shal

“While we fight for equality in the areas that do matter: for fundamental human and civil rights, or for the freedom for each person to pursue their thick desires (in the United States, this is called "the pursuit of happiness"); we also begin fighting for equality in areas that do not matter, our thing desires: to make as much money as someone else, to have the same number of Instagram followers, to have the same amount of status or respect or professional prestige as any one of the nearly eight billion models on the planet.”
― Luke Burgis, Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

“Look, it’s the same color as mine. Don’t be fooled by that. People are. But prick an imbecile and he’ll bleed crimson. So will a dog.”
― Paul Scott, The Day of the Scorpion

“Nationality is a social feeling. It is a feeling of a corporate sentiment of oneness which makes those who are charged with it feel that they are kith and kin. This national feeling is a double edged feeling. It is at once a feeling of fellowship for one’s own kith and kin and an anti-fellowship feeling for those who are not one’s own kith and kin. It is a feeling of “consciousness of kind” which on the one hand binds together those who have it, so strongly that it over-rides all differences arising out of economic conflicts or social gradations and, on the other, severs them from those who are not of their kind. It is a longing not to belong to any other group. This is the essence of what is called a nationality and national feeling.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or Partition of India

“We’re more threatened by people who want the same things as us than by those who don’t.”
― Luke Burgis, Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life