To be myself

To be myself (I note) I need the illumination of other people's eyes, and therefore cannot be entirely sure what is my self.

Virginia Woolf, The Waves (Vintage Books, 2004) p. 75

The lake of my mind

The lake of my mind, unbroken by oars, heaves placidly and soon sinks into an oily somnolence.

Virginia Woolf, The Waves (Vintage Books, 2004) p. 21

The abolition of money

Who can fail to see that fraud, theft, pillaging, disputes, riots, strife, rebellion, murder, treason, poisoning, all those crimes that repeated punishment fails to deter, would die out with the abolition of money. And at the very moment when money vanished, so too would fear, anxiety, grief, stress and wakeful nights; even poverty itself, which seems to be just the lack of money, would instantly vanish if money was completely suppressed.

Thomas More, Utopia (Penguin Classics, 2012) pp. 120-121

A conspiracy of the rich

What sort of justice is it when some aristocrat, goldsmith, moneylender or, for that matter, any such individual who either does nothing at all or else something quite remote from the real needs of the commonwealth, enjoys a life of luxury and elegance thanks to his idleness or his inessential services, while at the same time a labourer, a wagoner, an artisan or farm-worker sweats so hard and so long that a beast of burden could scarcely bear it, and at work so essential that no commonwealth could survive for a year without it; yet they earn such pathetic recompense and live such wretched lives that the condition of beasts actually seems preferable, since beasts don't have to toil without a break and their food is scarcely worse – in fact, to them it's more tasty – nor of they fret about the future. But men like these are compelled for the present to labour that brings scant reward, and are haunted by the prospect of a penniless old age, for their daily wage is so far from meeting their current needs that there's no chance of any surplus being put aside that they might rely on when they're old.

Now isn't it an inequitable and selfish society where such rewards are lavished on the nobility (as they're called), and on goldsmiths and others of that sort, who are either parasites, or flatterers, or purveyors of idle pleasures? And where, by contrast, no decent provision is made for farm-workers, or colliers, or labourers, or carters or artisans, without whom the commonwealth couldn't even function? When their best years have been used up in drudgery, when they are word down by age and sickness and are quite destitute, an ungrateful society, disregarding their long hours of work and the extent of their services, repays them with a wretched death. But there's more: the rich are forever fleecing the poor of some of their daily pittance, not only by private fraud but even by official legislation. In this way what initially seemed an injustice, namely that those who deserved most from the commonwealth received least, has now been converted from an abuse into an act of justice by the passing of a law. So when I survey and assess all the different political systems flourishing today, nothing else presents itself – God help me – but a conspiracy of the rich, who look after their own interests under the name and title of the commonwealth. They plot and contrive schemes and devices by which, for a start, they can cling on to whatever they have already accumulated by shady means without any fear of losing it, and then take advantage of the poor by acquiring their works and their labour at the lowest possible cost. Once the rich, in the name of the community (and that, of course, includes the poor), have decreed that these fraudulent practices are to be observed, they become laws.

Thomas More, Utopia (Penguin Classics, 2012) pp. 119-120

When money is the measure of all things

When money is the measure of all things, futile and unnecessary trades are bound to be practiced, just to meet the demands of luxury and indulgence.

Thomas More, Utopia (Penguin Classics, 2012) pp. 65-66

Den njutningsfyllda glädjen över världens skapnad

Aldrig, aldrig ens under ögonblicken av den mest slösande, den mest besinningslösa lycka övergav dem det högsta, det mest överväldigande: den njutningsfyllda glädjen över världens skapnad, känslan av att själva gå in i tavlan, förnimmelsen av att höra in i hela bildens skönhet, i hela universum.

Endast i denna samhörighet med allt levde och andades de. Därför förblev de oberörda av det moderna daltandet med människan, av människoförgudandet och upphöjandes av människan över den övriga naturen. De till politik förvandlade falska principerna om samhällsutvecklingen var för dem ett ömkligt och obegripligt fuskverk.

