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Quote by Lawrence Nault

“A story is not an escape from the world—it is a return to it, through the wild path of empathy.”

Quote by Lawrence Nault

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Lawrence Nault

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“We have reached a turning point in history in which major historical processes are partly caused by the decisions of nonhuman intelligence. It is this that makes the fallibility of the computer network so dangerous. Computer errors become potentially catastrophic only when computers become historical agents.”

“Civilizations are born from the marriage of bureaucracy and mythology. The computer-based network is a new type of bureaucracy that is far more powerful and relentless than any human-based bureaucracy we’ve seen before. This network is also likely to create inter-computer mythologies that will be far more complex and alien than any human-made god. The potential benefits of this network are enormous. The potential downside is the destruction of human civilization.”

“In a nutshell, men and women who have wealth and power are human beings, as are women and men who have nothing more than their dignified rage. And up above they demand and insist: "We must say not to violence, wherever it comes from"... making sure to emphasize it if the violence comes from below. According to them, everyone must bring themselves into harmony for their differences and contradictions to be resolved and must chant, "armed people are also exploited," making reference to soldiers and police officers. Our position as Zapatistas is clear. We do not support pacifist flags that are raised fro someone else to turn the other cheek, nor violence that is encouraged when others provide the dead. We are who we are, with all the good and all the bad that we carry and is our responsibility. But it would be naive to think that all the good things we have accomplished - including the privilege of listing to and learning from you - would have been possible without preparing a full decade for the sun to rise as it rose on January 1, fifteen years ago.”

“Whereas the violence of the oppressors prevents the oppressed from being fully human, the response of the latter to this violence is grounded in the desire to pursue the right to be human. As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized. As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors' power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression.”