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The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels, and divine intervention.

Chris Hedges

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Chris Hedges
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: September 18
Author
Journalist
War Correspondent
Writer
St. Johnsbury
Vermont
Christopher Lynn Hedges
Christopher Hedges
Less
Atheist
Perfect
Rational
Science
Angel
Used
Discipline
Quantifiable
Human
Magic
Disciplines
Humans
Divine
Intervention
Belief
Angels
Society
Absurd

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One needs solitude and quiet to think. The cacophony of modern culture is designed to make that impossible.
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We've become the most eavesdropped, monitored, spied on, photographed population in human history, dwarfing anything that was done by the Stasi state and East Germany. And that's all been - you know, these are all the sacrifices that we supposedly have to make to make ourselves safe.
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I have seen children shot in El Salvador, Algeria, Guatemala, Sarajevo, but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.
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It is one of the great ironies of corporate control that the corporate state needs the abilities of intellectuals to maintain power, yet outside of this role it refuses to permit intellectuals to think or function independently.
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The arts often realize human truths well before other branches of human endeavor.
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The New York Times is an institution that attracts careerists, who are drawn to power and access. This gave me a kind of a free hand. The kind of work that I wanted to do, most of the other reporters didn't want to do. I was not doing lunch. I was not sucking up to officials. I was writing from the street.
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The moral nihilism of celebrity culture is played out on reality television shows, most of which encourage a dark voyeurism into other people's humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal.
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The violence of war is random. It does not make sense. And many of those who struggle with loss also struggle with the knowledge that the loss was futile and unnecessary.
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The imperial projects will continue, Wall Street will be unimpeded in its malfeasance and criminal activity, social programs will continue to be cut, maybe not at the same speed as under a Republican Administration, but it's all headed in the same direction.
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Patriotism, often a thinly veiled form of collective self-worship, celebrates our goodness, our ideals, our mercy and bemoans the perfidiousness of those who hate us.
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No real journalist makes $5 million a year... Those in power fear and dislike real journalists.
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The purpose of bread and circuses is, as Neil Postman said in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, to distract, to divert emotional energy towards the absurd and the trivial and the spectacle while you are ruthlessly stripped of power.
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War is addictive. Indeed, it is the most potent narcotic unleashed by mankind.
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Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jail and prisons, however, they can each generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to $40,000 a year.
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The notion that the press was used in the [first Iraq] war is incorrect. The press wanted to be used. It saw itself as part of the war effort.
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Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the Corporate State. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, and the Constitution while manipulating internal levers.
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In war, we always deform ourselves, our essence.
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I used to wonder: Is Huxley right or is Orwell right? It turns out they're both right. First you get the new world state and endless diversions as you are disempowered. And then, as we are watching, credit dries up, and the cheap manufactured goods of the consumer society are no longer cheap. Then you get the iron fist of Oceania, of Orwell's 1984.
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Again, although I'm not a particularly religious person, I go back to the religious left that I come out of: There are moral imperatives to fight back. As Daniel Berrigan says, We're called to do the good. And then we have to let it go. It's not our job to know where the good goes.
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We on the left have forgotten that the question is not how do you get good people to rule, most people who rule are mediocre at best and usually venal. The question is how do we make those in power frightened of us and not be seduced by formal political processes.
Chris Hedges