Great Writings

By Michel Focault | Excerpted from Power/Knowledge

It was while I was studying the origins of clinical medicine. I had been planning a study of hospital architecture in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the great movement for the reform of medical institutions was getting under way.

by George Orwell

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

How the New Sciences and Internet Are Framing A New Global Identity and Order

By John Clippinger and David Bollier (transcribed from full PDF)

Cultures, like people, can run out of ideas. They can exhaust themselves in the face of events and ideas they can no longer predict, explain or control. When they do, they revert to the repetitive assertion of the simplest and most soothing of their founding ideas. These attempts to ward off the unknown through the ritualized assertion of familiar core beliefs are what anthropologists call a "ghost dance." The name is taken from a Sioux Indian ritual dance designed to resurrect ancestors. Sioux warriors believed the dance made them impervious to the bullets of the U.S. Calvary in the 1870s. What may seem to be a bizarre ritual is in fact a well-documented practice of all cultures, traditional and modern. Many events in contemporary American life can be understood as a ghost dance of denial: ritualistic behavior that people hope will ward off unpleasant social and economic realities, ecological perils and new global interdependencies that are profoundly threatening to established cultural norms. The ghost dance desperately repeats unexamined, unquestioned "truths" despite contrary evidence.

By GEORGE ORWELL

James Burnham’s book, The Managerial Revolution, made a considerable stir both in the United States and in this country at the time when it was published, and its main thesis has been so much discussed that a detailed exposition of it is hardly necessary. As shortly as I can summarize it, the thesis is this:

Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralized society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production: that is, business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers, lumped together by Burnham under the name of ‘managers’. These people will eliminate the old capitalist class, crush the working class, and so organize society that all power and economic privilege remain in their own hands. Private property rights will be abolished, but common ownership will not be established. The new ‘managerial’ societies will not consist of a patchwork of small, independent states, but of great super-states grouped round the main industrial centres in Europe, Asia, and America. These super-states will fight among themselves for possession of the remaining uncaptured portions of the earth, but will probably be unable to conquer one another completely. Internally, each society will be hierarchical, with an aristocracy of talent at the top and a mass of semi-slaves at the bottom.

By George Orwell (1940)

By Jean-Paul Sartre (1946)

My purpose here is to offer a defense of existentialism against several reproaches that have been laid against it.

First, it has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair. For if every way to a solution is barred, one would have to regard any action in this world as entirely ineffective, and one would arrive finally at a contemplative philosophy. Moreover, since contemplation is a luxury, this would be only another bourgeois philosophy. This is, especially, the reproach made by the Communists.

From another quarter we are reproached for having underlined all that is ignominious in the human situation, for depicting what is mean, sordid or base to the neglect of certain things that possess charm and beauty and belong to the brighter side of human nature: for example, according to  the Catholic critic, Mlle. Mercier, we forget how an infant smiles. Both from this side and from the other we are also reproached for leaving out of account the solidarity of mankind and considering man in isolation. And this, say the Communists, is because we base our doctrine upon pure subjectivity — upon the Cartesian “I think”: which is the moment in which solitary man attains to himself; a position from which it is impossible to  regain solidarity with other men who exist outside of the self. The ego cannot reach them through the cogito.

By Robert Green Ingersoll [found via Majikthise]

A LIBERAL paper should be edited by a Liberal man. And by the word Liberal I mean, not only free, not only one who thinks for himself, not only one who has escaped from the prisons of customs and creed, but one who is candid, intelligent and kind -- that is to say, Liberal toward others.

This Liberal editor should not forever play upon one string, no matter how wonderful the music. He should not have his attention forever fixed upon one question -- that is to say, he should not look through a reversed telescope and narrow his horizon to that degree that he sees only one thing.

To know that the Bible is the literature of a barbarous people, to know that it is uninspired, to be certain that the supernatural does not and cannot exist -- all this is but the beginning of wisdom. This only lays the foundation for unprejudiced observation. To kill weeds, to fell forests, to drove away or exterminate wild beasts -- this is preparatory to doing something of greater value. Of course the weeds must be killed, the forests must be felled. and the beasts must be destroyed before the building of homes and the cultivation of fields.

A Liberal paper should not discuss theological questions alone. Intelligent people everywhere have given up most of the old superstitions. They have pretty well made up their minds what is false, and they want to know something that is true. For this reason, a Liberal paper should keep abreast of the discoveries of the human mind. No science should be neglected; no fact should be overlooked. Inventions should be described and understood. And not only this, but the beautiful in thought, in form and color, should be preserved. The paper should be filled with things calculated to interest thoughtful, intelligent and serious people. There should be a column for children as well as for men and women.

"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection." - Vice President Henry A. Wallace (1944)

By Thom Hartmann | CommonDreams.orgJuly 19, 2004 The Republican National Committee has recently removed from the top-level pages of their website an advertisement interspersing Hitler's face with those of John Kerry and other prominent Democrats. This little-heralded step has freed former Enron lobbyist and current RNC chairman Ed Gillespie to resume his attacks on Americans who believe some provisions of Bush's PATRIOT Act, his detention of American citizens without charges, his willingness to let corporations write legislation, and the so-called "Free Speech Zones" around his public appearances are all steps on the road to American fascism.

By Arundhati Roy | Excerpted from Speech at WSF 1/04

By George Carlin | From Jammin' in NY

As soon as they close the door to the aircraft, that's when they begin the safety lecture. I love the safety lecture. This is my favorite part of the airplane ride. I listen very carefully to the safety lecture, especially that part where they teach us how to use the seatbelts. Imagine this, here we are, a plane full of grown human beings, many of us partially educated, and they're actually taking time out to describe the intricate workings of a belt buckle.

"Place the small metal flap into the buckle." Well, I asked for clarification at that point. Over here please, over here, yes, thank you very much. Did I hear you correctly? Did you say place the small metal flap into the buckle or place the buckle over and around the small metal flap? I'm a simple man; I do not possess an engineering degree nor am I mechanically inclined. Sorry to have taken up so much of your time. Please continue with the “wonderful” safety lecture. Seatbelt--high-tech shit.

The safety lecture continues. "In the unlikely event . ." This is a very suspect phrase, especially coming as it does from an industry that is willing to lie about arrival and departure times. "In the unlikely event of a sudden change in cabin pressure"--ROOF FLIES OFF! " . . An oxygen mask will drop down in front of you. Place the mask over your face and breathe normally." Well, I have no problem with that. I always breathe normally when I'm in a 600 mile an hour uncontrolled vertical dive. I also shit normally.

They tell you to adjust YOUR oxygen mask before helping your child with his. I did not need to be told that. In fact, I'm probably going to be too busy screaming to help him at all. This will be a good time for him to learn self-reliance. If he can program his fucking VCR, he could goddamn, jolly-well learn to adjust an oxygen mask. Fairly simple thing, just a little rubber band in the back is all it is. Not nearly as complicated as say, for instance, a seatbelt.

The safety lecture continues. "In the unlikely event of a water landing . . ." Well, what exactly is a water landing? Am I mistaken, or does this sound somewhat similar to CRASHING INTO THE OCEAN!? ". . . your seat cushion can be used as a floatation device." Well, imagine that, my seat cushion... Just what I need -- to float around the North Atlantic for several days -- clinging to a pillow full of beer farts...