Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians page 246

Einstein, with his sublime intelligence, was able, in a flash of illumination, to catch a glimpse of the space-time relationship, but without completely understanding or integrating it into his scheme of things. To communicate his discovery at a communicable and intelligible level, and to help him to recapture his own illuminating vision, he drew the sign λ representing the trihedral angle. This sign is not a schema of reality and means nothing to the mass of mankind. It is a signal, a rallying cry to all workers in the field of mathematical physics. And yet all the progress made in this field by the greatest intellects will only succeed in discovering what this trihedral symbol evokes, but will not be able to penetrate the Universe where the law of which this symbol is an expression actually operates. At least, at the end of this forward march, we will know that this other Universe exists.

Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians page 209

Superficial, worldly people--positivist, rational, moral--ordinary humans. Millions of insignificant little men of goodwill had defied the Will of the Knights of the Powers of Darkness! In the East a lot of mechanized simpletons, in the West a bunch of spineless Puritans had been able to turn out superior quantities of tanks, aeroplanes and guns. And they possessed the atomic bomb--without knowing anything about the great hidden forces! And now, like snails after a shower, having escaped the storm of iron, here they all were--monocled judges, Professors of human rights and horizontal virtues, Doctors of mediocrity, baritones of the Salvation Army, stretcher-bearers from the Red Cross, all naïvely babbling about "brighter tomorrows"--assembled here in Nuremberg to preach elementary sermons to the Great Ones of this Earth, the militant monks who could read in the mirror of Darkness; to the Allies of Shamballah, the heirs of the Holy Grail! And they actually sent them to the gallows, and treated them like criminals or raving lunatics!

What the Nuremberg prisoners and their leaders who committed suicide could not understand was that the civilization that had just triumphed was also, and far more certainly, a spiritual civilization, a formidable movement which, from Chicago to Tashkent, was impelling humanity towards a higher destiny. What they had done was to dethrone Reason and put Magic in its place. It is true that Cartesian reason does not cover the whole of Man or the whole of his knowledge. So they had put it to sleep. But when Reason sleeps, it brings forth monsters. What had happened here was that Reason, which had not been put to sleep, but pushed to its extreme limits, was operating on a higher level, linking up with the mysteries of mind and spirit, the secrets of energy and universal harmony. Rationalism pushed to extremes breeds the Fantastic, of which the monsters engendered by Reason when asleep are only a sinister caricature.

Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians page 94

The very structure of our knowledge needs to be revised. Charles Hoy Fort is full of exciting theories, all tinged with an element of the bizarre. He sees science as a highly sophisticated motor-car speeding along on a highway. But on either side of this marvelous track, with its shining asphalt and neon lighting, there are great tracts of wild country, full of prodigies and mystery.

Stop! Explore in every direction! Leave the high road and wander!

Robert Sheckley, Journey Beyond Tomorrow (in the Dimensions of Sheckley Omnibus) page 173

I had never known about this state of affairs, since news like this is generally ignored in a democracy, and is banned in a dictatorship.

Robert Sheckley, Journey Beyond Tomorrow (in the Dimensions of Sheckley Omnibus) pages 169-171

"Mr. Watts, these people do not look dead. And in actual fact, all exaggeration aside, they are not dead, are they?"

"I never put exaggeration aside," Watts told him. "But since you're a stranger, I'll try to explain a little more. To begin with, death is merely a matter of definition. Once the definition was very simple: you were dead when you stopped moving for a long time. But now the scientists have examined this antiquated notion more carefully, and have done considerable research on the entire subject. They have found that you can be dead in all important respects, but still go on walking and talking."

"What are these important respects?" Joenes asked.

"First of all," Watts told him, "the walking dead are characterized by an almost total lack of emotionality. They can feel only anger and fear, though they sometimes simulate other emotions in the crude manner of a chimpanzee pretending to read a book. Next, there is a robotic quality in their actions, which accompanies a cessation of the higher thinking processes. Frequently there is a reflex motion toward piety, which is not unlike the frantic movements that a chicken makes after its head has been chopped off. Because of this reflex, many of the walking dead are detected around churches, where some of them even try to pray. Others can be found on park benches or near subway exits--"

"Ah," said Joenes. "When I walked in the city late last night I saw certain men at those places--"

"Exactly," said Watts. "Those are the ones who no longer pretend that they are not dead. But others copy the living with great and pathetic earnestness, hoping to pass unnoticed. They can usually be detected because they overdo it, either by talking too much or by laughing too hard."

