Em ’s Reviews > The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power > Status Update

"The temporal, spatial and personal separation of utilities and costs, the separation of an act committed now from the suffering that ensues, or the non-intersection between advantages that are privately consumable and disadvantages that have to be borne collectively, is an exceedingly seductive characteristic of modern scientific technologies."

"... material needs are created faster than the conditions for their gratification... the phenomenon of permanently frustrated people caught in an endless spiral of needs... the persistent and overwhelming compulsion of having to sell one's labour power in competition with other sellers... made subject to an accelerating time stress, which leaves little space for his feelings, soul and thoughts..."

"... no system becomes morally acceptable merely because human imagination has failed to produce an alternative to it at a given point in time."

"[...] the unity of mankind [reveals] as a menacing fate. Instead of hopeful appeals, sombre warnings provide the accompaniment. [...] No one can rock the boat without causing all of us to be united in our collective destruction. [...] There are no terrestrial wanderers [...] only passengers clinging fearfully to their vessel as it splits apart. [...] unity in our age [may be] consummated in catastrophe." pp117-118

""... each tongue contains its own way of perceiving man & nature, experiencing joy and sorrow, & finding meaning [...]. To pray or to love, to dream or to reason, evokes different things when done in Farsi, German or Zapotec. Just as certain plants & animals [maintain] large ecosystems, languages [sustain] cultures through time. Once species disappear, ecosystems break down; once languages die out, cultures falter."

"For us [...] technological and market dependence is becoming the only way to conceive of freedom. To be free is to devote oneself to consumption; even people themselves are reduced to consumer goods." p.92

"...where our mania for salvation makes life unbreathable.... Everyone is trying to remedy everyone's life... the sidewalks and hospitals of the world overflow with reformers. The longing to become a source of events affects each man like a mental disorder or a desired malediction. Society-an inferno of saviours! What Diogenes was looking for with his lantern was an indifferent man. -E.M. Cioran" p.72

"The modern person places him- or herself under an uncompromising optimization imperative. No one is allowed to rest until everything that is has been improved - that is, no one is ever allowed to rest. For everything that has been improved is good only for a fleeting historical moment. Afterwards it is once again overdue for being surpassed". p.63

"Originally to be rich meant to have power of the sort a king has - that is, power over other people. It meant the kind of power you can only have when other people do not: where there are no subjects, there is no king." Lummis (2010).

"... experts defined equity as a problem of the poor ... lack of income, lack of technologies, and lack of market access of the poor
... ... they worked at raising the floor, rather than lowering the ceiling. ... however ... the quest for fairness in a finite world means in the first place changing the rich, not the poor. Poverty alleviation, in other words, cannot be separated from wealth alleviation." Sachs '09