#Politics Society Literature

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Sepultura - Common Bonds

[tygerland]

Animal Farm (1954)

[bones-ivy-breath]

There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority. It is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status, it establishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it signifies as true, and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces. Above all, authority can, indeed must, be analyzed.

Orientalism by Edward Said

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

G.K. Chesterton

[sapphiccyranodebergerac]

rereading the mysterious benedict society as an adult is very interesting. the book is lowkey a very poignant callout of authoritarian fear mongering.

like what strikes me most is the use of fear as a driver for control, the whisperer assuaging fears in order to get the kids to submit to it and then messages gaining control over the public by creating “the emergency” and then solving it for them.

also the “free market drill” is such an excellent callout of the paradox of late stage capitalism. like:

“The free market must always be completely free. The free market must be controlled in certain cases. The free market must be free enough to control its freedom in certain cases. The free market must have enough control to free itself in certain cases.”

i read that at 11 and was like “silly nonsense word salad” and now at 19 i’m like… fuck.

although considering how neurodivergent that book series is, it doesn’t surprise me that it’s also a tad socialist.

[blogbysaif]

Apni nigaaho'n ko ek chehre par paband karo, Har surat par lutt jana toheen-e-wafa hoti hai.

"Focus your gaze on one face; losing yourself over every face is a betrayal of loyalty."

[plutoisrad]

How grand my joy

To hear of your comfort and warmth

After hellish years

Leaves regrown from buried snow

To think as children we'd grow, apart

Fledged now in separation

How grand my joy

To hear of you through pleasantries

Two different stories that shared a same chapter

[nando161mando]

It's not an accident that Republicans are censoring history books that mention the Nazi Holocaust or American slavery.

https://www.britannica.com/

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index

https://libcom.org/

https://www.splcenter.org/

https://archive.org/

https://thewhiterosesociety.writeas.com/

https://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/

https://manybooks.net/

http://2020ok.com/

https://www.iww.org/

https://www.iwa-ait.org/

https://audioanarchy.org/

https://www.akpress.org/

https://deathtofascism.com/files/40ways.online.2020.pdf

[athinellis]

The tragedy in 1984 is that they do not actually kill the protagonist in the end but they kill him as an individual. And the final step to do so is not by destroying something directly related to himself but by destroying his feelings for another person. The final step to destroy a human being is to destroy their love.

[mysharona1987]

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Sepultura  -  Hatred Aside

[areadersquoteslibrary]

“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” - James Baldwin

[thatstudyblrontea]

it is remarkable [. . .] what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine for ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

[blackswaneuroparedux]

We would rather be ruined than changed We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die.

- W H Auden, The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue

It’s an odd fact that the Christian faith played out unpredictably in the later life of the English poet, W.H. Auden. Being gay made Auden feel claustrophobic in socially constricted England and so off he scuttled across to America just before the outbreak of the war in 1939. Some thought he was a coward for fleeing just as Britain faced its darkest hour and never forgave him.

But more than his gayness, another reason given for why he left for America is that he had grown weary of being lionised by the London literary chattering classes as his generation’s great left wing prophet. If anything he felt like an imposter. That self doubt served him to distance himself from the visceral and vicious debates raging across England’s cultural and political landscape as Europe fell into turmoil and crisis from the bitterness of the Spanish Civil War to the growing onset of war with Nazi Germany.

Auden’s literary friends didn’t grasp what he saw: Evil has a habit of infesting on all sides of ideological battle. No nation, political party or individual was pure and innocent. The ferocious rise of Nazism could happen anywhere, not just Germany in the 1930s. Nihilism was everywhere from the distinct Italian fascism of Mussolini’s Italy to the bloody brand of Communism in Stalin’s Russia.

Auden’s answer was to put his faith in Christianity, of the very English kind. Auden embraced the consolations of the Christian faith as the only mature way to understand human darkness and potential. The point of Christian belief, he argued, was to challenge our self-deceptions and self-pity and keep us focused on the only thing that matters - Jesus’ love command. Auden wrote: “For one thing, and one thing only, is serious: loving one’s neighbour as one’s self.”

Auden thought supernatural arguments and jargon distracted from real religion. Christian faith obliged believers to face the facts of this suffering world, not veer from them. He practiced numerous acts of charity anonymously. He didn’t like praying if it meant asking God to bend the universe to his own little purposes. Auden prayed as a way to pay deep attention to something other than himself. He prayed to God in order to forget his own ego.

Photo: W.H. Auden in Oxford, 1972.

[seladasstuff]

unrequited love no longer hurts me now, rather heartbroken or something it feels more like a shame huhu

[gregoriusadvena]

The Spiritual Letters, to be released later this year, are reflections on the psychology, anthropology and philosophy of religion.

Have you ever thought about the psychological meaning of prayer? Is there a difference between faith and belief? Can an afterlife compensate us for the evils of this life?