"I had no idea of all this," Joenes said.

"It is a tragic problem," Watts said. "The authorities are doing their best to cope with it, but it has assumed formidable proportions. I wish I could tell you other characteristics of the walking dead, and how they resemble the old-fashioned nonwalking dead, for I'm sure that you would find it interesting. But now, Mr. Joenes, I see a policeman approaching, and therefore I had better make my departure."

So saying, Watts broke into a full sprint and raced through the crowd. The policeman stared after him, but soon gave up the pursuit and returned to Joenes.

"Damn it," the policeman said. "I've lost him again."

"Is he a criminal?" Joenes asked.

"Smartest jewel thief in these parts," the policeman said, mopping his massive red brow. "He likes to disguise himself as a beatnik."

"He was talking to me about the walking dead," Joenes said.

"He's always making up those stories," the policeman told him. "Compulsive liar, that's what he is. Crazy. And dangerous as they come. Especially dangerous because he doesn't carry a gun. I've almost caught him three times. I order him to stop in the name of the law, just like the book says, and when he doesn't stop, I shoot at him. So far I've killed eight bystanders. The way I'm going, I'll probably never make sergeant. They make me pay for my own bullets, too."

"But if this Watts never carries a gun--" Joenes began, then stopped abruptly. He had seen a strange sullen expression cross the policeman's face, and had seen his hand drop to the butt of his gun. "What I meant to say," Joenes continued, "is there anything in what Watts told me about the walking dead?"

"Naw, that's just a beatnik line he makes up to kid people with. Didn't I tell you he was a jewel thief?"

"I forgot," Joenes said.

"Well don't forget it. I'm just a plain ordinary man, but a guy like Watts gets me sore. I do my duty just like the book says, and in the evenings I go home and watch the tv, except on Friday evenings when I go bowling. Does that sound like being a robot, like Watts says?"

"Of course not," Joenes said.

"That guy," the policeman continued, "talks about people not having no emotion. Let me tell you, I'm maybe no psychologist, but I know I got emotions. When I have this gun in my hand, I feel good. Does that sound like I got no emotions? Furthermore, let me tell you something. I was raised in a tough section of this city, and when I was a kid I used to run with a gang. We all had zip guns and gravity knives, and we enjoyed ourselves with armed robbery, murder, and rape. Does that sound like no emotion? And I might of gone right on in that way, from being a kid criminal to being an adult criminal, if I hadn't met this priest. He wasn't no stuffed shirt, he was just like one of us, because he knew that was the only way he could reach us wild types. He used to go out on stomps with us, and more than once I saw him cut the hell out of somebody with a little switchblade he always carried. So he was regular and we accepted him. But he was also a priest, and seeing he was regular I let him talk to me. And he told me how I was wasting my life in that way."

"He must have been a wonderful man," Joenes said.

"He was a saint," the policeman said, in a heavy brooding voice. "That man was a real saint, because he did everything we did but he was good inside and he always told us we should get out of criminality."

The policeman looked Joenes in the eye and said, "Because of that man, I became a cop. Me, who everyone thought would end up in the electric chair! And that Watts has the nerve to speak of the walking dead. I became a cop, and I've been a good cop instead of some lousy punk hoodlum like Watts. I've killed eight criminals in the line of duty, winning three merit badges from the department. And I've also accidentally killed 27 innocent bystanders who didn't get out of the way fast enough. I'm sorry about those people, but I've got a job to do, and I can't let people get in the way when I'm going after a criminal. And no matter what the newspapers say, I've never taken a bribe in my life, not even for a parking ticket." The policeman's hand tightened convulsively around the butt of his revolver. "I'd give a parking ticket to Jesus Christ himself and no number of saints would be able to bribe me. What do you think about that?"

"I think you are a dedicated man," Joenes said carefully.

"You're right. And I've got a beautiful wife and three wonderful children. I've taught them all how to shoot a revolver. Nothing's too good for my family. And Watts thinks he knows something about emotion! Christ, these smooth-talking bastards get me so sore sometimes I can feel my head coming off. It's a good thing I'm a religious man."

