Maryannaville™

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.
… Plato

Originally posted 2010-07-23 18:42:11. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

“We know that the wildest and most moving dramas are played not in the theatre but in the hearts of ordinary men and women who pass by without exciting attention, and who betray to the world nothing of the conflicts that rage within them except possibly by a nervous breakdown. What is so difficult for the layman to grasp is the fact that in most cases the patients themselves have no suspicion whatever of the internecine war raging in their unconscious. If we remember that there are many people who understand nothing at all about themselves, we shall be less surprised at the realization that there are also people who are utterly unaware of their actual conflicts.”

* Carl Jung (New Paths in Psychology)

Originally posted 2010-06-02 12:26:52. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
*Bertrand Russell, Dunning-Krugar effect

Originally posted 2010-03-11 00:16:05. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

“‘Terrorism’ has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militarization of America, for military adventures abroad, and for the suppression of civil liberties at home. It serves the same purpose, to create hysteria.”

… Howard Zinn.

Originally posted 2010-07-26 22:07:33. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”
*Theodore Roosevelt (Paris Sorbonne, 1910)

“It’s not the critic who counts [...]“

Originally posted 2006-06-29 12:51:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Human beings are paradoxical. We are social animals with a large anti-social streak. One unavoidable fact is that we are dependent on each other for the life of the whole society. The language of cooperation grows out of this. Our mothers teach us to share with our brothers and sisters, and we are, finally, meant to see the whole of humanity as a family.

Our ideas of social justice and fairness come from the ethos of cooperation. We are taught to get along with others, to make compromises, and to pull our own weight in the world. If only everyone would cooperate, the saying goes, then there would be no more war, no more abject poverty, and a common fight against crippling diseases and natural disasters. The principle of cooperation entails that we ought sometimes give up for the common good what we most desire for ourselves. We are asked to make sacrifices in the belief that what is good for the whole society is also good for the individuals who compose it.
Prehistory shows that cooperation has always been an evolutionary plus for the human species. It enabled individuals to band together in projects that no one person could realize. When civilization first began, cooperation was essential for farming, irrigation projects and the division of labor. Cooperation, not always voluntary, has been the basis of both ancient and modern life.
At the same time, human beings are competitive. As more and more goods are produced, inequalities arise in their distribution. The hierarchal arrangement of all ancient societies meant that those at the top of the social order received more and better quality goods, while those at the bottom toiled unceasingly for mere subsistence. The perception of less and more led to the stirring up of competitive desires to outdo one’s neighbor. Wealth lends prestige to its possessors and bolsters the ego of successful competitors.
The desire for more and more good things for one’s self and one’s family is greed. Nothing is enough. There is no natural end to it. Greed, on the perception that there is not enough of the good things to go around, breeds competition. The thinking of a competitive person, who wants more and better than his neighbor, is that since there is a scarcity of desirable goods, the individual must get out there and fight for a share. There is an attitude about the world, and what the good life is, that lies behind seeing the it as a competitive arena in which there are winners, and, regrettably, also losers.
Look at all the possibilities of competition in our world. We compete in sports for medals, in school for grades, in work for promotion, in war for national advantage, in art for fame, in business for money, and in politics for power. For the winners of competitions there are fat wallets and big egos. What is there for the losers? What is the ratio of winners to losers? Obviously there are many more losers than winners. It is even less than a zero sum game.
Competition does have a positive side. It encourages innovation and creative thinking. Effort is required to come out on top of a competitive process, new products and institutions are the results. No doubt greed does provide many people with the motivation to compete. It may even have been that competitiveness between humans helped the species to thrive as it has. The question now is whether competition will be as valuable to the species in the future as in the past?
Competition, by its nature, breeds a non-moral individualism. It makes people look to themselves first, and to look at others as potential rivals. We become suspicious and fearful. Competition separates us and breaks the bonds of society, creates factions, and makes cooperation more and more difficult. This could now be fatal to the human species. We do not have to look very far into the future to see challenges looming to our very life on this planet. Just ahead we are looking at global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, overpopulation, tidal waves, incipient pandemic, deforestation, over fishing, pollution, and nuclear waste. Some of these are partly the result of the kind of competitive world we have created. It will be all we can do to the survive on this planet, and it is sad and ludicrous to see human beings fighting each other when the only thing that will save us is cooperation on a universal scale.

