Ipsa

“Into every abyss I still bear the blessing of my affirmation”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Perhaps this is what a state actually is: a combination of exceptional violence and the creation of a complex social machine, all ostensibly devoted to acts of care and devotion.

There is obviously a paradox here. Caring labour is in a way the very opposite of mechanical labour: it is about recognizing and understanding the unique qualities, needs and peculiarities of the cared-for – whether child, adult, animal or plant – in order to provide what they require to flourish. Caring labour is distinguished by its particularity. If those institutions we today refer to as ‘states’ really do have any common features, one must certainly be a tendency to displace this caring impulse on to abstractions; today this is usually ‘the nation’, however broadly or narrowly defined. Perhaps this is why it’s so easy for us to see ancient Egypt as a prototype for the modern state: here too, popular devotion was diverted on to grand abstractions, in this case the ruler and the elite dead. This process is what made it possible for the whole arrangement to be imagined, simultaneously, as a family and as a machine, in which everyone (except of course the king) was ultimately interchangeable. From the seasonal work of tomb-building to the daily servicing of the ruler’s body (recall again how the first royal inscriptions are found on combs and make-up palettes), most of human activity was directed upwards, either towards tending rulers (living and dead) or assisting them with their own task of feeding and caring for the gods.”
― David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

“One might ask, how could that most basic element of all human freedoms, the freedom to make promises and commitments and thus build relationships, be turned into its very opposite: into peonage, serfdom or permanent slavery? It happens, we’d suggest, precisely when promises become impersonal, transferable – in a nutshell, bureaucratized.”
― David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

“वह कैसे भविष्यवाणी कर सकती है कि जिस स्वर्ग की हमने आकाश में कल्पना की है, वह उस दिन ढह जाएगा यदि वह किसी तरह यह स्वर्ग बन गया? स्वर्ग में स्वर्ग और अधोलोक में नर्क को स्वर्ग-नरक के आधार पर व्यापार करने के लिए धरती पर स्वर्ग और नर्क की आवश्यकता है। यह आवश्यकता राजा-एंडी और दास-स्वामी के बीच के अंतर से पूरी होती है”
― Rahul Sankrityayan, वोल्गा से गंगा