"I'm sure it is," Joenes said.

"I still go every week to see the priest who got me out of the gang. He's still working with kids, because he's dedicated. He's getting sorta old to use a knife, so now it's usually a zip gun, or sometimes a bicycle chain. That man has done more for the cause of law than all the youth rehabilitation centers in the city. I give him a hand sometimes, and between us we've redeemed fourteen boys who you would have thought were hopeless criminals. Many of them are respected businessmen now, and six have joined the police force. Whenever I see that old man, I feel religion."

"I think that's wonderful," Joenes said. He began backing away, because the policeman had drawn his revolver and was toying with it nervously.

Robert Sheckley, Journey Beyond Tomorrow (in the Dimensions of Sheckley Omnibus) page 163

Joenes said, "I stand upon my Constitutional rights, namely the First and Fifth Amendments, and respectfully decline to answer."

Pelops smiled thinly. "You may not do so, Mr. Joenes, since the Constitution to which you now so fervently cling has been reinterpreted, or rather brought up to date, by those of us who wish to preserve it from change and desecration. The Amendments you mention, Mr. Joenes--or should I say Comrade Joenes--will not permit you to be silent for reasons which any judge of the Supreme Court would have been glad to tell you--had you chosen to ask him!"

Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance pages 887-888

There's a place I go when the sorrow gets to be too much for me, when I feel I just cannot go on. It's only a few miles from my home, and coincidentally only a couple of miles from a couple of different sites where in the nineteenth century the civilized massacred hundreds of Tolowa Indians. In the 1960s a corporation started to put in a housing division there. The corporation laid out paved roads in neat squares. But then because of environmental concerns it was never able to get permission to build any houses. So for the last forty years the housing division has sat.

And the forest has begun to reclaim its own. Trees push through pavement, roots making ridges that run from side to side of the street. Grass comes up in every crack. Wind, water, sand, and bacteria make potholes that grow year by year. Or maybe we should switch perspective and speak of the ground beneath finding its way back to the surface. Trees and bushes reach from each side of the road to intertwine limbs, at first high above the ground, then lower and lower, until sometimes you cannot even see where there used to be a road.

Forty years, and the land is coming back. That makes me happy.

Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance page 887

People often ask me what sort of a culture I would like to see replace civilization, and I always say that I do not want any culture to replace this one. I want 100,000 cultures to replace it, each one emerging from its own landbase, each one doing what sustainable cultures of all times and all places have done for their landbases: helping the landbase to become stronger, more itself, through their presence.

Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance pages 861-862

The endpoint of civilization is assembly-line mass murder. The assembly-line mass murder of the Nazi Holocaust is production stripped of the veneer of economics. It is the very essence of production. It took the living and converted them to the dead. That's what this culture does. It was efficient, it was calculable, it was predictable, and it was controlled through nonhuman technologies. And it was also, as well as being grossly immoral, incredibly stupid. Even from the perspective of pure acquisitiveness and land-hunger, it was self-defeating. As German troops froze and starved on the Eastern Front, valuable railroad cars were used instead to move cargos that fed crematoria. The Nazis performed economic analyses showing that feeding slaves just a bit more increased their productivity more than enough to offset the extra cost of feed. Yet they were starved. Similarly, slaughtering Russians was foolish. Many Ukrainians and Russians greeted the Wehrmacht with kisses, open arms, and flowers, happy to be out from under the tyranny of Stalinism. The Germans quickly began murdering noncombatants to make room for the Germans who would move in after the war, or because they were told to, or because Russians were inferior, or for any of the reasons given for these slaughters since the beginning of civilization's wars of extermination. And so Russian noncombatants fought back. They blew up trains, they killed German officers, they picked off individual soldiers. They hurt the Germans. For all their vaunted rationality, the Germans weren't so very rational, were they?

