“A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” tells us, that the idea that the democracy and civilization can be brought from the outside, modern, civilized society, is not realistic.
#mark_twain #yankee #democracy #civilization #modernism
there are small countries in Europe.
no small countries in many other places. because in many other places they would not be tolerated, but swallowed. or divided by neighbours. #politics #civilization
My country is sick with aggressive ignorance, nationalism and imperialistic megalomania.
Civilization reached dead end. Science, education, cognition, art did not succeed in taming human aggression. Formerly it seemed that culture is able to overcome these self-destructive aspirations, but I’m afraid human race has almost no time left.
In German: https://magazin.spiegel.de/digital/index_SP.html#SP/2014/34/128743771
In Russian: http://www.inopressa.ru/article/18Aug2014/spiegel/ulitskaya.html
#deutsch #german #russian #ulitskaya #russia #aggression #imperialism #civilization #culture #art
The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
#bertrand-russel #russel #leisure #work #civilization
The attitude of the governing classes, and especially of those who conduct educational propaganda, on the subject of the dignity of labor, is almost exactly that which the governing classes of the world have always preached to what were called the ‘honest poor’.
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
#ussr #cccp #ссср #խսհմ #bertrand-russel #russel #leisure #work #civilization
A man who has worked long hours all his life will become bored if he becomes suddenly idle.
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
#bertrand-russel #russel #leisure #work #civilization
In #America men often work long hours even when they are well off; such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their sons. Oddly enough, while they wish their sons to work so hard as to have no time to be civilized, they do not mind their wives and daughters having no work at all. the snobbish admiration of uselessness, which, in an aristocratic #society, extends to both sexes, is, under a #plutocracy, confined to #women
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
#bertrand-russel #russel #leisure #work #civilization
Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization.
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
#bertrand-russel #russel #leisure #work #civilization
