Tuesday note: Anodyne verities (truth & power)

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“…..If one wishes successfully to write the truth about evil conditions, one must write it so that its avertible causes can be identified. If the preventable causes can be identified, the evil conditions can be fought.”

Writing the truth, Five difficulties, Bertolt Brecht, 1935

It is not a sense of compassion for refugees that is missing in the current refugee crisis. What is missing is the realization of the cause. This is what is needed in order to address the source of the problem. This kind of truth is what the power is afraid of. Actions that inspire a general sense of compassion and imply nothing about the warmongers (the criminals) behind the victims only achieve to create a generalized sense of guilt in society that is useful for the criminals in power: They keep the people in a  state of confusion, blaming themselves, while keeping the guilty secure and hidden. Only seeing who is responsible, what is the source of a given situation can enable people to react. Such projects are met with great enthusiasm from the mainstream media media because they provide the power with a valuable service.

Featured picture: A photograph from the #orangevest project of G.Lale (source: themanews)

Tuesday note: The rabbits of happiness

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Happiness is of two sorts, though, of course, there 
are intermediate degrees. The two sorts I mean 
might be distinguished as plain and fancy, or animal 
and spiritual, or of the heart and of the head. 
...............................
Perhaps the simplest way to describe the difference 
between the two sorts of happiness is to say that 
one sort is open to any human being, and the other 
only to those who can read and write. 
...............................
The happiness of my gardener is of the same species*; 
he wages a perennial war against rabbits, of which 
he speaks exactly as Scotland Yard speaks of Bolsheviks; 
he considers them dark, designing and ferocious, 
and is of opinion that they can only be met by means 
of a cunning equal to their own. Like the heroes 
of Valhalla who spent every day hunting a certain 
wild boar, which they killed every evening but which 
miraculously came to life again in the morning, 
my gardener can slay his enemy one day without any 
fear that the enemy will have disappeared the next day. 
Although well over seventy, he works all day and 
bicycles sixteen hilly miles to and from his work, 
but the fount of joy is inexhaustible, and it is 
"they rabbits" that supply it. -The Conquest of Happiness
(1930), Bertrand Russell

*of the sort open to any human being

Featured image: "Russell in 1938" by Unknown - Licensed under 
Public Domain via Commons