is. It doesn’t mean leaving the grid for Alaska homesteading. No, that’s a prison of quite another sort. It doesn’t mean mattering to nothing. *It means mattering to other humans who see YOU as an autonomous end-in-itself and not as a means to an end.* THAT’S your pack. Make a difference for THEM.» – Pecking Order
«You hear all the time about how these Trump tweets … are a “dog whistle” that … calls forth the alt-right clowns. … But what the tweets … really are … is a dog whistle for the Democrats and an obedience collar for the Republicans. It … forces every elected politician, regardless of party, to play their appointed role, strutting and fretting upon the stage. Even though none of them like the script and none of them want to play the part.» – Always Go To the Funeral
THAT’S your pack. Make a difference for THEM.
Good reading, thanks Peter!
#Philosophy
