Tag Archive for: Technocracy

Zitate

Carl Sagan | Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking

"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreshadowing of an America in the time of my children or grandchildren – when the United States is a service and information economy; when Almost all major manufacturing industries have moved to other countries; when terrible technological powers are in the hands of too few, and no one representing the public interest can understand the issues; when people have lost the ability to set their own agenda. Lost or deliberately questioned by those in power; when, holding our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our vital faculties decline, in distinguishing between what feels good and what is true Unable, we go back to superstition and darkness, almost without noticing.

America’s downfall is most evident in the slow decay of real content in the most influential media, 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), credible presentations on lowest common denominator programming, pseudoscience and superstition, but especially From a kind of celebration of ignorance."

Dr. Carl Edward Sagan

Konrad Lorenz | To the extent that handicrafts are wiped out by the competition of industry

"To the extent that handicrafts are wiped out by the competition of industry, and to the extent that the smaller entrepreneur, including the farmer, becomes unable to exist, we are all quite simply forced to submit in our way of life to the wishes of the large producers, to eat the food and put on the clothes they think good for us, and what is worst of all, by virtue of the conditioning bestowed upon us, we do not even realize that they are doing so."

Konrad Lorenz

Theodore Dalrymple | Political correctness is communist propaganda

"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."

Theodore Dalrymple

Prof. Stephen Schneider | to capture the public’s imagination…

"We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest"

Prof. Stephen Schneider

Richard Haass | The common enemy of humanity is man

"The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself."

Richard Haass

Frederick Taylor Gates | the people yield themselves with perfect docility

"In our dreams we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our moulding hand. The present education conventions made from our minds and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor shall we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply. The task which we set before ourselves is a very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shop and on the farm."

Frederick Taylor Gates

Rupert Sheldrake | Science delusion is the belief that science …

"Science delusion is the belief that science has already fundamentally understood the nature of our reality and only the details need to be completed. I believe this is a seriously flawed view. Most people's first reaction is one of disbelief and rejection when they first hear this statement. How could there actually be anything more successful than science? It has given us cell phones, computers, airplanes, advanced forms of surgery, and much more. We have huge advantages today through science and through its technical applications. It looks as if there is no more room for error or even delusion there, and yet I maintain that at the innermost core of today's sciences there are fundamental errors of thought and dubious assumptions, and that there is a conflict within the sciences that keeps them from their proper task. I see science as a method of inquiry, a tool for exploring and investigating reality. But there is another side to the sciences, namely science as a worldview or even as a dogmatic belief system. Again, most people are shocked at first when I suggest that science can be a dogmatic belief system. They then say things like, "Hey, science in particular is the only thing that is possible for us and to leave our dogmatic belief patterns. It's the only discipline that produces tangible evidence, full respect, free inquiry, and open thinking." Now, this is the ideal of the sciences, and it is an ideal that I also share. But unfortunately, in practice, this ideal is usually not realized in the way it is preached. Within the sciences there is a strongly defined corset of beliefs that most scientists do not even suspect could be beliefs. They do believe that other people have beliefs-Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and so on-but they themselves, of course, have no beliefs because they are, after all, concerned with scientific truth. And these beliefs are taken as such settled, established truths that they are usually not even discussed. When you study science, people don't just tell you what beliefs to accept and what things to know. You just absorb these principles like the process of osmosis in biology. These are things that are treated with such a matter of course that you just assume they must be true. Most people outside the scientific world assume that they must be true because science is simply so successful and, as a result, enjoys an enormously high level of prestige today."

Rupert Sheldrake

Richard Feynman | iintellectual tyranny in the name of science

"Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation (…) When someone says, “Science teaches such and such,” he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, “Science has shown such and such,” you might ask, “How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?” It should not be “science has shown” but “this experiment, this effect, has shown.” And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments–but be patient and listen to all the evidence–to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at. (…) The experts who are leading you may be wrong. (…) I think we live in an unscientific age in which almost all the buffeting of communications and television-words, books, and so on-are unscientific. As a result, there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science."

Richard Phillips Feynman

Dr. Markus Krall | Every generation has been exposed to socialist seduction

"Every generation has been exposed to socialist seduction in ever new disguises. And always a part falls for the totalitarian ideologists. And again and again there is a confrontation between humanity and totalitarianism. Also today. #EcoSocialism"

Dr. Markus Krall

Lysander Spooner | agents of the people

"If a man is my servant, agent, or attorney, I necessarily make myself responsible for all his acts done within the limits of the power I have intrusted to him. If I have intrusted him, as my agent, with either absolute power, or any power at all, over the persons or properties of other men than myself, I thereby necessarily make myself responsible to those other persons for any injuries he may do them, so long as he acts within the limits of the power I have granted him. But no individual who may be injured in his person or property, by acts of Congress, can come to the individual electors, and hold them responsible for these acts of their so-called agents or representatives. This fact proves that these pretended agents of the people, of everybody, are really the agents of nobody."

Lysander Spooner

Lysander Spooner | Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice

"Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice. They are men of the same nature as minorities. They have the same passions for fame, power, and money, as minorities; and are liable and likely to be equally - perhaps more than equally, because more boldly - rapacious, tyrannical and unprincipled, if intrusted with power."