Of course we're different now. We have rational reasons for the killings. There's no silly talk of master races and lebensraum. Instead, the economy is run along strictly rationalist lines. If something makes money, we do it, and if it doesn't, we don't (ignore for a moment that to divorce economics from morals and humanity is as evil as it is to do the same for science). But the United States economy costs at least five times as much as it's worth. Total annual U.S. corporate profits are about $500 billion, while the direct costs of the activities from which these profits derive are more than $2.5 trillion. These include $51 billion in direct subsidies and $53 billion in tax breaks, $274.7 billion lost because of deaths from workplace cancer, $225.9 billion lost because of the health costs of stationary source air pollution, and so on. This is to speak only of calculable costs, since other values--such as a living planet--do not, because they're not calculable, exist. The fact remains, however, that it is manifestly stupid to destroy your landbase, regardless of the abstract financial reward or esteem you may gain. Yet this culture spends more to build and maintain commercial fishing vessels than the fiscal value of the fish caught. The same is true for the destruction of forests. In the United States the Forest Service loses in a not atypical year $400 million dollars [sic] on its timber sale program, or about seven hundred and seventy-nine dollars per acre deforested.

Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance pages 819-820

We all--even those of us who are wildly anti-civ--buy far too much into the myth of the primacy of the machine. We believe civilization works. We believe civilization is resilient. Whether we want to admit it or not, we believe in the deus ex machina, the god in the machine who will save us in the end. This is certainly true of those who believe that science or technology will save us from problems partially created by science and technology. But nearly all of us believe in the machine far more deeply than that.

What do you do when you're thirsty? If you're like me, you go to the sink, and you're utterly certain that when you "turn on" the water it will flow from the tap. It's automatic. It's a complete, and completely invisible, belief backed up in the short term by consistent experience. Likewise when we flip a switch we're absolutely certain that ghost slaves will light up the night. We're certain that when we go to the grocery store we'll find food (which we can purchase from transnational corporations). It may surprise us to learn that for nearly all of our existence humans have had this faith not in technologies but in landbases. They knew for certain they could drink water from streams. They knew for certain the salmon would come, or the passenger pigeons, or the bison, or the char, or whatever creatures they relied on for food. But no more. Our faith has been replaced. Our new faith--deep, abiding, unshakable--is in civilization, that it will one way or another take care of us, that it will continue. This faith is strong enough that nearly all of us no longer perceive it as faith. Indeed, most of us do not even think about it at all. I would imagine the possibility that civilization will not take care of us into the foreseeable future is a thought that never once occurs to nearly all Americans in their entire lives. Not once. Civilization with all it entails is simply the way things are. Not many people consider themselves to have faith in gravity. Gravity just is, and if you trip you fall down. No faith is involved. Civilization is perceived the same way.

Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance pages 775-777

I think we can take Besayev and the killers at their word, that this killing was done in retribution for the killing of their own children: you kill ours, we kill yours, fair enough? But I believe it's also true that the Chechens were trying to send a message which I believe would run something like this: stop killing our children. The next question is: to whom are they trying to send the message? If they're trying to send it to the people of Beslan, I think they're trying to send it to the wrong people. I think it's safe to say that Russia is no more of a democracy than the United States, which means even if the people of Beslan receive the message loud and clear--even if they're terrorized into not supporting Russia's occupation of Chechnya--if probably won't cause the Russian government to withdraw from Chechnya. The people from Beslan almost undoubtedly have no more influence on Russian policy than the people of Crescent City, California have on United States policy.

I'd imagine Besayev and the others are fully aware of this. This makes me suspect that their message was intended not just for the people of Beslan but for Putin and the others who run the Russian government, those who could actually make the decision to withdraw from Chechnya. But there's a big problem with this logic: it presumes that Putin and others of the Russian elite give a shit about the people of Beslan, an extremely doubtful proposition. Consider the United States: do you think George W. Bush and Dick Cheney care about your life, or the lives of your family? Their rhetoric aside, do you think they honestly care about the lives of American citizens? Do you think they care more for human beings than for corporations, production, personal financial gain, or increasing their personal and political power? If so, how could they possibly promote the use of pesticides? How could they promote the toxification of the total environment, with the consequent deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans each year? If Bush, Cheney, and company cared about human lives, they would help us to prepare for the end of civilization. But they don't. They don't care about humans in general. They don't care about American citizens. They don't care about this or that small town. If Chechens obliterated the entire town of Crescent City, California, certainly the United States would use that as an excuse to bump up repression at home and to conquer yet another oil-extracting country, but I can guarantee you George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would feel no pain.

