Moral Codes

"Moral codes are always obstructive, relative, and man-made. Yet they have been of enormous profit to civilization. They are civilization. Without them, we are invaded by the chaotic barbarism of sex, nature's tyranny, turning day into night and love into obsession and lust."

Camille Paglia
Sexual Personae

High, Middle and Low Classes

“The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim – for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives – is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.”

George Orwell.

All Civilizations Decline

"All civilizations decline. That's a fact of history. The cause is - civilization! The more organized a state become, the more successful. But, the more successful the state the more affluent elements ascend to the the top and using their individual power, they steer the government toward self serving goals that have nothing to do with national survival. Soon, the civilization becomes top heavy and topples from sheer elitist lethargy. There is a revolution, the nation crumbles into chaos and the whole things starts over on a new playing filed. The USA has achieved all it can and now will fall for reasons stated above. It is not reparable. It has to go the same way other nations fell. The world will miss us terribly."

Jim Bass
Comment on Asia Times Online article.

This State is mine

"Everyone, atheists, Christian conservatives, feminists, Islamists, even, yes, many gays and lesbians, seems to want to remake society in their own image, without regard for anyone elses thoughts or beliefs. We think only of ourselves and our own little groups. A little consideration for the other people we share this country with would go a long way."

Comment on American Conservative by Geoff Guth.

Traditions

"...traditions are never defended. If they need to be defended, the cause is already lost. Traditions are supported and, if they’re no longer supported, collapse."

Comment by bjk on The American Conservative.

"Sometimes the warlords decide that everything worthy of plunder has been extracted, and that the hitherto rich sources of revenue have dried up. Then they begin the so-called peace process. They convene a meeting of the opposing sides (the 'warring factions conference'), they sign an agreement, and set a date for elections. In response, the World Bank extends to them all manner of loans and credits. Now the warlords are even richer than they were before, because you can get significantly more from the World Bank than from your own starving kinsmen."

Ryszard Kapuscinki - The Shadow of the Sun

Nearly reasonable

"The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite."

G.K. Chesterton. 1908.

'Leftism should be about the people. That's how it began. Instead, what it has become in the last 20 years is a white upper-middle-class elitism which preaches to the people and says, "Oh, you don't agree with us? You're homophobic, you're so uneducated. You're in the darkness. You need us to bring light and truth to you."'

Camille Paglia

"Civilization emerges with complexity, exists because of it, and disappears when complexity does.

Complexity is the base of civilization, and civilization, by definition here, can disappear only when complexity vanishes. It may be true that specific polities can rise and fall within a civilization, but political complexity itself must disintegrate for civilization to disappear.

For this reason the study of rising and falling complexity serves as a monitor of the phenomenon termed civilization..."

Joseph Tainter - The Collapse of Complex Societies.

"Society, that it may live better, creates the State as an instrument. Then the State gets the upper hand and society has to begin to live for the State."

Ortega y Gasset, 1930.

"I used to be amused by Utopians. With life experience, I have grown to fear them. The great failing of Utopians is that they can never accept that someone else might not want to be a part of their Utopian vision. Like ill-mannered tourists, they assume that if you don't agree with them, it must be because they're not explaining it simply enough, or often enough, or loudly enough, or ultimately, because you're stupid.
Utopians always think achieving Utopia is simply a matter of education—and then re-education—and then coercion, legislation, litigation medication conditioning threats book-burnings eugenics surgical modifications hunting down the counter-revolutionaries killing the reactionaries genetic engineering—and ultimately all Utopians, no matter how nobly they begin, always end up at the same conclusion: that the only thing that keeps Man from building a secular heaven here on Earth is the nature of Man, therefore we must build a New and Better Man."
Bruce Bethke, Final Afterthoughts

"The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may soon be turned into complaints."
Burke commenting on the French Revolution.

"Ours is an era in which political ideology, liberal as much as Marxist, has a rapidly dwindling leverage on events, and more ancient, more primordial forces, nationalist and religious, fundamentalist and soon, perhaps, Malthusian, are contesting with each other."
John Gray, 1989.