Jacques

“What has Capitalism resolved? It has solved no problems. It has looted the world. It has left us with all this poverty. It has created lifestyles and models of consumerism that are incompatible with reality. It has poisoned the waterways. Oceans, Rivers, Lakes, Seas, the Atmosphere, the Earth. It has produced an incredible waste of resources.
I always cite one example; imagine every person in China owned a Car, or aspired to own a Car. Everyone of the 1.1 Billion people in China, or that everyone of the 800 million people in India wished to own a Car, this method, this lifestyle, and Africa did the same, and nearly 450 million Latin Americans did the same. How long would Oil last? How long would Natural Gas last? How long would natural resources last? What would be left of the Ozone layer? What would be left of Oxygen on Earth? What would happen with Carbon Dioxide? And all these phenomenon that are changing the ecology of our world, they are changing Earth, they are making life on our Planet more and more difficult all the time.
What model has Capitalism given the world to follow? An example for societies to emulate? Shouldn’t we focus on more rational things, like the education of the whole population? Nutrition, health, a respectable lodging, an elevated culture? Would you say capitalism, with it’s blind laws, it’s selfishness as a fundamental principle, has given us something to emulate? Has it shown us a path forward? Is humanity going to travel on the course charted thus far? There may be talk of a crisis in socialism, but, today, there is an even greater crises in capitalism, with no end in sight.”
― Fidel Castro

“Added to all this is the universal dread of reality. We "pale-faces" have it, all of
us, although we are seldom, and most of us never, conscious of it. It is the
spiritual weakness of the "Late" man of the higher civilizations, who lives in his
cities cut off from the peasant and the soil and thereby from the natural
experiencing of destiny, time, and death. He has become too wide awake, too
accustomed to ponder perpetually over yesterday and tomorrow, and cannot bear
that which he sees and is forced to see: the relentless course of things, senseless
chance, and real history striding pitilessly through the centuries into which the
individual with his tiny scrap of private life is irrevocably born at the appointed
place. That is what he longs to forget, refute, or contest. He takes flight from
history into solitude, into imaginary far-away systems, into some faith or another,
or into suicide. Like a grotesque ostrich he buries his head in hopes, ideals, and
cowardly optimism: it is so, but it ought not to be, therefore it is otherwise. We
sing in the woods at night because we are afraid.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution

“We are still in the Age of Rationalism, which began in the eighteenth century and is now rapidly nearing its close. We are all its creatures whether we know and wish it or not. The word is familiar enough, but who knows how much it implies? It is the arrogance of the urban intellect, which, detached from its roots and no longer guided by strong instinct, looks down with contempt on the full-blooded thinking of the past and the wisdom of ancient peasant stock. It is the period in which everyone can read and write and therefore must have his say and always "knows better." This type of mind is obsessed by concepts - the new gods of the Age - and it exercises its wits on the world as it sees it. "It is no good," it says; "we could make it better; here goes, let us set up a program for a better world!" Nothing could be easier for persons of intelligence, and no doubt seems to be felt that this world will then materialize of itself. It is given a label, "Human Progress," and now that it has a name, it is. Those who doubt it are narrow reactionaries, heretics, and, what is worse, persons devoid of democratic virtue: away with them! In this wise the fear of reality was overcome by intellectual arrogance, the darkness that comes from ignorance of all things of life, spiritual poverty, lack of reverence, and, finally, world-alien stupidity - for there is nothing stupider than the rootless urban intelligence.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution

“When information is contextualized, it becomes knowledge. When knowledge compels convictions, it becomes wisdom. Yet the internet inundates users with the opinions of thousands, even millions, of other users, depriving them of the solitude required for sustained reflection that, historically, has led to the development of convictions. As solitude diminishes, so, too, does fortitude—not only to develop convictions but also to be faithful to them, particularly when they require the traversing of novel, and”
― Henry Kissinger, The Age of A.I. and Our Human Future