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Tag: Bertrand Russell
QUOTES OF THE DAY
IT’S A FOURTH TURNING: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?
“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impossible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe
“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe
I’ve been pondering this Fourth Turning in articles since its spectacular onset in September 2008, with the Wall Street/Federal Reserve initiated global financial implosion. The description above is apt, as this ongoing two-decade long storm gains intensity and our freedoms, liberties and rights are slowly extinguished as the electricity flickers and our modern civilization reverts to a more brutish state of antipathy among competing tribes, based on race, gender, class, party, geographic location, and now medical status.
Continue reading “IT’S A FOURTH TURNING: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
QUOTES OF THE DAY
What Desires Are Politically Important?
Bertrand Russell – Nobel Lecture
December 11, 1950
I have chosen this subject for my lecture tonight because I think that most current discussions of politics and political theory take insufficient account of psychology. Economic facts, population statistics, constitutional organization, and so on, are set forth minutely. There is no difficulty in finding out how many South Koreans and how many North Koreans there were when the Korean War began.
If you will look into the right books you will be able to ascertain what was their average income per head, and what were the sizes of their respective armies. But if you want to know what sort of person a Korean is, and whether there is any appreciable difference between a North Korean and a South Korean; if you wish to know what they respectively want out of life, what are their discontents, what their hopes and what their fears; in a word, what it is that, as they say, «makes them tick», you will look through the reference books in vain.
DEMORALIZED, DEPRESSED, DETACHED & DEFIANT
I’ve now been running The Burning Platform blog for over ten years. It’s been over eleven years since I wrote my first article – Why We Need Ron Paul – in May 2008 during the Republican primaries. I really thought I could change enough minds through my writing to influence voters and help wake up people to the truth about our deteriorating financial situation. I would send op-eds to my local paper, and they would publish them. My articles on Seeking Alpha in 2008/2009 were the most read and commented on their site.
My assessment of the Wall Street banks, coming financial crisis and recession were accurate enough that I was being sought out by Glenn Beck on CNN, Neal Cavuto on Fox, and Maria Bartiromo on CNBC to be interviewed on their shows. I didn’t want that kind of attention, since it would likely have negatively impacted my day job – which actually supported my family.
Continue reading “DEMORALIZED, DEPRESSED, DETACHED & DEFIANT”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.”
Bertrand Russell
QUOTES OF THE DAY
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Bertrand Russell
“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence”
Bertrand Russell
“In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
Bertrand Russell
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.”
Bertrand Russell
QUOTE OF THE DAY
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Bertrand Russell
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.”
Bertrand Russell. The Impact of Science on Society. 1951.
QUOTES OF THE DAY
“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid … Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
― Bertrand Russell
“War does not determine who is right – only who is left.”
― Bertrand Russell
“In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
― Bertrand Russell
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.”
― Bertrand Russell
“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
― Bertrand Russell
“It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”
― Bertrand Russell