Boris Pasternak, Doktor Zjivago (1958) p. 553

En enda förblivande konst

Min gamla tanke är att konsten inte är en benämning på en kategori eller ett område, som omfattar en oöverskådlig mängd begrepp och sig förgrenande företeelser, utan tvärtom någonting starkt begränsat och koncentrerat, att den betecknar en grundprincip, som ingår i vad man sammanfattar i begreppet konstnärlig framställning, att den är en benämning på en kraft som där kommer till användning eller på en däri utvecklad sanning. Och konsten har aldrig tyckts mig vara ett formtema, en sida av formen utan fastmer en hemlighetsfull och fördold del av innehållet. Detta är för mig klart som dagen, jag känner det med varje fiber, men hur skall jag uttrycka och klart formulera denna tanke?

Verken kommer till tals på många sätt: genom sina teman, sina teser, sina ämnen och hjältar. Men framför allt talar de genom närvaron av den konst som de innehåller. Konstens närvaro på sidorna i "Brott och Straff" skakar oss mer än Raskolnikovs brott.

Den primitiva konsten, den egyptiska, den grekiska, vår tids konst, allt detta är förvisso under loppet av många årtusenden ett och detsamma, en enda förblivande konst. Den är ett slags tanke, ett slags påstående om livet, som i sin allomfattande vidd inte kan sönderdelas i enstaka ord, och när ett uns av denna kraft ingår som en beståndsdel i en mer komplicerad blandning, kommer tillsatsen av konst att väga upp betydelsen av allt det övriga och visa sig vara den innersta kärnan, själen och grunden i framställningen.

Boris Pasternak, Doktor Zjivago (1958) p. 310

Det mäktigaste av alla narkotika

Vilken lycka att arbeta från tidiga morgonen till sena kvällen för sig och sin familj, att ordna tak över huvudet, att odla upp jord för att sörja för födan, att likt Robinson bygga upp sin egen värld, imitera skaparen då han skapade universum, att i sin egen moders efterföljelse gång på gång återföds sig till världen!

Så många tankar som går genom medvetandet, så mycket nytt man kommer att fundera över när armmusklerna är upptagna av kroppsarbete, av grovarbete eller timmermansjobb, när man tar itu med förnuftiga uppgifter, som man kan lösa genom fysiskt arbete och som skänker belöning genom den glädje och den framgång deras lösande innebär, eller när man sex timmar i sträck håller på att yxa till någonting eller att gräva i jorden ute under en öppen himmel som genomtränger en med sin heta och välgörande andedräkt. Och just detta, att dessa tankar, dessa aningar och denna närhet inte låter sig överföra till papperet utan glöms bort där de hastigt fladdrar förbi är inte en förlust utan en vinning. Du stadens eremit, som med starkt svart kaffe eller tobak piskar på dina slappnade nerver och din försvagade inbillningskraft, du känner inte det mäktigaste av alla narkotika, det som ligger inneslutet i verklig nöd och en god hälsa.

Boris Pasternak, Doktor Zjivago (1958) p. 305

Människan bland andra människor det är just människans själ

Men hela tiden är det ett och samma oändligt likartade liv som uppfyller universum och som varje timme förnyas i otaliga föreningar och omvandlingar. Ni är rädd att ni inte ska uppstå från de döda, men ni uppstod redan när ni föddes, utan att ni lade märke till det.

Kommer ni att plågas? Kommer vävnaderna att känna av sitt sönderfall? Det vill med andra ord säga: hur kommer det att gå med ert medvetande? Men vad är medvetandet? Låt oss undersöka den saken. Att medvetet vilja somna innebär verklig sömnlöshet, att medvetet försöka känna sina egna matsmältningsorgan arbeta, det innebär en verklig störning a deras innervation. Medvetandet är ett gift, ett medel till självförgiftning av det subjekt som inriktar det på sig själv. Medvetandet är ett ljus som går i dagen, medvetandet lyser upp vägen framför oss så att vi inte ska snubbla. Medvetandet är de tända lyktorna på ett lokomotiv i rörelse. Rikta dess ljus inåt så inträffar en katastrof.

Hur går det med ert medvetande? Ert. Ert. Vad är ni? Däri ligger knuten. Låt oss reda ut den saken. Hur uppfattar ni er själv, vad är det för del av er som ni är medveten om? Är det njurarna, levern, blodkärlen? Nej, så långt ni kan erinra er har ni alltid bestämt er själv genom era verksamhetsyttringar utom er själv, i familjen, bland främmande människor eller genom era händers verk. Låt oss se närmare på detta. Människan bland andra människor det är just människans själ. Detta är vad ni är, det är i dettas ert medvetande har andats, det är därav det har närt sig, har berusat sig hela livet. Er själ, er odödlighet, ert liv finns hos andra. Än sen? Hos andra har ni varit, hos andra ska ni förbliva. Och vad gör det för skillnad för er, att detta sedan kommer att kallas minne. Detta är ni, sådan ni ingår i det varav framtiden skall bestå.

Boris Pasternak, Doktor Zjivago (1958) p. 75

Wherever things are measured in money

To be entirely frank it seems to me that wherever you have private property and all things are measured in money it's all but impossible for a community to be just or prosperous, unless you consider that justice can function where the best things belong to the worst people, or that there can be happiness where everything is divided up among very few – and even those few derive little benefit while the remainder are thoroughly wretched.

Thomas More, Utopia (Penguin Classics, 2012) pp. 51-52

Words are the first layer of a cocoon

What do we write to a woman whom we have kissed without declaring our love. To ask her forgiveness would be offensive, especially since she returned the kiss with passion. If on the other hand we did not say, upon kissing her, I love you, why should we invent the words now, at the risk of not being believed. The Romans assure us in the Latin tongue that actions speak louder than words, let us therefore consider the actions as done and the words superfluous, words are the first layer of a cocoon, frayed, tenuous, delicate. We should use words that make no promise, that seek nothing, that do not even suggest, let them protect our rear as our cowardice retreats, just like these fragmented phrases, general, noncommittal, let us savour the moment, the fleeting joy, the green restored to the budding leaves.

José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (The Harvill Press, 1998) p. 218

The name is the only thing that remains constant

It never occurs to people that the one who finishes something is never the one who started it, even if both have the same name, for the name is the only thing that remains constant.

José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (The Harvill Press, 1998) p. 37

An entire new concept of the urban

Just as architects read the city as a historical palimpsest produced by social forces that become coded into material form – layers upon layers of ruins constituting a living fabric of social relations – Amazonia must be interpreted through the syntax of urban design, or else the concept of the urban must be crafted anew to incorporate the constructed nature presented by the forest. The relation between figure and ground is subverted, insofar as that which was defined as the surroundings – the antithesis to, or outside space of, the civic – are incorporated as a constituent part of an "expanded polis," within which humans and nonhumans cohabit in a common political space. In this process an entire new concept of the urban is made visible, one whose contours encompass a multi-species polity that we may initially find difficult to recognize because for too long our perspective has been confined to the epistemic enclosures of the Western city.

Paulo Tavares, 'The Political Nature of the Forest: A Botanic Archeology of Genocide' in The Word For World Is Still Forest (K. Verlag, 2016) p. 151

Urban life and class struggle

The collective labor involved in the production and reproduction of urban life must therefore become more tightly folded into left thinking and organizing. Earlier distinctions that made sense – between the urban and the rural, the city and the country – have in recent times also become moot. The chain of supply both into and out of the cities entails a continuous movement, and does not entail a break. Above all, the concepts of work and of class have to be fundamentally reformulated. The struggle for collective citizens' rights (such as those of immigrant workers) has to be seen as integral to anti-capitalist class struggle.

David Harvey, Rebel Cities (Verso, 2013) p. 139

Capitalism cannot do without monopoly powers

Plainly, the economic space of competition has changed in both form and scale over time. The recent bout of globalization has significantly diminished the monopoly protections given historically by high transport and communications costs, while the removal of institutional barriers to trade (protectionism) has likewise diminished the monopoly rents to be procured by keeping foreign competition out. But capitalism cannot do without monopoly powers, and craves means to assemble them. So the question upon the agenda is how to assemble monopoly powers in a situation where the protections afforded by the so-called "natural monopolies" of space and location, and the political protections of national boundaries and tariffs, have been seriously diminished, if not eliminated.

David Harvey, Rebel Cities (Verso, 2013) pp. 95-96

The monopoly power of private property

All rent, recall, is a return to the monopoly power of private ownership of some crucial asset, such as land or a patent. The monopoly power of private property is therefore both the beginning-point and the end-point of all capitalist activity. A non-tradable juridical right exists at the very foundation of all capitalist trade, making the option of non-trading (hoarding, withholding, miserly behavior) an important problem in capitalist markets. Pure market competition, free commodity exchange, and perfect market rationality are therefore rather rare and chronically unstable devices for coordinating production and consumption decisions. The problem is to keep economic relations competitive enough while sustaining the individual and class monopoly privileges of private property that are the foundation of capitalism as a political-economic system.

David Harvey, Rebel Cities (Verso, 2013) p. 94

Pure commodification erases monopoly advantages

The bland homogeneity that goes with pure commodification erases monopoly advantages; cultural products become no different from commodities in general.

David Harvey, Rebel Cities (Verso, 2013) pp. 92-93

Capitalist urbanization destroys the city

Capitalist urbanization perpetually tends to destroy the city as a social, political and livable commons.

David Harvey, Rebel Cities (Verso, 2013) p. 80

Det som görs av barmhärtighet är föga värt om den andra hoppas att det görs av kärlek

Det är ingen idé att prata. Ärliga svar ges ej, och det av hänsyn. Man sviker och blir sviken och det finns inget att prata om för det föreligger inga skyldigheter när viljan inte är för handen. Det som görs av barmhärtighet är föga värt om den andra hoppas att det görs av kärlek.

Lena Andersson, Egenmäktigt Förfarande (Natur & Kultur, 2013) p. 202

Alla är maktlösa inför någon

Människor är inte så små som man tror. Och inte så stora. Felet med att ha makten som bedömningsgrund och inte handlingarna är att nästan alla friskriver sig då, var och en hittar sin maktlöshet när de behöver den. För alla är maktlösa inför någon, och något. Alla har ett skikt av maktlöshet i sig, i sin upplevelse av sig själva i tillvaron, som de då använder. Och därför ser världen ut som den gör. Alla har en glipa i sin makt, även när de vet att de har makt och ansvar, som de kan utnyttja för att förstå varför de måste handla som de gör. Moralen börjar hos individen. Man måste kräva den av alla. De som har makt föddes maktlösa och denna känsla är den som består i dem hela livet, särskilt i de stunder då de handlar fel. Då minns de att de blev mobbade på skolgården och slagen av pappa och inser att allt är någon annans fel även nu.

Lena Andersson, Egenmäktigt Förfarande (Natur & Kultur, 2013) p. 173

Man måste älska en människa väldigt för att stå ut med hennes hunger

Man måste älska en människa väldigt för att stå ut med hennes hunger.

Lena Andersson, Egenmäktigt Förfarande (Natur & Kultur, 2013) p. 154

Hoppet är ett skadedjur

[...] eftersom allt som existerar vill leva och hoppet inte är ett undantag. Det är ett skadedjur. Det äter och frodas på de oskyldigaste av vävnader. Dess överlevnad ligger i en välutvecklad förmåga att bortse från allt som inte gynnar dess växt men kasta sig över det som göder dess fortlevnad. Sedan idisslar det dessa smulor tills varje spår av näring har utvunnits.

Lena Andersson, Egenmäktigt Förfarande (Natur & Kultur, 2013) pp. 150-151

Revolution är oförenlig med människan

Revolution är oförenlig med människans hjärnas funktionssätt. Det vill säga med människan. Vi klarar inte av att hantera revolutionens inneboende absolutism och plötslighet. Allt människan gör sker gradvis. Alla insikter hon gör, alla tankar, allt som händer och sägs ingår i processer, lager på lager av gjorda erfarenheter. Själva livet levs gradvis, per definition, och medvetandet är gjort sådant, per evolution.

Lena Andersson, Egenmäktigt Förfarande (Natur & Kultur, 2013) p. 50

Forcing us to think the break itself

For it is the very principle of the radical break as such, its possibility, which is reinforced by the Utopian form, which insists that its radical difference is possible and that a break is necessary. The Utopian form itself is the answer to the universal ideological conviction that no alternative is possible, that there is no alternative to the system. But it asserts this by forcing us to think the break itself, and not by offering a more traditional picture of what things would be like after the break.

 Fredric Jameson, Archeologies of the Future (Verso, 2005) pp. 231-232

An unsuspected variety of new collective combinations

Meanwhile, thus renewed, the Utopian impulse wanders the gamut from dual relationships of all kinds, relationships to things fully as much as to other people, all the way to an unsuspected variety of new collective combinations. And insofar as our own society has trained us to believe that true disalienation or authenticity only exists in the private or individual realm, it may well be this revelation of collective solidarity which is the freshest one and the most startlingly and overtly Utopian: in Utopia, the ruse of representation whereby the Utopian impulse colonizes purely private fantasy spaces is by definition undone and socialized by their very realization.

Fredric Jameson, Archeologies of the Future (Verso, 2005) p. 230

If death be anything at all beyond a brief and peculiar emotional state of the bereaved

Miss Rosa Coldfield was buried yesterday. She remained in the coma for almost two weeks and two days ago she died without regaining consciousness and without pain they say, and whatever they mean by that since it has always seemed to me that the only painless death must be that which takes the intelligence by violent surprise and from the rear so to speak, since if death be anything at all beyond a brief and peculiar emotional state of the bereaved it must be a brief and likewise peculiar state of the subject as well. And if aught can be more painful to any intelligence above that of a child or an idiot than a slow and gradual confronting with that which over a long period of bewilderment and dread it has been taught to regard as an irrevocable and unplumbable finality, I do not know it.

William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (Vintage, 2005) pp. 173-174

Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure

Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the fields from "afternoon church" – as such walks used to be in those old leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precision always in one place. Leisure is gone – gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager though to rush in. Even idleness is eager now – eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensation which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quite perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of weekday services, and though none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure. He fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners, and slept the sleep of the irresponsible, for had he not kept up his character by going to church on the Sunday afternoons?

Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him, and judge him by our modern standard.

George Eliot, Adam Bede (Penguin Popular Classics, 1994) pp. 484-485

Evil spreads as necessarily as disease

There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bar the punishment alone; you can't isolate yourself and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease.

George Eliot, Adam Bede (Penguin Popular Classics, 1994) p. 403

The secret of deep human sympathy

Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty – it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.

All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children – in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the region of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world – those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this world there are so many of these common coarse people, who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes. Therefore, let Art always remind us of them; therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things – men who see beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my everyday fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your common labourer, who gets his own bread and eats it vulgarly but creditably with his own pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should have a fibre of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers – more needful that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, who is perhaps rather too corpulent and in other respects is not an Oberlin or Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist.

George Eliot, Adam Bede (Penguin Popular Classics, 1994) pp. 177-178

Consequences are unpitying

"A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom."
"Well, but one may be betrayed into doing things by a combination of circumstances, which one might never have done otherwise."
"Why, yes, a man can't very well steal a bank-note unless the bank-note lies within convenient reach; but he won't make us think him an honest man because he begins to howl at the bank-note for falling his way."
"But surely you don't think a man who struggles against a temptation into which he falls at last as bad as the man who never struggles at all?"
"No, certainly; I pity him in proportion to his struggles, for they foreshadow the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis. Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before – consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us."

