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Modern Society Quotes

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Modern Society Quotes

“I don't even notice the mob until it's rushing toward me. They snort and pant, ash-colored jackets swirling as their arms and legs pull at the air. A few hundred of them stampede in my direction, and there’s no way to escape. I’m convinced that I’m about to be swept away. I’ll kick, I’ll struggle, but their momentum will be too much for me. They’ll carry me to justice. No escape this time. But the mob reaches me and keeps moving. They’re heading somewhere, and I just got in their way. I stop fighting, and move in the same direction as everyone else, and soon the crowd shelters me, buries me inside its raucousness.”

ProtestModern SocietySelf Absorption
Book:The City in the Middle of the Night
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“I have never been able to believe that human affairs were serious matters. I had no idea where the serious might lie, except that it was not in all this I saw around me - which seemed to me merely an amusing game, or tiresome. There are really efforts and convictions I have never been able to understand. I always looked with amazement, and a certain suspicion, on those strange creatures who died for money, fell into despair over the loss of a 'position,' or sacrificed themselves with a high and mighty manner for the prosperity of their family. I could better understand that friend who had made up his mind to stop smoking and through sheer will power had succeeded. One morning he opened the paper, read that the first H-Bomb had been exploded, learned about its wonderful effects, and hastened to a tobacco shop.”

Modern SocietyAbsurdismH Bomb
Book:The fall
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“Today, there was no time for the old rituals and the old ways; there was barely time in each day to kiss your son good morning and your wife goodbye as you rushed out to the shop, trying to make a living, before trudging home with nothing to show after you’d paid the taxi fares and bought the milk for Klein Ben’s porridge …”

RushingModern SocietyBusy LifeOld WaysRituals
Book:The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories
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“[There is] no direct relationship between IQ and economic opportunity. In the supposed interests of fairness and “social justice”, the natural relationship has been all but obliterated. Consider the first necessity of employment, filling out a job application. A generic job application does not ask for information on IQ. If such information is volunteered, this is likely to be interpreted as boastful exaggeration, narcissism, excessive entitlement, exceptionalism [...] and/or a lack of team spirit. None of these interpretations is likely to get you hired. Instead, the application contains questions about job experience and educational background, neither of which necessarily has anything to do with IQ. Universities are in business for profit; they are run like companies, seek as many paying clients as they can get, and therefore routinely accept people with lukewarm IQ’s, especially if they fill a slot in some quota system (in which case they will often be allowed to stay despite substandard performance). Regarding the quotas themselves, these may in fact turn the tables, advantaging members of groups with lower mean IQ’s than other groups [...] sometimes, people with lower IQ’s are expressly advantaged in more ways than one. These days, most decent jobs require a college education. Academia has worked relentlessly to bring this about, as it gains money and power by monopolizing the employment market across the spectrum. Because there is a glut of college-educated applicants for high-paying jobs, there is usually no need for an employer to deviate from general policy and hire an applicant with no degree. What about the civil service? While the civil service was once mostly open to people without college educations, this is no longer the case, and quotas make a very big difference in who gets hired. Back when I was in the New York job market, “minorities” (actually, worldwide majorities) were being spotted 30 (thirty) points on the civil service exam; for example, a Black person with a score as low as 70 was hired ahead of a White person with a score of 100. Obviously, any prior positive correlation between IQ and civil service employment has been reversed. Add to this the fact that many people, including employers, resent or feel threatened by intelligent people [...] and the IQ-parameterized employment function is no longer what it was once cracked up to be. If you doubt it, just look at the people running things these days. They may run a little above average, but you’d better not be expecting to find any Aristotles or Newtons among them. Intelligence has been replaced in the job market with an increasingly poor substitute, possession of a college degree, and given that education has steadily given way to indoctrination and socialization as academic priorities, it would be naive to suppose that this is not dragging down the overall efficiency of society. In short, there are presently many highly intelligent people working very “dumb” jobs, and conversely, many less intelligent people working jobs that would once have been filled by their intellectual superiors. Those sad stories about physics PhD’s flipping burgers at McDonald's are no longer so exceptional. Sorry, folks, but this is not your grandfather’s meritocracy any more.”

EducationGeniusEconomicsIntelligencePhysicsConservatismSelf EducationModern SocietyIqEducational Reform
Author:Christopher Langan
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“Unlike our ancient ancestors, we live in a world that is slowly but surely being poisoned by technology, industry and human encroachment on the natural world. [...] As industry and technology systematically destroy the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, out health problems ahve increased dramatically. While modern medical science has virtually eliminated the virulent diseases that threatened the lives of our ancestors (smallpox, diptheria, polio, typhoid fever), a different kind of disease process is gradually destroying the body's ability to protect and heal itself.”

EnvironmentPlanet EarthModern SocietyEarth DayEnvironmental DegradationHeal The WorldGo GreenHeal The Planet
Book:The Five Elements of Self-Healing: Using Chinese Medicine for Maximum Immunity, Wellness, and Health
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“AI is a tool and, like any tool, it can be used for positive and negative ends. It depends on the motives of the operator(s). There are benefits; it could revolutionise crime detection if utilized correctly, speed up and focus investigations and secure convictions. New technology will always be exploited before it is harnessed. That's human nature. With the internet as the perfect delivery mechanism, the effect of AI is multiplied infinitely. The danger is we may have invented our replacement that will one day outgrow us and evolve beyond us.”

