“Agriculture has been and remains a “catastrophe” at all levels, the one which underpins the entire material and spiritual culture of alienation now destroying us. Liberation is impossible without its dissolution”

—  John Zerzan

Elements of Refusal (1988)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Agriculture has been and remains a “catastrophe” at all levels, the one which underpins the entire material and spiritu…" by John Zerzan?
John Zerzan photo
John Zerzan 23
American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author 1943

Related quotes

Viktor Yanukovych photo

“I may say without exaggeration that this is a revolutionary approach; it is very painful, because this system of permission was the underpinning of the great bureaucratic system on all levels. And that democratic system, a corrupt one, it has been built for years and decades.”

Viktor Yanukovych (1950) Ukrainian politician who was the President of Ukraine

Source: [2011-06-21, В Страсбурге Янукович перепутал демократию с бюрократией, https://focus.ua/politics/190373, 2022-06-12, ФОКУС, ru]

“The problem they had to solve was the same as any messianic movement: how to exist with an alien culture yet remain spiritually autonomous.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: The Ghost Dance made its unfulfillable promises at a time when the Indians were ready to rebel. The teachings of the Native American Church spread at a time when the Indians were ready to admit defeat.... The problem they had to solve was the same as any messianic movement: how to exist with an alien culture yet remain spiritually autonomous. The solution had been to borrow freely from White culture while salvaging what is considered important in Indian religious thought.<!-- p. 269

Jacques Ellul photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“The dealer now theorized that Thorp was memorizing the entire deck. He knew exactly which cards remained in the deck and bet accordingly.
Thorp said it was impossible for any one to do that.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part Two, Blackjack, More Trouble Than an $18 Dollar Whore, p. 96 (See Also: Stu Ungar Section; Blackjack)
Fortune's Formula (2005)

Lewis Mumford photo

“The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

"The Drama of the Machines" in Scribner's Magazine (August 1930)

Abbas Kiarostami photo

“The calling of art is to extract us from our daily reality, to bring us to a hidden truth that's difficult to access - to a level that's not material but spiritual.”

Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/jun/13/abbas-kiarostami-film

“A mass culture is a culture which can be appropriated by the meanest capacities without any intellectual or moral effort whatsoever. … Liberal education is the counterpoison to mass culture, to the corroding effects of mass culture, to its inherent tendency to produce nothing but “specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart.””

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

“What is liberal education,” p. 5 [The phrase “specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart.” is from Max Weber]
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)

M. S. Golwalkar photo
Lawrence Lessig photo

Related topics