Social Structure Quotes

“When we free ourselves from the chaos enclosed in the surrounding rigid social structure, we can find peace of mind and still our hunger for knowledge and understanding. If we follow the rhythm of our heartbeat, we can quench our thirst for meaning in life and encounter an array of soothing vibrations of wellbeing. (“A handful of dust”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.”
― Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

“As you try to balance between the socialist and capitalist systems in the world, you will come up against the biggest problem facing humanity today. Jung wrote in 1938 "Any large company composed of wholly admirable persons has the morality and intelligence of an unwieldy, stupid, and violent animal. The bigger the organization, the more unavoidable is its immorality and blind stupidity." Each of these systems promotes itself by pointing out the moral failings of the other, but these moral failings are actually failings brought about by people acting within the context of large organizations. What is truly needed is to learn a structure of organization of human beings that provides for the organized group the same capacity and propensity for moral behavior that is possessed by individuals.”
― Anonymous

“The ones to fear are those who cannot realize it: the ones who just see the structure and bind themselves to it because they are otherwise afraid. They look at the structure, and they just see no other way. They cannot seek anything beyond it or do not want to. Yet, they will also vehemently deny that they are unable to venture beyond the structure and castigate others they perceive to have that inability so as to make themselves feel superior. They will even delude themselves into assuming that they are free of structural influence and will violently oppose any who say otherwise. They will say that the structures are a pragmatic necessity for social cohesion, but that they, even as willing participants in it, remain capable of acknowledging external terms and associations. They just choose not to—that’s the line they go with. They choose the structure for a lack of any better alternative and will not go
without one. Perhaps they are naïve, in that sense, and it is easy for them to believe that those who seek to negate their structures are either unscrupulous, foolish, or ego-driven.”
― Ashim Shanker, trenches parallax leapfrog

“To reflect upon the present as history is to understand that history may now be made by default. Understanding that, we no longer need accept as “necessary” the lesser evil. We no longer need to accept historical fate, for fate is a feature of specific kinds of social structure, of irresponsible systems of power.

These systems can be changed. Fate can be transcended We must come to understand that while the domain of fate is diminishing, the exercise of responsibility is also diminishing and in fact becoming organized as irresponsibility. We must hold men of power variously responsible for pivotal events, we mush unmask their pretentions- and often their own mistaken convictions- that they are not responsible. Our politics, in short, must be the politics of responsibility.”
― C. Wright Mills

“I have hardly ever seen a town that didn't wish the destruction of its neighbour, and never a family that didn't want to extirpate another. Everywhere you go, the weak loathe the powerful at whose the feet they crawl. And the rich treat them like flocks whose wool and meat they sell.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“The reason why shows like Friends and The Office are so beloved is because they show us what we truly want in life - a tight knit social group that we're always a part of, no matter how bad we screw up.”
― @TheWeirdWorld