Is the American dream fading?
With more people living on the breadline in the US, we ask if it is time to abandon the American dream.
"Among these downtrodden, duped, and defrauded men, who are becoming
demoralised by overwork, and being gradually done to death by
underfeeding, there are men living who consider themselves Christians;
and others so enlightened that they feel no further need for
Christianity or for any religion, so superior do they appear in their
own esteem. And yet their hideous, lazy lives are supported by the
degrading, excessive labour of these slaves, not to mention the labour
of millions of other slaves, toiling in factories to produce samovars,
silver, carriages, machines, and the like for their use. They live among
these horrors, seeing them and yet not seeing them, although often
kind at heart—old men and women, young men and maidens, mothers and
children—poor children who are being vitiated and trained into moral
blindness."
demoralised by overwork, and being gradually done to death by
underfeeding, there are men living who consider themselves Christians;
and others so enlightened that they feel no further need for
Christianity or for any religion, so superior do they appear in their
own esteem. And yet their hideous, lazy lives are supported by the
degrading, excessive labour of these slaves, not to mention the labour
of millions of other slaves, toiling in factories to produce samovars,
silver, carriages, machines, and the like for their use. They live among
these horrors, seeing them and yet not seeing them, although often
kind at heart—old men and women, young men and maidens, mothers and
children—poor children who are being vitiated and trained into moral
blindness."
— Leo Tolstoy, There Are No Guilty People
"I simply do not understand the goals and rewards of the Western Way of Life, apart from such side-effects of the project as anesthesia for dentistry (which can just as well be effected by hypnosis). What is the point of Progress if the food is tasteless, the housing absurd, the clothing uncomfortable, the religion just talk, the air poisoned by Cadillacs, the work boring, the sex uptight and mechanical, the earth clobbered with concrete, and the water so chemicalized that even the fish are abandoning existence?"
— Alan Watts, What On Earth Are We Doing?
"Tricia Rose (1994), in her study of the meanings of rap music in contemporary America, argues that rap should be understood as a mass-mediated critique of the underlying ideology of mainstream American society. Rap presents an alternative interpretation—a different story—of the ways power and authority are structured in contemporary society. Robin D. G. Kelley (1994) argues that some rap lyrics are “intended to convey a sense of social-realism” that “loosely resembles a sort of street ethnography of racist institutions and social practices, but told more often than not in the first person"
— Media Society
"But I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got here. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with. Some of the crazymaking games today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls basketball."
— Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without a Country: Do You Know What a Twerp Is?
Land is life. It is the basis of livelihoods for peasants and indigenous people across the Third World and is also becoming the most vital asset in the global economy. As the resource demands of globalisation increase, land has emerged as a key site of conflict. …
Day 06 - A Book That Makes You Sad
I really don’t think this mandates explanation.
"Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded—"
— F. Alexander in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange
"If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into “I,” and cuts you off forever from the “we."
— John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath
