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What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
-- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
I suspect that appreciating fine art is something that requires someone to be in a receptive frame of mind.

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Our battle for liberty appears not just as a conflict between those who want freedom versus those who want control, but instead as the battle between normal people and the psychopaths. I have found incredible explanatory power of our world within the psychopathic hypothesis: The world feels wrong because psychopaths run it. In a country trained to discount and ridicule all ideas more than a standard deviation from the average, coherent explanations of observable social phenomena don't get much press. Without understanding physical laws, we would never have gained the massive improvements in our quality of life from technological developments. Similarly, without understanding our social systems, we will never escape from the tyranny unleashed on us by psychopaths. We should spread the word and explore this rich vein of thought with vigor

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Listen to them closely and you'll hear that we might as well be different species. They are an elite -- near demigods who are above everything, including the law. We are less than nothing, of no concern to them except for the tasks we perform and the wealth we create for them to steal. If some of us can play the violin, create beautiful paintings or sculptures, or bring audiences to tears with our singing or acting, those are just "stupid pet tricks" without real value or significance.

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“Sisters,” she began, “let me tell you what is happening, and who it is that we must fight. It is the Magisterium, the Church. For all its history—and that’s not long by our lives, but it’s many, many of theirs—it’s tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. And when it can’t control them, it cuts them out. Some of you have seen what they did at Bolvangar. And that was horrible, but it is not the only such place, not the only such practice. Sisters, you know only the north; I have traveled in the south lands. There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too, as the people of Bolvangar did—not in the same way, but just as horribly. They cut their sexual organs, yes, both boys and girls; they cut them with knives so that they shan’t feel. That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, obliterate, destroy every good feeling. So if a war comes, and the Church is on one side of it, we must be on the other, no matter what strange allies we find ourselves bound to.

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"There are two great powers," the man said, "and they've been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit."

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
I feel like those wrestler dudes in They Live sometimes.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
Except we don't have them special glasses.

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