The '60s was really stupid ... It was a type of merchandising, Americans had this hideous weakness, they had this desire to be OK, fun guys and gals, and they haven't come to terms with the reality of the situation: we were not created equal. Some people can do carpentry, some people can do mathematics, some people are brain surgeons and some people are winos and that's the way it is, and we're not all the same. This concept of one world-ism, everything blended and smoothed out to this mediocre norm that everybody downgrades themselves to be is stupid. The '60s was merchandised to the public at large... My pet theory about the '60s is that there is a sinister plot behind it... The lessons learnt in the '60s about merchandising stupidity to the American public on a large scale have been used over and over again since that time.
Frank ZappaRelated topics
behind brain carpentry concept desire equal everybody everything fun large learn mathematics merchandising norm public situation stupid stupidity way weakness 60sRelated quotes
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH?
When a human soul goes out of the body, some great mystery happens. For if it is guilty of sins, then there come hordes of demons, evil angels and dark forces, take that soul and drag it to their side.
No one should be surprised at that, because if a man surrendered and fell prey to them while still alive in this world, will not they have even greater control over him and enslave him when he departs from this world?
As for the other, the better part of people, something different happens to them. There are Angels around the holy servants of God in this life; the holy spirits surround them and protect them; and when their souls are separated from the body, the choir of Angels welcomes them into their fellowship, into a bright life, and thus leads them to the Lord.
Macarius of Egypt
Relativism is a product of the modern historical-sociological procedure which is based on the recognition that all historical thinking is bound up with the concrete position in life of the thinker [Standortsgebundenheit des Denkers]. But relativism combines this historical-sociological insight with an older theory of knowledge which was as yet unaware of the interplay between conditions of existence and modes of thought, and which modelled its knowledge after static prototypes such as might be exemplified by the proposition 2 x 2 = 4. This older type of thought, which regarded such examples as the model of all thought, was necessarily led to the rejection of all those forms of knowledge which were dependent upon the subjective standpoint and the social situation of the knower, and which were, hence, merely "relative."
Karl Mannheim
I listen to the radio now that we seem to be on it quite a lot, but before that, I didn't really listen a great deal. I gave up for a while. But other groups... without really trying to sound terribly down on modern music, much of it really doesn't affect me a great deal. It seems tragically tidy, and everybody has their little safety nets and their little life rafts, and once people seem to get a hit they seem to just dilute the formula constantly and there's no risk involved, and it's really so desperately tidy, that... I want to change things. But I don't want to imply that The Smiths are a high-risk situation anyway, of course they're not. They're immediately listenable. But it just needs somebody with some heart and some brain. I think popular music needs brains at the moment.
Morrissey
Harvey was not especially introspective, but this didn't mean he was stupid. He was moral, within his lights; he understood the value of subtlety even if he wasn't much for it himself, and one of the reasons he could get away with being loud and obnoxious was that he was a fair stick at strategy and logistics. Give him a job and he'd do it, usually in the most entropy-producing way possible, yes, but also in a way that achieved exactly the aim it was supposed to. One of Harvey's guiding lights in terms of strategies was simplicity; all things being equal, Harvey preferred the course of action that let him get into the middle of things and then just buckle down. When asked about it, Harvey called it his Occam's razor theory of combat: The simplest way of kicking someone's ass was usually the correct one.
John Scalzi
If my history lesson has done nothing else, it should have reminded you that, during any given period in the evolving history of physics, the prevailing, main line, climate of opinion was likely as not to be wrong, as seen in the light of later developments. And yet, in those earlier times, with relatively few individuals involved, change did occur, but slowly... What is fundamentally different in the present day situation in high energy physics is that large numbers of workers are involved, with corresponding pressures to conformity and resistance to any deflection in direction of the main stream, and that the time scale of one scientific generation is much too long for the rapid pace of experimental discovery. I also have a secret fear that new generations may not necessarily have the opportunity to become familiar with dissident ideas.
Julian Schwinger