#despotism — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #despotism, aggregated by home.social.
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Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government, and earthly despotism would be the absolute perfect earthly government if the conditions were the same; namely the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual; but as a perishable, perfect man must die and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Novel (1889), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Part 3 “The Tale of the Lost Land,” ch. 10 “Beginnings of Civilization”More about this quote: wist.info/twain-mark/85346/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #twain #marktwain #connecticutyankee #absolutepower #despotism #dictatorship #humannature #mortality #perfection #succession #tyranny
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A quotation from Thomas Jefferson
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Document (1776-07-02), “Declaration of Independence”More about this quote: wist.info/jefferson-thomas/220…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #thomasjefferson #absolutepower #custom #despot #despotism #endurance #government #inertia #overthrow #putupwith #rebellion #revolution #suffering #tyranny #declarationofindependence
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A strange thing, when one considers it: to wit, the world applies to Czar and System the same moral axioms that have vogue and acceptance in civilized countries! Because, in civilized countries, it is wrong to remove oppressors otherwise than by process of law, it is held that the same rule applies in Russia, where there is no such thing as law — except for our Family. Laws are merely restraints — they have no other function. In civilized countries they restrain all persons, and restrain them all alike, which is fair and righteous; but in Russia such laws as exist make an exception — our Family. We do as we please; we have done as we pleased for centuries. Our common trade has been crime, our common pastime murder, our common beverage blood — the blood of the nation. Upon our heads lie millions of murders. Yet the pious moralist says it is a crime to assassinate us. We and our uncles are a family of cobras set over a hundred and forty million rabbits, whom we torture and murder and feed upon all our days; yet the moralist urges that to kill us is a crime, not a duty.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Story (1905-02-02), “The Czar’s Soliloquy,” North American Review, Vol. 180, No. 580 (1905-03)More about this quote: wist.info/twain-mark/83904/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #marktwain #twain #absolutepower #abovethelaw #assassination #civilization #despotism #greatergood #killing #lawlessness #morality #ruleoflaw #tyranny #violence -
When the savages of Louisiana want some fruit, they cut down the tree at the base and gather the fruit. That is how a despotic government works.
[Quand les sauvages de la Louisiane veulent avoir du fruit, ils coupent l’arbre au pied, & cueillent le fruit. Voilà le gouvernement despotique.]Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Spirit of Laws [The Spirit of the Laws; De l’esprit des lois], Book 5, ch. 13 (5.13) (1748) [tr. Stewart (2018)]More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/montesquieu/82151/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #montesquieu #spoils #autocracy #despotism #destruction #devastation #exploitation #inefficiency #pillage #taking #thoughtlessness #tyranny #unsustainability
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A quotation from Madeleine L'Engle
We think because we have words, not the other way around, and the greater our vocabulary, the greater our ability to think conceptually. The first people a dictator puts in jail are the writers, the teachers, the librarians — because these people are dangerous. They have enough vocabulary to recognize injustice and to speak out loudly about it. Let us have the courage to go on being dangerous people.
Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) American writer
Speech (1983-11-16), “Dare To Be Creative,” Lecture, Library of Congress, Washington, DCMore about this quote: wist.info/lengle-madeleine/818…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #lengle #madeleinelengle #censorship #communication #concepts #despotism #dictatorship #jailing #librarians #suppression #teachers #tyranny #vocabulary #wellspoken #writers
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“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana”*…
Detail from Adams Synchronological Chart of Universal History created by Sebastian C Adams in 1881, a visual representation of world history, spanning from 4004 BCE to 1881 CE (the David Rumsey Map Collection)A companion of a sort to last Friday’s post: In the 19th century, the linear idea of time became dominant. As Emily Thomas explains, that has had profound implications for how we experience the world…
‘It’s natural,’ says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘to think that time can be represented by a line.’ We imagine the past stretching in a line behind us, the future stretching in an unseen line ahead. We ride an ever-moving arrow – the present. However, this picture of time is not natural. Its roots stretch only to the 18th century, yet this notion has now entrenched itself so deeply in Western thought that it’s difficult to imagine time as anything else. And this new representation of time has affected all kinds of things, from our understanding of history to time travel.
Let’s journey back to ancient Greece. Amid rolls of papyrus and purplish figs, philosophers like Plato looked up into the night. His creation myth, Timaeus, connected time with the movements of celestial bodies. The god ‘brought into being’ the sun, moon and other stars, for the ‘begetting of time’. They trace circles in the sky, creating days, months, years. The ‘wanderings’ of other, ‘bewilderingly numerous’ celestial bodies also make time. When all their wanderings are ‘completed together’, they achieve ‘consummation’ in a ‘perfect year’. At the end of this ‘Great Year’, all the heavenly bodies will have completed their cycles, returning to where they started. Taking millennia, this will complete one cycle of the universe. As ancient Greek philosophy spread through Europe, these ideas of time spread too. For instance, Greek and Roman Stoics connected time with their doctrine of ‘Eternal Recurrence’: the universe undergoes infinite cycles, ending and restarting in fire.
Such views of time are cyclical: time comprises a repeating cycle, as events occur, pass, and occur again. They echo processes in nature. Day and night. Summer to winter. As the historian Stephen Jay Gould explains in Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle (1987), within the West, cyclical conceptions dominated ancient thought. It’s even hinted at in the Bible. For example, Ecclesiastes proclaims: ‘What has been will be again … there is nothing new under the sun.’ Yet, Gould writes, the Bible also contains a linear conception of time: time comprises a one-way sequence of unrepeatable events. Take Biblical history: ‘God creates the earth once, instructs Noah to ride out a unique flood in a singular ark.’ Gould describes this linear understanding of history as an ‘important and distinctive’ contribution of Jewish thought. Biblical history helped power linear ideas of time.