George Eliot, Adam Bede (Penguin Popular Classics, 1994) p. 171

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning

I have no quarrel with the student of history who brings to his work a touchingly childish, innocent faith in the power of our minds and our methods to order reality; but first and foremost h must respect the incomprehensible truth, reality, and uniqueness of events. Studying history, my friend, is no joke and no irresponsible game. To study history on must know in advance that one is attempting something fundamentally impossible, yet necessary and highly important. To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game (Penguin Books, 1985) p. 159

History's third dimension is always fiction

We must not forget that the writing of history – however dryly it is done and however sincere the desire for objectivity – remains literature. History's third dimension is always fiction.

Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game (Penguin Books, 1985) p. 47

The capability of the artist

SOPHIE: But surely it is a fact about art – regardless of the artist's subject or his intentions – that it celebrates a world which includes itself – I mean, part of what there is to celebrate is the capability of the artist.
MARTELLO: How very confusing.
SOPHIE: I think every artist willy-nilly is celebrating the impulse to paint in general, the imagination to paint something in particular, and the ability to make the painting in question.
MARTELLO: Goodness!
SOPHIE: The more difficult it is to make the painting, the more there is to wonder at. It is not the only thing, but it is one of the things. And since I do not hope to impress you by tying up my own shoelace, why should you hope to have impressed me by painting a row of black strips on a white background?

Tom Stoppard, 'Artist Descending a Staircase' in Plays Two (Faber and Faber, 1996) p. 139

The concrete mixers churn and churn

The concrete mixers churn and churn until only a single row of corn grows between two cities, and is finally ground between their walls.

Tom Stoppard, 'Albert's Bridge' in Plays Two (Faber and Faber, 1996) p. 85

God is a brain mutation

Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, "I'll be dead," you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul – it was a consequence of grammar. And so was God, because as soon as there's a past tense, there has to be a past before the past, and you keep going back in time until you get to I don't know, and that's what God is. It's what you don't know – the dark, the hidden, the underside of the visible, and all because we have grammar, and grammar would be impossible without the FoxP2 gene; so God is a brain mutation, and that gene is the same one birds need for singing. So music is built in, Glenn said: it's knitted into us. It would be very hard to amputate it because it's an essential part of us, like water.

Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood (Virago Press, 2010) p. 377

They know the dawn will come

We Humans must labour to believe, as the other Creatures do not. They know the dawn will come. They can sense it – that ruffling of the half-light, the horizon bestirring itself.

Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood (Virago Press, 2010) p. 279

The life according to reason is the happiest

If reason is divine, then, in comparison with man, the life according to it is divine in comparison with human life. But we must not follow those who advice us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything. And this would seem actually to be each man, since it is the authoritative and better part of him. It would be strange, then, if he were to choose not the life of himself but that of something else. And what we said before will apply now: that which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each thing; for man, therefore, the life according to reason is best and pleasantest, since reason more than anything else is man. This life therefore is also the happiest.

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2009) pp. 195-196

Happiness does not lie in amusement

Now, as we have often maintained, those things are both valuable and pleasant which are such to the good man; and to each man the activity in accordance with his own state is most desirable, and therefore to the good man that which is in accordance with virtue. Happiness, therefore, does not lie in amusement; it would, indeed, be strange if the end were amusement, and one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself. For, in a word, everything that we choose we choose for the sake of something else – except happiness, which is an end. Now to exert oneself and work for the sake of amusement seems silly and utterly childish. But to amuse oneself in order that one may exert oneself, as Anacharsis puts it, seems right; for amusement is a sort of relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it is taken for the sake of activity.

The happy life is thought to be virtuous; now a virtuous life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2009) p. 193