Originally posted 2006-06-04 18:56:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Originally posted 2010-09-17 15:24:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The math is the math. You can’t lower current (tax) rates and raise revenue unless you’re getting revenue from someplace else. Now, either it’s coming from middle-class families, or poor families, or it’s coming from folks like you and me that can afford to pay a little more.

…You can’t get away from the basic concept that either we have a system in which the people who have benefited the most from this new economy by a magnitude of 200, 300 percent increases in their income — either they’re doing a little bit more, or they’re not.

I think they should. And this is not because I’m interested in punishing the rich. I want everybody to be rich! That’s great! It has to do with the fact that the less I’m asking you or me to do, the more I’m asking somebody who’s in a much tougher position to sacrifice.

President BARACK OBAMA,  in response to Republican charges that he is “fixated” on “raising the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans,” on 60 Minutes.

“When you look at the things that make so many atheists angry about religion, you realize that most of it is not harm that’s being done to atheists. Most of it is about harm that’s being done to believers. It’s anger on other people’s behalf. Atheists are not angry because we’re selfish, we’re not angry because we’re whiny, we’re not angry cause we have no joy and meaning in our lives. Atheists are angry because we have compassion. We’re angry because we have a sense of justice.

Atheists are not angry because there’s something wrong with us. Atheists are angry because there’s something right with us.”
— Greta Christina

 

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has apologized for not including any mention of slavery in his proclamation declaring April “Confederate History Month” and added an extra clause to the proclamation.

“The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed,” McDonnell wrote in a statement. “The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation.”

He also added a clause to the proclamation that declares slavery “led to this war.”

This year’s new Teabonics must have had him sidetracked an all. We know how that goes, don’t we?

Image source

 

Originally posted 2010-04-07 23:24:30. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

 

“I like people but I like them in short bursts. I don’t like people in extended periods of time. I’m alright with them for a little while but once you get up past around a minute, minute and a half, I gotta get the fuck out of there; and, my reason for this one is that you may share possibly. I have a very low tolerance for stupid bullshit.”
- George Carlin

Originally posted 2010-06-04 22:57:35. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

“No matter how long protesters camp out across America, big banks will continue to pour money into shadow groups promoting candidates more likely to slash Medicaid for poor children than help families facing foreclosure,” said Deutch in a statement provided to ThinkProgress. “No matter how strongly Ohio families fight for basic fairness for workers, the Koch Brothers will continue to pour millions into campaigns aimed at protecting the wealthiest 1%. No matter how fed up seniors in South Florida are with an agenda that puts oil subsidies ahead of Social Security and Medicare, corporations will continue to fund massive publicity campaigns and malicious attack ads against the public interest. Americans of all stripes agree that for far too long, corporations have occupied Washington and drowned out the voices of the people. I introduced the OCCUPIED Amendment because the days of corporate control of our democracy. It is time to return the nation’s capital and our democracy to the people.”

-Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL)

 

Originally posted 2008-01-06 14:46:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Nietzsche would have enjoyed the internet, I believe.

Originally posted 2010-07-31 17:14:54. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a container already built for us to fit inside: A social security number, a gender, a race, a profession or an I.Q. I ponder if we are more defined by the container we are in, rather than what we are inside. Would we recognize ourselves if we could expand beyond our bodies? Would we still be able to exist if we were authentically ‘un-contained’?

Paige Bradley

Originally posted 2011-07-04 21:02:45. Republished by Blog Post Promoter