Cyclical and linear conceptions of time thrived side by side for centuries, sometimes blurring into one another. After all, we live through natural, cyclical seasons and unrepeatable events – birth, first marriage, death. Importantly, medievals and early moderns didn’t literally see cyclical time as a circle, or linear time as a line. Yet in the 19th-century world of frock coats, petticoats and suet puddings, change was afoot. Gradually, the linear model of time gained ground, and thinkers literally began drawing time as a line…
[Thomas explores four key developments that fueled the shift, chronography (the development of timelines), Darwin and the emergence of the concept of evolution, chronophotography, and theories in math and physics of a “fourth dimension” (then explored by Einstein and Bergson, Mary Calkins and Victoria Welby, Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, and so many others…]
… Today, conceiving of time as a line remains widespread. Timelines are everywhere: in the history of evolution, the history of video games, and the history of chocolate. There’s even a timeline of timelines. And the effects of this line of thought (pun intended) are still with us. Philosophers continue to debate the reality of past and future: just check out this bumper encyclopaedia article on ‘Presentism’, ‘the view that only present things exist’. Time-travel stories run rife. Back to the Future. Groundhog Day. The Time Traveler’s Wife. Historians have largely dropped Victorian faith in the progress of humanity, yet progress stories about particular areas remain. For example, take this timeline: it straightforwardly depicts technological progress over time. All these ideas are powered by the notion that time is a line. Were we to reshape our idea of time, perhaps these other ideas would also find themselves bent into new forms…
“The Shape of Time,” from @aeon.co.
* Anthony Oettinger and separately, Susumu Kuno (though often mis-attributed to Groucho Marx)
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As we wonder at Yeat’s widening gyre, we might send echoing birthday greetings to Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu; he was born on this date in 1689. Better known simply as Montesquieu, he was a French judge, historian, and political philosopher.
Montesquieu is the principal source of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented (if not always observed) in many constitutions throughout the world. He is also known for doing more than any other author to secure the place of the word “despotism” in the political lexicon. His anonymously published The Spirit of Law (De l’esprit des lois, 1748; first translated into English in 1750) was received well in both Great Britain and the American colonies, and influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States in drafting the U.S. Constitution.
#art #culture #despotism #history #literature #Montesquieu #philosophy #politicalPhilosophy #politics #Psychology #Science #separationOfPowers #Technology #time #timelineTimelines -
No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice — when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.
[Il n’y a point de plus cruelle tyrannie que celle que l’on exerce à l’ombre des lois et avec les couleurs de la justice, lorsqu’on va, pour ainsi dire, noyer des malheureux sur la planche même sur laquelle ils s’étaient sauvés.]Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline [Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence], ch. 14 “Tiberius” (1734, 1748 ed.) [tr. Lowenthal (1965)]More info about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/montesquieu/79852/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #montesquieu #despotism #injustice #justicesystem #laws #legalsystem #tyranny #weaponized #cruelty
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A quotation from Thomas Jefferson
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Document (1776-07-02), “Declaration of Independence”Sourcing, notes, other versions: wist.info/jefferson-thomas/220…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #thomasjefferson #declarationofindependence #absolutepower #custom #despot #despotism #endurance #government #inertia #overthrow #putupwith #rebellion #revolution #suffering #tyranny
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The fundamental Article of my political Creed is, that Despotism, or unlimited Sovereignty, or absolute Power is the Same in a Majority of a popular Assembly, an Aristocratical Counsel, an Oligarchical Junto and a Single Emperor. Equally arbitrary cruel bloody and in every respect, diabolical.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Letter (1815-11-13) to Thomas JeffersonSourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-john/1455/
#quote #quotes #quotation #absolutepower #aristocracy #autocracy #despotism #dictatorship #evil #government #monarchy #oligarchy #tyranny #tyrannyofthemajority
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Thoughts for today: Jamuary 20, 2025
While my political views are for the most part completely opposite of the late Senator Barry Goldwater, I do find many quotes attributed to him both insightful and thought provoking. The quote below seems especially thought provoking for today:
“Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism. Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people. ”
― Barry Goldwater#USPolitics #AbsolutePower #Despotism #FreePress #HumanRights
Reference: Good Reads - https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/369997.Barry_M_Goldwater
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Was das #Mobbing, wie es von z.B.
mastodon.art,xim.ca,mstdn.socialund deren Freaks mit einem machen können: https://tly.be/pbOoeDas Fediverse ist kein Safe-Space. Für niemanden, wenn Personen wie WelshPixie, Alex, Schratze oder Rysiek jemanden mit ihren Lügen bis hin zu Suizidgedanken treiben!
I've not planned to translate the text to English. If you need it in another language, use deepl.com and NOT Google Translate!
#FediBlockMeta #TheBadSpace #Oliphant #FediBlock #CyberMobbing #HassReden #Harassment #HateSpeech #Bullying #Framing #Gaslighting #Deplatforming #Derailing #Despotism #Discrimination #Disinformation #Dogmatism #Dogpiling #Fascism #Gatekeeping #Hatemongering #Narcissism #Sealioning #Scam #Sectarianism #WitchHunting #VictimBlaming #Antifa #Bigotry #Blackmailing #Censorship #Corrupt #Fearmongering #FediSeer