It would seem impossible to be a great friend to many people

As regards good friends, should we have as many as possible, or is there a liit to the number of one's friends, as there is to the size of a city? You cannot make a city out of ten men, and if there are a hundred thousand it is a city no longer. But the proper number is presumably not a single number, but anything that falls between certain fixed points. So for friends too there is a fixed number – perhaps the largest number with whom one can live together (for that, we found, is thought to be very characteristic of friendship); and that one cannot live with many people and divide oneself up among them is plain. Further, they too must be friends of one another, if they are all to spend their days together; and it is a hard business for this condition to be fulfilled with a large number. It is found difficult, too, to rejoice and to grieve in an intimate way with many people, for it may likely happen that one has at once to be happy with one friend and to mourn with another. Presumably, then, it is well not to seek to have as many friends as possible, but as many as are enough for the purpose of living together; for it would seem actually impossible to be a great friend to many people. This is why one cannot love several people; love is ideally a sort of excess of friendship, and that can only be felt towards one person; therefore great friendship too can only be felt towards a few people. This seems to be confirmed in practice; for we do not find many people who are friends in the comradely way of friendship, and the famous friendships of this sort are always between two people. Those who have many friends and mix intimately with them all are thought to be no one's friend, except in the way proper to fellow citizens, and such people are also called obsequious. In the way proper to fellow citizens, indeed, it is possible to be the friend of many and yet not be obsequious but a genuinely good man; but one cannot have with many people the friendship based on virtue and on the character of our friends themselves, and we must be content if we find even a few such.

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2009) pp. 179-180

It is by doing just acts that the just man is produced

Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them. It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by such a course of philosophy.

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2009) p. 28

Virtue comes as a result of teaching or habit

Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name (ethike) is on that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, not can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2009) p. 23

To virtue belongs virtuous activity

With those who identify happiness with virtue or some one virtue our account is in harmony; for to virtue belongs virtuous activity. But it makes, perhaps, no small difference whether we place the chief good in possession or in use, in state of mind or in activity. For the state of mind may exist without producing any good result, as in a man who is asleep or in some other way quite inactive, but the activity cannot; for one who has the activity will of necessity be acting, and acting well. And as in the Olympic Games it is not the most beautiful and the strongest that are crowned but those who compete (for it is some of these that are victorious), so those who act win, and rightly win, the noble and good things in life.

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2009) p. 13

Går det över huvud taget att fördela pengar?

Går det över huvud taget att fördela pengar? Vardagserfarenheten svarar ja: vi kan samla kontanter i en hög och dela ut dem på nytt. Men en omfördelningspolitik för större rättvisa kan inte nöja sig med kontanter utan måste även omfördela illikvida tillgångar – sådant som fastigheter, fabriker och fiberkablar. Det intressanta är då inte penningvärdet, utan det materiella innehållet. Går hotellet att använda som flyktingboende? Går golfbanan att använda som betesmark? Rymmer kolkraftverket någon utrustning som kan användas till legitim verksamhet?

Det är möjligt att de miljarder dollar som bokförs av aktieägarna till Spotify inte går att omsätta i äldreomsorg. Vad pengarna representerar är i huvudsak immaterialrättsliga tillgångar: patent, affärshemligheter, databaser och anställningskontrakt som begränsar de anställdas rätt att använda sina kunskaper. Sådana tillgångar kan förvisso “omfördelas” genom att de immateriella rättigheterna helt enkelt upphävs, precis som tomma fastigheter kan “omfördelas” genom husockupationer.

Att använda pengar som medium för omfördelning är inte omöjligt, lika lite som det är omöjligt att se teaterföreställningar på Youtube eller chatta med hjälp av brevduvor. Men med varje medium följer vissa begränsningar. Detta gäller även för pengarna. Det abstraktaste av alla medier verkar helt enkelt vara illa ägnat för konkret omfördelning av makt och resurser i ett samhälle.

Rasmus Fleischer, 'Kan Pengar Fördelas?' on RasmusFleischer, https://www.rasmusfleischer.se/2016/09/kan-pengar-fordelas/ (09/2016)

Mynt ≠ Allmän ekvivalens

Att mynt har cirkulerat i ett samhälle kan konstateras empiriskt, men detta är inte tillräckligt för att dra slutsatsen att samhällets invånare var marknadsaktörer som resonerade i termer av allmän ekvivalens.

Rasmus Fleischer, 'Kan Pengar Fördelas?' on RasmusFleischer, https://www.rasmusfleischer.se/2016/09/kan-pengar-fordelas/ (09/2016)