If a man can say of his life or
any moment of his life, There is
nothing more to be desired! his state
becomes like that told in the famous
double sonnet--but without the sonnet's
restrictions. Let him go look
at the river flowing or the bank
of late flowers, there will be one
small fly still among the petals
in whose gauzy wings raised above
its back a rainbow shines. The world
to him is radiant and even the fact
of poverty is wholly without despair.

So it seems until these rouse
to him pictures of the systematically
starved--for a purpose, at the mind's
proposal. What good then the
light winged fly, the flower or
the river--too foul to drink of or
even to bathe in? The 90 story building
beyond the ocean that a rocket
will span for destruction in a matter
of minutes but will not
bring him, in a century, food or
relief of any sort from his suffering.

The world is too much with us? Rot!
the world is not half enough with us--
the rot of a potato with
a healthy skin, a rot that is
never revealed till we are about to
eat--and it revolts us. Beauty?
Beauty should make us paupers,
should blind us, rob us--for it
does not feed the sufferer but makes
his suffering a fly-blown putrescence
and ourselves decay--unless
the ecstasy be general.

-William Carlos Williams (h/t wood s lot)

Mistah Kurtz--He Bred.

"[The above map] documents U.S. military outposts, construction, security cooperation, and deployments in [49 of the 54 African nations].

,

,

"The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen] ought always to be listened to with great precaution and ought never be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of whose interest is never the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
-Adam Smith, 1776

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today."
-Theodore Roosevelt, 1912

R. Nachman would say that the true goal of knowledge is the realization that one does not know. In each branch of knowledge this idea is operative, therefore even though one achieves such a realization in one area of knowledge this is not yet the final goal. One needs to strive to achieve a higher realization of ignorance at higher levels, ad infinitum.

,

Negative Solidarity

"More than mere indifference to worker agitations, negative solidarity is an aggressively enraged sense of injustice, committed to the idea that, because I must endure increasingly austere working conditions (wage freezes, loss of benefits, declining pension pot, erasure of job security and increasing precarity) then everyone else must too. Negative solidarity can be seen as a relation to the kind of "lottery thinking" that underpins the most pernicious variants of the American Dream. In lottery thinking we get a kind of inverted Rawlsian anti-justice- rather than considering the likelihood of achieving material success in an unequal society highly unlikely, and therefore preferring a more equal one- instead the psychology of the million-to-one shot prevails. Since I will inevitably be wealthy in the future, this line of thinking runs, I will ensure that the conditions when I become wealthy will be as advantageous to me as possible, even though, on a balance of realistic probabilities, this course of action will in fact be likely to be entirely against my own interests. More than lottery thinking, which is inherently (if misguidedly) aspirational in nature, negative solidarity is actively and aggressively anti-aspirational, utterly negative in the most childish fashion, and drives a blatant race-to-the bottom."
- splinteringboneashes

Ice Bucket

,well, well, well, well,

"The household survey is, well, a survey, which means it's open to error."

"The first problem with the unconscious is that it is, well, unconscious."

"What we really want is, well, a reason to keep wanting."

"By now, no one really imagines that presidential debates are really, well, debates."

"Has Kate Upton decided to stop playing the field for someone who, well,
plays on the field?"

"Marginalia occupies a place in literature which we might characterize
as, well, marginal."

"If the strong are, well, stronger than the weak, then the strong will rule."

,

  

what's something you've been avoiding thinking about?

"What's something you've been avoiding thinking about? It can be anything - a relationship difficulty, a problem at work, something on your todo list you've been avoiding. Call it to mind - despite the pain it brings - and just sort of let it sit there. Acknowledge that thinking about it is painful and feel good about yourself for being able to do it anyway. Feel it becoming less painful as you force yourself to keep thinking about it. See, you're getting stronger!

OK, take a break. But when you're ready, come back to it, and start thinking of concrete things you can do about it. See how it's not as scary as you thought? See how good it feels to actually do something about it?

Next time you start feeling that feeling, that sense of pain from deep in your head that tells you to avoid a subject - ignore it. Lean into the pain instead."

-Aaron Swartz

Restriction of the Domain of the Snuggle

"Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization. Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women, others with none. It's what is known as "the law of the market". In an economic system where unfair dismissal is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their place. In a sexual system where adultery is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their bed mate. In a totally liberal economic system certain people accumulate considerable fortunes; others stagnate in unemployment and misery. In a totally liberal sexual system certain people have a varied and exciting erotic life; others are reduced to masturbation and solitude."
- Michel Houellebecq, Whatever