TechnologyAiArtificial IntelligenceModern SocietyTechnology Existential RisksFrankensteinCreating A MonsterDangers Of AiDangers Of Technology21st Century Prophecy
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“If the adoption of ploughing increased a village's population from a hundred to 110, which ten people would have volunteered to starve so that the others could go back to the good old time? There was no going back. The trap snapped shut. The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have take demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad.”

Modern SocietyAgricultural RevolutionCollege Debt
Book:Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
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“[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead.”

PeaceSilenceDarknessTechnologyLonelinessNoiseIsolationStillnessModern SocietyShallowness
Book:Angle of Repose
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“Exposed! shines a harsh light on the myriad horrors of modern society and reports back from the fearful frontlines with wicked wit and paranoid power. From the murky waters of New Orleans to the scarred psyches of our own image-obsessed existence, Exposed! is the last headline we get to read before reality comes tumbling down.”

RealityLightLastsWaterExistenceModernHorrorShiningWitObsessedWickedReportsExposedFearfulHarshNew OrleansHeadlinesParanoidModern SocietyPsychTumblingFrontlineTumbling DownMurky Water
Author:Jeremy Robert Johnson
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“Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle. In many parts of the world society is given to instant gratification and consumerism while remaining indifferent to the damage which these attitudes cause. Simplicity, moderation and discipline, as well as a spirit of sacrifice, must become part of everyday life, lest all suffer the negative consequences of the careless habits of a few.”

WorldWellsLooksProblemSpiritSufferingGivenCausesAttitudeSacrificeModernSeriousHabitDisciplineSolutionsConsequenceNegativeEverydaySimplicityLifestyleInstantDamageIndifferentConsumerismEveryday LifeModerationGratificationCarelessEcologicalOverconsumptionModern SocietyInstant GratificationNegative ConsequencesSerious Look
Author:Pope John Paul II
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“Man is by nature a pragmatic materialist, a mechanic, a lover of gadgets and gadgetry; and these are the qualities that characterize the "establishment" which regulates modern society: pragmatism, materialism, mechanization, and gadgetry. Woman, on the other hand, is a practical idealist, a humanitarian with a strong sense of noblesse oblige, an altruist rather than a capitalist.”

MenHandsStrongQualityModernLoversHumanitarianPracticalsMaterialismEstablishmentCapitalistMechanicPragmaticIdealistModern SocietyGadgetsPragmatismMechanizationNoblesse Oblige
Author:Elizabeth Gould Davis
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“Divorce is simply modern society's version of medieval torture. Except it lasts longer and leaves deeper scars. A divorce releases the most primitive emotions; the ugliest, raw feelings. Emotionally wounded people do their best to inflict pain upon the other party, but rather than using claws they use divorce lawyers.”

PeopleUseFeelingsPainLastsPartyEmotionModernDeeperDivorceLawyerVersionsReleaseTortureScarPrimitiveWoundedMedievalClawsModern SocietyDivorce Lawyers
Book:Up Till Now
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“Lest those islands still seem to you too remote in space and time to be relevant to our modern societies, just think about the risks... of our increasing globalization and increasing worldwide economic interdependence.”

ThinkingStillsSeemsLiteratureSpaceRiskEconomicModernIslandsRelevantGlobalizationTime And SpaceModern SocietyInterdependence
Book:Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition
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“Humans in modern societies are driven by a perhaps desperate hope that they might find some way of mobilizing their theoretical and empirical knowledge and their evaluative systems so as both to locate themselves and their projects in some larger imaginative structure that makes sense to them. ... Furthermore, many modern agents would like it to be the case that the form of orientation which their life has is, if not true, at least compatible with the best available knowledge.”

IfsWayHumansMightFormCasesModernProjectsStructureAvailableDrivenAgentsMake SenseDesperateImaginativeTheoreticalOrientationModern SocietyCompatible
Author:Raymond Geuss
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“Modern society, which, soon after its birth, pulled Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the earth, greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glittering incarnation of the very principle of its own life.”

EarthPrinciplesModernHairBirthHolyGoldInvestingIncarnationModern SocietyHoly GrailBowels
Book:Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production
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“We think that we have to do so many things and it's unfortunate, entire modern society is besotted with the do-ables, we have to do this, we have to have a half-hour of yoga, an hour of meditation, 2 hours of this, and then 12 hours of work and non-stop electronic gadgets, gizmos etc. etc., and then go home and take care of the family, and then take the children to wherever, and what tends to happen is we do way too much. The society does way too much. One of the greatest things in healing is try for just one day to do nothing. Very difficult.”

ThinkingWayTryingChildrenDoeHomeHappensCareDifficultHoursHealingHalfToo MuchMeditationModernOne DayYogaTake CareJust OneEtcUnfortunateModern SocietyHalf HoursGadgetsNon Stop
Author:Maya Tiwari
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“The Declaration [of Independence] was not a protest against government, but against the excess of government. It prescribed the proper role of government, to secure the rights of individuals and to effect their safety and happiness. In modern society, no individual can do this alone. So government is not a necessary evil but a necessary good.”

GovernmentEvilIndividualCan DoRolesRightsModernEffectsSafetyIndependenceSecureProtestExcessDeclarationDeclaration Of IndependenceModern SocietyNecessary EvilRole Of Government
Author:Gerald R. Ford
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