The same holds true for retribution. The point of retribution seems to be: you cause me pain, and I cause you pain so you know how it feels. But I'm guessing Putin feels no pain over the deaths of these children. He undoubtedly feels a bit of panic as he tries to deal with the public relations nightmare this situation has created. But pain? No.

Putin will almost undoubtedly follow Jefferson's lead in saying, "In war they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them." But I realize now that Jefferson was lying all along, and what he really meant was: "In war they shall kill some of those whose lives we don't much care about anyway, and the troops we command shall destroy all of them."

I'm not saying that killing hundreds of children in some small town in southern Russia is a morally acceptable way to send a message to those in power. Nor am I saying it is not understandable that if some group is systematically killing your sons and daughters and husbands and wives and sisters and brothers and mothers and fathers and lovers and friends that you may want to lash out at members of that larger group. I am saying that there are much longer levers they could have used. If they were trying to send a message to Putin or others of the Russian elite, it probably would not have been a bad idea to strike closer to their home.

How would this play out differently if instead of killing children in Beslan, the Chechens killed Putin's children and the children of others who command Russian soldiers to loot, rape, and kill in Chechnya? What if they skipped the children and went straight after the perpetrators? Would Putin then feel pain? Would that be a more understandable retribution? Would that send a message Putin could understand? Would Putin be so quick to commit more troops to this murderous occupation if he knew that by doing so he was placing his own life and the lives of those nearest to him at risk? Let me put this another way: Do you believe that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would have been so eager to invade Iraq--oops, to order other people's sons and daughters to invade Iraq--if they themselves would have been in serious danger of being maimed or killed, and if they knew their children would be the first to die?

Not on your life. Not on theirs either.

Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance page 766

Civilization has from the beginning devoted itself almost completely to conquest, to war. It's sometimes hard to say--and I'm not sure I care anyway--whether the civilized hyperexploit resources to fuel the war machine, or need a war machine to seize resources (which are then hyperexploited to fuel the war machine). It's probably a bit like asking whether the dominant culture is so destructive becasue most of its members are insane, suffering from a form of complex PTSD; or whether the dominant culture is so destructive because its materialistic system of social rewards--overvaluing the acquisition of wealth and power and undervaluing relationship--leads inevitably to hatred and atrocity; or whether the physical resource requirements of cities necessitate widespread violence and destruction. The answer is yes.

Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance pages 677-678

I have many other problems with the pacifist use of the idea that force is solely the dominion of those in power. It's certainly true that the master uses the tool of violence, but that doesn't mean he owns it. Those in power have effectively convinced us they own land, which is to say they've convinced us to give up our inalienable right to access our own landbases. They've effectively convinced us they own conflict resolution methods (which they call laws), which is to say they've convinced us to give up our inalienable right to resolve our own conflicts (which they call taking the law into your own hands). They've convinced us they own water. They've convinced us they own the wild (the government could not offer "timber sales" unless we all agreed it owned the trees in the first place). They're in the process of convincing us they own the air. The state has for millennia been trying to convince us it owns a monopoly on violence, and abusers have been trying to convince us for far longer than that. Pacifists are more than willing to grant them that, and to shout down anyone who disagrees.

Well, I disagree. Violence does not belong exclusively to those at the top of the hierarchy, no matter how much abusers and their allies try to convince us. They have never convinced wild animals, including wild humans, and they will never convince me.

And who is it who says we should not use the master's tools? Often it is Christians, Buddhists, or other adherents of civilized religions. It is routinely people who wish us to vote our way to justice or shop our way to sustainability. But civilized religions are tools used by the master as surely as is violence. So is voting. So is shopping. If we cannot use tools used by the master, what tools, precisely, can we use? How about writing? No, sorry. As I cited Stanley Diamond much earlier, writing has long been a tool used by the master. So I guess we can't use that. Well, how about discourse in general? Yes, those in power own the means of industrial discourse production, and those in power misuse discourse. Does that mean they own all discourse--all discourse is one of the master's tools--and we can never use it? Of course not. They also own the means of industrial religion production, and they misuse religion. Does that mean they own all religion--all religion is one of the master's tools--and we can never use it? Of course not. They own the means of industrial violence production, and they misuse violence. Does that mean they own all violence--all violence is one of the master's tools--and we can never use it? Of course not.

