Status Updates From O Indivíduo, a Sociedade e ...

Important as the economic factor is, it is not enough. the rejuvenation of mankind needs the inspiration and energising force of an ideal.

It is not the negative. thing of being free from something, because with such freedom you may starve to death. Real freedom, true liberty is positive: it is freedom to something; it is the liberty to be, to do; in short, the liberty of actual and active opportunity.

It is power that corrupts and degrades both master and slave and it makes no difference whether the power is wielded by an autocrat, by parliament or Soviets. More pernicious than the power of a dictator is that of a class; the most terrible - the tyranny of a majority.

(GRAAH!!) Socially speaking, the criterion of civilisation and
culture is the degree of liberty and economic opportunity which the individual enjoys; of social and international unity and co-operation unrestricted by man-made laws and other artificial obstacles; by the absence of privileged castes and by the reality of liberty and human dignity; in short, by the true emancipation of the individual.

!!! The ability to travel at the rate of 100 miles an hour is no evidence of being civilised. True civilisation is to be measured by the individual, the unit of all social life; by his individuality and the extent to which it is free to have its being to grow and expand

senses have been dulled by the deadly routine of work and bc they must eke out an existence.

it is not truth or falsehood which serves as the criterion of the opposition he meets. It is not the validity or usefulness of his thought or activity which rouses against him the forces of the State and of "public opinion."

One of the insane characteristics of this struggle is the complete negation of the relation of the producer to the things he produces. The average worker has no inner point of contact with the industry he is employed in, and he is a stranger to the process of production of which he is a mechanical part. Like any other cog of the machine, he is replaceable at any time by other similar depersonalised human beings.

only mutual aid and voluntary co-opera-tion - not the omnipotent, all-devastating State - can create the basis for a free individual and associational life.

the struggle for physical survival goes merrily on though the necessity for it has entirely disappeared. Indeed, the struggle 1s being continued apparently because there is no necessity for it. Does not so-called overproduction prove it?

Moreover, the inherent conservatism of government, of authority of any kind, unavoidably becomes reactionary. For two rea-sons: first, because it is in the nature of government not only to retain the power it has, but also to strengthen, widen and perpetuate it, nationally as well as internationally.

Life begins and ends with man, the individual. Without him there is no race, no humanity, no State. No, not even "society" is possible without man. It is the individual who lives, breathes and suffers. His development, his advan-ce, has been a continuous struggle against the fetishes of his own creation and particularly so against the "State."

To call the State and organism shows a diseased tendency to make a fetish of words.
The state has no more existence than gods and devils have. They are equally the reflex and creation of man, for man, the individual, is the only reality.

They (the elders) helped to manage the affairs of life, not to rule and dominate the individual.
[..] no government can exist without the consent of the people, consent open, tacit or assumed.
That consent is the belief in authority, in the necessity for it. At its base is the doctrine that man is evil, vicious, and too incompetent to know what is good for him. On this all government and oppression is built.

(abt last quote) Ig in order to do achieve great things and wage revolutions, you have to believe, at least in some part, in the godhood of man. That kind of glorification lights a fire under one’s feet.

Man’s greatest battles have been waged against man-made obstacles and artificial handicaps imposed upon him to paralyse his growth and development.
[..] he is not a part of this or that; he is whole, an individual whole, a growing, changing, yet always constant whole.

poxa, vontade de colar na minha testa todas as palavras bonitas que ela usou pra dizer que o militarismo é uma grande merda