Lysander Spooner

Philip Stott | The fundamental point

"The fundamental point has always been this: climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically-selected factor is as misguided as it gets."

Philip Stott

C.S. Lewis | Of all tyrannies

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

C.S. Lewis

Ingolfur Blühdorn | Politics is losing ground dramatically to the power of the markets

"It has long been obvious in the Western tribal countries of democracy that the promises inherent in this concept will probably remain unfulfilled: Politics is losing ground dramatically to the power of the markets; supposedly democratic systems are firmly in the hands of powerfully organized interests and have less and less to do with popular sovereignty - if there ever was any. Social inequality and the disenfranchisement and reification of citizens as mere administrative objects or human resources are advancing inexorably - though every step of disenfranchisement is communicated as emancipatory gain."

Ingolfur Blühdorn

Jacques Élisée Reclus | the policy of hatred always breeds hatred

"History permits the well-founded observation that the policy of hatred always breeds hatred and fatally complicates the general situation, if not leads to final ruin. How many nations perished in this way. Oppressors as well as oppressed! Should we also be doomed? I hope not! And I owe this hope also to the anarchist thinking, which penetrates day by day more and more into the light and renews the human initiative."

Jacques Élisée Reclus

Howard Zinn | Our problem is civil obedience

"As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem.... Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem."

Howard Zinn

Coudenhove-Kalergi | Today, democracy is a façade of plutocracy

"The form of constitution that replaced feudalism and absolutism was democracy; the form of government, plutocracy. Today, democracy is a façade of plutocracy: since nations would not tolerate a pure form of plutocracy, they were granted nominal powers, while the real power rests in the hands of plutocrats. In republican as well as monarchical democracies, the statesmen are puppets, the capitalists are the puppeteers; they dictate the guidelines of politics, rule through purchase the public opinion of the voters, and through professional and social relationships, the ministers. Instead of the feudal structure of society, the plutocratic stepped in; birth is no more the decisive factor for social rank, but income is. Today's plutocracy is mightier than yesterday's aristocracy: because nobody is above it but the state, which is its tool and helper's helper. When there was still true blood nobility, the system of aristocracy by birth was fairer than that of the moneyed aristocracy today: because then the ruling caste had a sense of responsibility, culture and tradition, whereas the class that rules today is barren of feelings of responsibility, culture or tradition."

Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi

The Analyst | Die Schäfchen gehen nirgendwo hin. Sie mögen meine Welt

"Die Schäfchen gehen nirgendwo hin. Sie mögen meine Welt. Sie wollen diese Sentimentalität nicht. Sie wollen weder Freiheit noch Selbstbestimmung. Sie wollen kontrolliert werden. Sie sehnen sich nach dem Komfort der Gewissheit. Und das bedeutet, ihr zwei, zurück in euren Kapseln, bewusstlos und allein, genau wie sie."

The Analyst (Matrix Resurrections (2021))

Charlie Chaplin | As for politics, I’m an anarchist

"As for politics, I’m an anarchist. I hate governments and rules and fetters. Can’t stand caged animals. People must be free."

Charlie Chaplin

Roland Baader | It is … a naivety that cannot be excused by anything to believe

"It is ... a naivety that cannot be excused by anything to believe that a state can be total in the economic sphere without being so at the same time in the political and spiritual sphere ...." ... Democracy and socialism are not a tautology (à la Oskar),but radical, mutually exclusive opposites. Democracy is a method of limiting and controlling power. Socialism, on the other hand, always denies the individual freedom of choice of individuals over their economic preferences and life goals (supposedly in favor of the general public, the collective); thus socialism always assigns sovereignty over the decisive existential forces and life motivations to the state or a party or political cliques, and thus socialism is never a system or method for limiting power, but always and everywhere pseudo-moral justification for patronizing life, carte blanche for cynically moralizing unrestrained power."

Roland Baader

Michael Wendler | We are living at the peak of the time of the false world

"We are living at the peak of the time of the false world. That's why being real gets you shunned. Why speaking truth gets you scorned and banned. Society is at the tipping point of the height of illussion. It takes serious courage to be real right now. Please be brave!"

Michael Wendler

Winston Churchill | There is only published opinion

"There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion."

Winston Churchill

Niklas Luhmann | the media don’t depict reality, they create it

"Sure, the media don't depict reality, they create it! And that's why we need counter-publicity!"

Niklas Luhmann

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld | The power of radio

"The power of radio can be compared only with the power of the atomic bomb."

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld

Wernher von Braun | the last card is the alien card

“And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens and all of it is a lie"

Wernher von Braun,1977 (cité par Carol Rosin)

Machiavelli | He who has once begun to live by robbery

"He who has once begun to live by robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others."

Machiavelli

Henry Louis Mencken | The urge to save humanity

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts."

Henry Louis Mencken

Emiliano Zapata | It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."

Emiliano Zapata

Marvin Simkin | Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch

"Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote."

Marvin Simkin

Samuel Edward Konkin III | Every victim of statism

"Every victim of statism has internalized the State to some degree. The IRS’s annual proclamation that the income tax depends on “voluntary compliance” is ironically true. Should the taxpayer completely cut off the blood supply, the vampire State would helplessly perish, its unpaid police and army deserting almost immediately, defanging the Monster."

Samuel Edward Konkin III