But I have yet another problem with the statement that the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, which is that it's a terrible metaphor. It just doesn't work. The first and most necessary condition for a metaphor is that it make sense in the real world. This doesn't.

You can use a hammer to build a house, and you can use a hammer to take it down.

It doesn't matter whose hammer it is.

...

There's an even bigger problem with the metaphor. What is perhaps its most fundamental premise? That the house belongs to the master. But there is no master, and there is no master's house. There are no master's tools. There is a person who believes himself a master. There is a house he claims is his. There are tools he claims as well. And there are those who still believe he is the master.

But there are others who do not buy into this delusion. There are those of us who see a man, a house, and tools. No more and no less.

Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance page 655

This disconnection from killing is related to a disbelief in our own deaths, and even moreso to a disbelief in the rightness of our own deaths and a belief on the other hand that death is the enemy. As such it ties back to premise four of this book. Death is violence and violence cannot happen to us. We cannot die. We will not die. We are immortal. This delusion is based on the linear/historical view of the world we discussed so very long ago in this book, where life is not a circle where I feed off you who feeds off someone else who feeds off someone else who feeds off someone else who feeds off me (or put another way, where I feed someone else who feeds someone else who feed someone else who feeds someone else who feeds me). Rather we are exempt from this cycle. We are at the top of a pyramid. We are consumers. I feed off you and I feed off someone else and I feed off someone else and I feed off someone else and I feed off someone else. No one feeds off me. I will never die.

Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance page 621

Any time any of us figure out how to use their rules to stop the destruction of all we hold dear, those in power change the rules. Why would those in power allow activities that undercut their own power? The purpose of the rules was never to actually protect us or those we love, but rather to provide the illusion of protection. So long as we continue to mistake the illusion of protection for actual protection, all that we love will continue to be destroyed.

Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance page 616

We're no longer in the realm of delusion, but history, which I suppose could be defined as the place where the delusions of the powerful combine with the force to make them happen.

Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance page 599

A few years ago I was talking with Ward Churchill about how stupid it was of the Nazis to keep meticulous records of their atrocities, even when these records led at least a few of them to the hangman. He responded, "What do you think GNP is?"

I'd long known that production is the conversion of the living to the dead, but I'd never made the connection that GNP is really nothing more than the sum of these atrocities, with ledger sheets being the enumeration of the awful details. Wall Street was formed as a market for slaves, and now functions as a market in slavery, and a market for futures built on planetary murder.

Etienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude page 26

The fact is that the tyrant is never truly loved, nor does he love. Friendship is a sacred word, a holy thing; it is never developed except between persons of character, and never takes root except through mutual respect; it flourishes not so much by kindnesses as by sincerity. What makes one friend sure of another is the knowledge of his integrity: as guarantees he has his friend's fine nature, his honor, his constancy....

Although it might not be impossible, yet it would be difficult to find true friendship in a tyrant; elevated above others and having no companions, he finds himself already beyond the pale of friendship, which receives its real sustenance from an equality that, to proceed without a limp, must have its two limbs equal. That is why there is honor among thieves (or so it is reported) in the sharing of the booty; they are peers and comrades; if they are not fond of one another they at least respect one another and do not seek to lessen their strength by squabbling. But the favorites of a tyrant can never feel entirely secure, and the less so because he has learned from them that he is all powerful and unlimited by any law or obligation.

Etienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude pages 23-24

Thus the despot subdues his subjects, some of them by means of others, and thus is he protected by those from whom, if they were decent men, he would have to guard himself; just as, in order to split wood, one has to use a wedge of the wood itself. Such are his archers, his guards, his halberdiers; not that they themselves do not suffer occasionally at his hands, but this riff-raff, abandoned alike by God and man, can be led to endure evil if permitted to commit it, not against him who exploits them, but against those who like themselves submit, but are helpless. Nevertheless, observing those men who painfully serve the tyrant in order to win some profit from his tyranny and from the subjection of the populace, I am often overcome with amazement at their wickedness and sometimes by pity for their folly. For, in all honesty, can it be in any way except in folly that you approach a tyrant, withdrawing further from your liberty and, so to speak, embracing with both hands your servitude? Let such men lay aside briefly their ambition, or let them forget for a moment their avarice, and look at themselves as they really are. Then they will realize clearly that the townspeople, the peasants whom they trample under foot and treat worse than convicts or slaves, they will realize, I say, that these people, mistreated as they may be, are nevertheless, in comparison with themselves, better off and fairly free. The tiller of the soil and the artisan, no matter how enslaved, discharge their obligation when they do what they are told to do; but the dictator sees men about him wooing and begging his favor, and doing much more than he tells them to do. Such men must not only obey orders; they must anticipate his wishes; to satisfy him they must foresee his desires; they must wear themselves out, torment themselves, kill themselves with work in his interest, and accept his pleasure as their own, neglecting their preference for his, distorting their character and corrupting their nature; they must pay heed to his words, to his intonation, to his gestures, and to his glance. Let them have no eye, nor foot, nor hand that is not alert to respond to his wishes or to seek out his thoughts.

Can that be called a happy life? Can it be called living? Is there anything more intolerable than that situation, I won't say for a man of mettle nor even for a man of high birth, but simply for a man of common sense or, to go even further, for anyone having the face of a man? What condition is more wretched than to live thus, with nothing to call one's own, receiving from someone else one's sustenance, one's power to act, one's body, one's very life?

Still men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves, or as if anyone could possess under a tyrant a single thing in his own name. Yet they act as if their wealth really belonged to them, and forget that it is they themselves who give the ruler the power to deprive everybody of everything, leaving nothing that anyone can identify as belonging to somebody.

Etienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude page 22

It is not the troops on horseback, it is not the companies afoot, it is not arms that defend the tyrant. This does not seem credible on first thought, but it is nevertheless true that there are only four or five who maintain the dictator, four or five who keep the country in bondage to him. Five or six have always had access to his ear, and have either gone to him of their own accord, or else have been summoned by him, to be accomplices in his cruelties, companions in his pleasures, panders to his lusts, and sharers in his plunders. These six manage their chief so successfully that he comes to be held accountable not only for his own misdeeds but even for theirs. The six have six hundred who profit under them, and with the six hundred they do what they have accomplished with their tyrant. The six hundred maintain under them six thousand, whom they promote in rank, upon whom they confer the government of provinces or the direction of finances, in order that they may serve as instruments of avarice and cruelty, executing orders at the proper time and working such havoc all around that they could not last except under the shadow of the six hundred, nor be exempt from law and punishment except through their influence.

The consequence of all this is fatal indeed. And whoever is pleased to unwind the skein will observe that not the six thousand but a hundred thousand, and even millions, cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied.

Etienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude page 19

They didn't even neglect, these Roman emperors, to assume generally the title of Tribune of the People, partly because this office was held sacred and inviolable and also because it had been founded for the defense and protection of the people and enjoyed the favor of the state. By this means they made sure that the populace would trust them completely, as if they merely used the title and did not abuse it. Today there are some who do not behave very differently; they never undertake an unjust policy, even one of some importance, without prefacing it with some pretty speech concerning public welfare and common good.

Etienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude pages 17-18

Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books. Roman tyrants invented a further refinement. They often provided the city wards with feasts to cajole the rabble, always more readily tempted by the pleasure of eating than by anything else. The most intelligent and understanding amongst them would not have quit his soup bowl to recover the liberty of the Republic of Plato. Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, "Long live the King!" The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them. A man might one day be presented with a sesterce and gorge himself at the public feast, lauding Tiberius and Nero for handsome liberality, who on the morrow, would be forced to abandon his property to their avarice, his children to their lust, his very blood to the cruelty of these magnificent emperors, without offering any more resistance than a stone or a tree stump. The mob has always behaved in this way--eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honorably accepted, and dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably endured. Nowadays I do not meet anyone who, on hearing mention of Nero, does not shudder at the very name of that hideous monster, that disgusting and vile pestilence. Yet when he died--when this incendiary, this executioner, this savage beast, died as vilely as he had lived--the noble Roman people, mindful of his games and his festivals, were saddened to the point of wearing mourning for him. Thus wrote Cornelius Tacitus, a competent and serious author, and one of the most reliable. This will not be considered peculiar in view of what this same people had previously done at the death of Julius Caesar, who had swept away their laws and their liberty, in whose character, it seems to me, there was nothing worth while, for his very liberality, which is so highly praised, was more baneful than the cruelest tyrant who ever existed, because it was actually this poisonous amiability of his that sweetened servitude for the Roman people. After his death, that people, still preserving on their palates the flavor of his banquets and in their minds the memory of his prodigality, vied with one another to pay him homage. They piled up the seats of the Forum for the great fire that reduced his body to ashes, and later raised a column to him as to "The Father of His People." (Such was the inscription on the capital.) They did him more honor, dead as he was, than they had any right to confer upon any man in the world, except perhaps on those who had killed him.

Etienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude page 6

You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you?

Etienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude page 3

Our nature is such that the common duties of human relationship occupy a great part of the course of our life. It is reasonable to love virtue, to esteem good deeds, to be grateful for good from whatever source we may receive it, and, often, to give up some of our comfort in order to increase the honor and advantage of some man whom we love and who deserves it. Therefore, if the inhabitants of a country have found some great personage who has shown rare foresight in protecting them in an emergency, rare boldness in defending them, rare solicitude in governing them, and if, from that point on, they contract the habit of obeying him and depending on him to such an extent that they grant him certain prerogatives, I fear that such a procedure is not prudent, inasmuch as they remove him from a position in which he was doing good and advance him to a dignity in which he may do evil.

Robert Sheckley, Immortality, Inc. (in the Dimensions of Sheckley omnibus) page 148

Pretentious, of course, but then life itself was a pretension in the vast universe of unliving matter.

Robert Sheckley, Immortality, Inc. (in the Dimensions of Sheckley omnibus) pages 127-129

"There are two basic elements in human affairs," Joe said sententiously. "One of them is man's eternal struggle for freedom. Freedom of worship, freedom of press and assembly, freedom to select government--freedom! And the other basic element in human affairs is the efforts of government to withhold freedom from the people."

Blaine considered this a somewhat simplified view of human affairs. But he continued listening.

"Government," Joe said, "withholds freedom for many reasons. For security, for personal profit, for power, or because they feel the people are unready for it. But whatever the reason, the basic facts remain: Man strives for freedom, and government strives to withhold freedom. Transplant is simply one more in a long series of the freedoms that man has aspired to and that his government feels are not good for him...."

"What will Transplant do?" Blaine asked.

"Transplant," Joe said fervently, "gives man the ability to transcend the limits imposed by his heredity and his environment!"

"Huh?"

"Yes! Transplant lets you exchange knowledge, bodies, talents and skills with anyone who wishes to exchange with you. And plenty do.... Think about it, Mr. Blaine. Why should a man be forced to live out his lifetime in a body he had no part in selecting? It's like telling him he must live with the diseases he's inherited, and mustn't try to cure them. Man must have the freedom to choose the body and talents best suited to his personality needs."

"If your plan went through," Blaine said, "you'd simply have a bunch of neurotics changing bodies every day."

"The same general argument was raised against the passage of every freedom," Joe said, his eyes glittering. "Throughout history it was argued that man didn't have the sense to choose his own religion, or that women didn't have the intelligence to use the vote, or that people couldn't be allowed to elect their own representatives because of the stupid choices they'd make. And of course there are plenty of neurotics around, people who'd louse up heaven itself. But you have a much greater number of people who'd use their freedoms well."

Joe lowered his voice to a persuasive whisper. "You must realize, Mr. Blaine, that a man is not his body, for he receives his body accidentally. He is not his skills, for those are frequently born of necessity. He is not his talents, which are produced by heredity and by early environmental factors. He is not the sicknesses to which he may be predisposed, and he is not the environment that shapes him. A man contains all these things, but he is greater than their total. He has the power to change his environment, cure his diseases, advance his skills--and, at last, to choose his body and talents! That is the next freedom, Mr. Blaine! It's historically inevitable, whether you or I or the government like it or not. For man must have every possible freedom!"

Joe finished his fierce and somewhat incoherent oration red-faced and out of breath. Blaine stared at the little man with new respect. He was looking, he realized, at a genuine revolutionary of the year 2110.