
East Timor bishops prepare for first-ever Ad Limina visit http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2014/03/15/east_timor_bishops_prepare_for_first-ever_ad_limina_visit/en1-781767 (15 March 2014)
Spark (2014)
Context: Modern authority is based on a system of lies that are accepted by the general population. If you pull away the curtain and show the reality of power, people are motivated to question the fictions that govern their own lives.
East Timor bishops prepare for first-ever Ad Limina visit http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2014/03/15/east_timor_bishops_prepare_for_first-ever_ad_limina_visit/en1-781767 (15 March 2014)
On her need to write Border in “THE SRB INTERVIEW: Kapka Kassabova” https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/free-content/the-srb-interview-kapka-kassabova/ in Scottish Review of Books (2018 Feb 10)
Derek K Hitchins (2005) Systems Methodology http://sse.stevens.edu/fileadmin/cser/2005/papers/10.pdf
After America: Get Ready for Armageddon (2011), Steyn, Regnery Publishing, pp. 206-206
After America: Get Ready for Armageddon (2011)
Context: Churchill called his book The History of the English-Speaking Peoples – not the English-Speaking Nations. The extraordinary role played by those nations in the creation and maintenance of the modern world derived from their human capital. What happens when, as a matter of state policy, you debauch your human capital? The United Kingdom has the highest drug use in Europe, the highest incidence of sexually transmitted disease, the highest number of single mothers, the highest abortion rate; marriage is all but defunct, except for toffs, upscale gays, and Muslims. A couple of years ago, the papers reported that stabbings are so rampant in British schoolyards that a company that specializes in military body armor is now manufacturing school blazers lined with Kevlar. For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ’s Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population.
Source: "The origins and purposes of several traditions in systems theory and cybernetics," 1999, p. 80: About General Systems Theory
“Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.”
Ur-Fascism (1995)
Context: Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view—one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, 1992
Context: Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist, with whatever suffering and injustice that it entails, as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can. At this stage of history either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, sympathy and concern for others, or alternatively there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must—namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival.
Grinker (1976) in General systems. Vol.19, p. 57