As in the political sphere, the child is taught that he is free, a democrat, with a free will and a free mind, lives in a free country, makes his own decisions. At the same time he is a prisoner of the assumptions and dogmas of his time, which he does not question, because he has never been told they exist. By the time a young person has reached the age when he has to choose (we still take it for granted that a choice is inevitable) between the arts and the sciences, he often chooses the arts because he feels that here is humanity, freedom, choice. He does not know that he is already moulded by a system: he does not know that the choice itself is the result of a false dichotomy rooted in the heart of our culture. Those who do sense this, and who don’t wish to subject themselves to further moulding, tend to leave, in a half-unconscious, instinctive attempt to find work where they won’t be divided against themselves. With all our institutions, from the police force to academia, from medicine to politics, we give little attention to the people who leave – that process of elimination that goes on all the time and which excludes, very early, those likely to be original and reforming, leaving those attracted to a thing because that is what they are already like. A young policeman leaves the Force saying he doesn’t like what he has to do. A young teacher leaves teaching, here idealism snubbed. This social mechanism goes almost unnoticed – yet it is as powerful as any in keeping our institutions rigid and oppressive. ibid.
You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher any more or you’re not a painter any more. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn’t a banker any more; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now. Anais Nin
Public education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite. May Sarton
An eternal question about children is, how should we educate them? Politicians and educators consider more school days in a year, more science and math, the use of computers and other technology in the classroom, more exams and tests, more certification for teachers, and less money for art. All of these responses come from the place where we want to make the child into the best adult possible, not in the ancient Greek sense of virtuous and wise, but in the sense of one who is an efficient part of the machinery of society. But on all these counts, soul is neglected. Thomas Moore
For Spock’s generation society could be cured by improving the way parents bring up children. Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words 1/3 Human, All Too Human, BBC 2011
The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity. Rollo May
In our so very civilized society it is necessary for me to live the life of a savage. I must be free even of governments. The people have my sympathies, I must address myself to them directly. Gustave Courbet
I’m the other end of your society. Charles Manson, interviewed in court
I don’t need you. I don’t need society. Slow Joe, Florida Warlocks
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it. Henry Thomas Buckle
Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. The Manifesto, Paragraph 5. Unabomber: The True Story 1996 starring Dean Stockwell & Robert Hays & Tobin Bell & Victoria Mallory & Bill Mondy & Michael Flynn & Scott Wilkinson & Noel De Souza & Joyce Cohen et al, director Jon Purdy, caption
We are each a separate human being, Brandon. And with the right to live and work and think as individuals. But with an obligation to the society we live in. By what right do you dare say there is a superior few to which you belong? Rope 1948 starring James Stewart & John Dall & Farley Granger & John Chandler & Cedric Hardwicke & Constance Collier & Douglas Dick & Edith Evanson et al, director Alfred Hitchcock, Stewart
A soulless society, Captain. It has no spirit. No spark. All is indeed peace and tranquillity. Peace of the factory. Tranquillity of the machine. All parts working in unison. Star Trek s1e21: The Return of the Archons, Spock
It’s the engineers who build societies. Star Trek: Voyager s7e10: Flesh & Blood II, B’Elanna
Social engineering (the analysis and automation of a society) requires the correlation of great amounts of constantly changing economic information (data), so a high-speed computerized data-processing system was necessary which could race ahead of the society and predict when society would arrive for capitulation.
Relay computers were too slow, but the electronic computer, invented in 1946 by J Presper Eckert and John W Mauchly, filled the bill.
The next breakthrough was the development of the simplex method of linear programming in 1947 by the mathematician George B Dantzig.
Then in 1948, the transistor, invented by J Bardeen, W H Brattain, and W Shockley, promised great expansion of the computer field by reducing space and power requirements.
With these three inventions under their direction, those in positions of power strongly suspected that it was possible for them to control the whole world with the push of a button.
Immediately, the Rockefeller Foundation got in on the ground floor by making a four-year grant to Harvard College, funding the Harvard Economic Research Project for the study of the structure of the American Economy. One year later, in 1949, The United States Air Force joined in.
In 1952 the grant period terminated, and a high-level meeting of the Elite was held to determine the next phase of social operations research. The Harvard project had been very fruitful, as is borne out by the publication of some of its results in 1953 suggesting the feasibility of economic (social) engineering. (Studies in the Structure of the American Economy – copyright 1953 by Wassily Leontief, International Science Press Inc White Plains New York).
Engineered in the last half of the decade of the 1940s, the new Quiet War machine stood, so to speak, in sparkling gold-plated hardware on the showroom floor by 1954.
With the creation of the maser in 1954, the promise of unlocking unlimited sources of fusion atomic energy from the heavy hydrogen in seawater and the consequent availability of unlimited social power was a possibility only decades away. The combination was irresistible.
The Quiet War was quietly declared by the International Elite at a meeting held in 1954.
Although the silent weapons system was nearly exposed 13 years later, the evolution of the new weapon-system has never suffered any major setbacks.
This volume marks the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Quiet War. Already this domestic war has had many victories on many fronts throughout the world. Bill Cooper, Top Secret: Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, Operations Research Technical Manual TM-SW7905.1
America’s punitive and reactive response to crime is an integral part of the new social Darwinism, the criminal justice counterpart of an increasingly harsh attack on living standards and social supports, especially for the poor ... America [is] a society in which a permanent state of social disintegration is held in check only by the creation of a swollen apparatus of confinement and control that has no counterpart in our own history or in any other industrial democracy. Professor Elliott Currie
The entire US ruling class, ruling elite, comes to see terrorism as the preferred means, indeed the only means, to provide social cohesion, to provide an enemy image for the society to keep it together ... The entire social order ... all based on a monstrous myth. Webster Griffin Tarpley
In 1813 an essay was published in a series called A New View of Society. It was dedicated to Wilberforce as the nation’s leading reformer, and it offered up a radical vision ... The key to creating human happiness was to change human character ... Robert Owen. Ian Hislop’s Age of the Do-Gooders 1/3, BBC 2010
The do-gooders were busy social engineering. ibid.
The public ethos was a Victorian invention, and perhaps the greatest one of all. ibid.
Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less. John Major, interview Mail on Sunday 21st February 1993
The paradox of our time is that humanity is becoming simultaneously more unified and more fragmented. That is the principal thrust of contemporary change. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era ch1
In our time the routinization of conflict has also meant a shift from sustained warfare to sporadic outbreaks of violence. ibid.
The impact of science and technology on man and his society, especially in the more advanced countries of the world, is becoming the major source of contemporary change. ibid.
But while our immediate reality is being fragmented, global reality increasingly absorbs the individual, involves him, and even occasionally overwhelms him. ibid.
The United States: A major disruptive influence on the world scene … No other society so massively disseminates its own way of life and values. ibid.
Marxism, born of the social upheaval produced by the combined effects of the industrial and nationalist revolutions provided a unique intellectual tool for understanding and harnessing the fundamental forces of our time. ibid. ch3
America’s relationship with the world must reflect American domestic values and preoccupations. ibid. ch5