Anti-Job Pro-Freedom Quote Of The Week 114

Education, with its supporting system of compulsory and competitive schooling, all its carrots and sticks, its grades, diplomas, and credentials, now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern and worldwide slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and "fans," driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve "education" but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and let people shape themselves.

This does not mean that no one should ever influence or try to influence what others think and feel. We all touch and change (and are changed by) those we live and work with. We are by instinct talkative and social creatures, and naturally share with those around us our view of reality. Both in my work as writer and lecturer, and among my friends, I do this all the time. But I refuse to put these others in a position where they feel they have no choice but to agree with me, or seem to agree. This is why, except as an occasional visitor, I will no longer do my teaching in compulsory and competitive schools..."
John Holt

Anti-Job, Pro-Freedom Quote Of The Week 113

The regulation of civil behavior in all societies is intimately dependent on stable occupational arrangements. So long as people are fixed in their work roles, their activities and outlooks are also fixed; they do what they must, and think what they must. Each behavior and attitude is shaped by the reward of a good harvest or the penalty of a bad one, by the factory paycheck or the danger of losing it. But mass unemployment breaks that bond, loosening people from the main institution by which they are regulated and controlled. Moreover, mass unemployment that persists for any length of time diminishes the capacity of other institutions to bind and constrain people. ...if the dislocation is widespread, the legitimacy of the social order itself may come to be questioned.
Frances Fox Piven, Richard A. Cloward

Regulating The Poor

(emphasis JS)

Robert Anton Wilson, January 18, 1932--January 11, 2007

Can the heretic ever win? Are there enough of them to make things change faster?


MsgId: *high_strangeness(25)Date: Tue Sep 16 22:14:39 EDT 1997 From: Robert Anton Wilson At: 205.184.191.173

Heresy always wins. All establishments grow rigid and ossified and die off. The individual heretic may play a role in the new paradigm or may just serve as comedy relief, i.e. appear as nutty to the future as to the current establishment. Heresy is no game for security seekers.




MsgId: *high_strangeness(54)Date: Tue Sep 16 22:54:05 EDT 1997 From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161
Do you believe everything you write (and say)?

MsgId: *high_strangeness(55)Date: Tue Sep 16 22:56:14 EDT 1997 From: Robert Anton Wilson At: 205.184.191.173
I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.)


“Most ‘work’ in this age is stupid, monotonous, brain-rotting, irritating, usually pointless and basically consists of the agonizing process of being slowly bored to death over a period of about 40 to 45 years of drudgery; Marx was quite right in calling it ‘wage slavery.’ Most people know this, but are afraid to admit it, because to dislike ‘work’ is regarded as a symptom of Communism or some other dreadful mental illness.”
Robert Anton Wilson

Anti-Job, Pro-Freedom Quote Of The Week 112

The spirit is most often free when the body is satiated with pleasure.
W. Somerset Maugham

Anti-Job, Pro-Freedom Quotes Of The Week 110, 111 plus

go see Stivers


296 million people in the USA used 97 quadrillion BTUs of energy (the BTU, or British Thermal Unit, is a measure of energy equivalent to a kitchen match which allows us to compare different energy sources). To put that huge number into perspective, each of us used about 328 million BTUs during the year, the equivalent of 96,000 Kilowatt hours of electricity. A Kilowatt-hour is about 1/3 more work than a horsepower-hour, so we used about 128,640 horsepower-hours, or the equivalent of 147 energy slaves working for each of us 24/7, all year long.
…
Now think about your energy slaves as you go about your day. Every time you leave a 75 Watt light bulb burning, one of these very strong energy slaves is pedaling away as hard as he can to keep it going for you. If that 25 mpg car has a 100 horsepower motor, it’s the equivalent of 1000 strong people. If you add up all the power we Americans use, on average, to light and heat our homes, transport us, etc. and convert it to the human energy equivalent, it's an unimaginable opulence by the standards of all the humans who came before us.
How many ‘energy slaves’ do we employ?
Jennifer Barker





Basic Income. All citizens are given a monthly stipend sufficiently high to provide them with a standard of living above the poverty line. This monthly income is universal rather than means-tested- it is given automatically to all citizens regardless of their individual economic
circumstances. And it is unconditional - receiving the basic income does not depend upon performing any labor services or satisfying other conditions. In this way basic income is like publicly-financed universal health insurance: in a universal health care system, medical care isprovided both to citizens who exercise and eat healthy diets and to those who do not. It is not a condition of getting medical care that one be "responsible" with respect to one's health. Unconditional, universal basic income takes the same stance about basic needs: as a matter of basic rights, no one should live in poverty in an affluent society.
Erik Olin Wright