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It was not until he reached the university that he began to recognize that all these injustices did not come by chance, but were the inevitable results of our economic system. Capitalism did not merely enslave the workers, it also vitiated taste and vulgarized intellect - hence our educational system and hence the lack of recognition for new genius. This discovery had made him a communist, but when the war came along and he saw Russia in alliance with the capitalist governments, he had found himself once more isolated and had to become a conscientious objector.
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce -
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
At a time of rapid change and profound uncertainty, we sense the possibility of a world far more beautiful than what we have long accepted as “normal.” We also know that the strategies we use to create change, if they are grounded in the old world, will be insufficient to create a new one. The planet is entering a new era, and we can bow into its service.
Charles Eisenstein -
It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men - kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest - sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.
John Steinbeck -
It is when the mass mind is unnaturally influenced by wicked men that the mass of mankind commit violence.
Gandhi -
I don't have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I don't know what to call it. I feel it particularly when I’m out in nature. It’s just something that's bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it's enough for me.
Jane Goodall -
Rich man and poor man stood there and looked at each other. And the poor man said: Were I not poor, you were not rich.
Bertolt Brecht, Poems -
The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.
John W. Gardner -
Do people exist to serve the economy? Or should the economy exist to serve people?
David Korten -
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
Albert Einstein -
Capitalism has outlived its usefulness.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
“Spiritual” as a concept presupposes a dichotomy or dualistic split between spirit and matter that is an error in our understanding. The “true person” of the Tao would be one who had integrated spirit and matter.
Daniel Pinchbeck -
Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin -
Many of us have awakenings. We awake to a deeper sense of our life purpose. We awaken to the Self beyond the mind. We awaken to our interconnectedness with others and the planet. Whether our awakenings lead to lasting transformation depends on how much we are willing to work with the gap between our awakened experience and our daily life. Transformation is what happens when you bring your life into alignment with your glimpses of awakened states.
Sally Kempton -
If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.
Edward Bernays, Propaganda -
The paradox of education is precisely this: that as one begins to become conscious, one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
James A. Baldwin -
Governments don’t want a population capable of critical thinking. They want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.
George Carlin -
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Albert Einstein -
The global economy does not have an underemployment problem; we suffer an over-employment tragedy i.e. the precious moments of this finite life that are squandered laboring for a corrupt elite of pathological greedheads.
Phil Rockstroh -
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
J. Krishnamurti -
When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.
Dom Helder Camara -
Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.
Terence McKenna -
Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth.
Spoon Boy, The Matrix -
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
P.C. Hodgell -
If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.
Buckminster Fuller -
We are the system. We are the government. We are society. We are the power. We are the law. It is not beyond us, unreachable nor undesirable to be it. The system is a reflection of who we are.
Birgitta Jónsdóttir -
The real leader has no need to lead – he is content to point the way.
Henry Miller -
I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who are truly alive.
Howard Thurman -
Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.
Neil deGrasse Tyson -
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment -
If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
Albert Einstein -
Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.
Cree Indian Proverb -
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Friedrich Nietzsche -
Entertainment is suspension of time and space, so that you realize your true nature which is spaceless and timeless.
Bill Hicks -
I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name of Goethe.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Artists, to my mind, are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
William S. Burroughs -
Human Salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.
Mark Twain -
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Buckminster Fuller -
Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring. We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting star light.
Carl Sagan -
Concerns for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
Albert Einstein -
Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
John F. Kennedy -
There is a real ability with this transit for all of us to creatively actualize our dreams, to fashion into form the depth of our inner selves, to serve the muse with alchemical potency, and to transform the storyteller into healer.
VerDarLuz -
Every generation has the obligation to free men’s minds for a look at new worlds… to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.
Ellison Onizuka -
Never in all of human history has mankind been so capable of achieving a true global political psycho-social awakening; nor has humanity ever been in such danger of being subjected to a truly global scientific totalitarianism. So we are filled with hope, but driven by urgency.
Andrew Gavin Marshall -
Clear your mind of dogmatic theological debris; let in the fresh, healing waters of direct perception.
Lahiri Mahasaya -
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
Albert Einstein -
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
Adolf Hitler -
Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power that can transform the world.
Howard Zinn
Some scenes from NatGat
July 16, 2012
I have yet to corral my thoughts on the Occupy National Gathering, which I feel overall was a fantastic and very significant event for the Occupy movement. I hope to do so this week, so in the meantime, please enjoy a few scenes below which capture a sense of what the week was like for me.
The first is a montage of the visioning process which took place on the gathering’s final day on July 4th – speeches by Occupy Philly organizers preceding the process, the process itself, the final march, and a portion of the final document that was produced. I heard many great presentations throughout the week, but I thought these speeches in particular were extremely powerful and heartfelt, making it unfortunate that I was unable to find them in their entirety on livestream, youtube or anywhere else. If anyone out there has access to these speeches, please do let me know.
The second video is snippets from a performance by comedian Lee Camp, which I was fortunate enough to be in the vicinity of. Like the first video, it doesn’t do the performance justice, but is the only one I could find. I include it here merely to introduce Mr. Camp to anyone who might not be familiar with him, as I find him to be one of the more cogent, sensible, yet impassioned voices of Occupy.
Additional Reading...