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Quotes about Society

Glenn Danzig Quote on Shopping Carts and How They Are The Ultimate Litmus Test

    Glenn Danzig Quote on Shopping Carts and How They Are The Ultimate Litmus Test

    “The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct. A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them a law and the force that stands behind it. The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.”

    Glenn Danzig

    Beyond the Quote (183/365)

    …Maybe not an “animal” or an “absolute savage,” but certainly a person who has given in to their lazy tendencies. I think we all have that moment when we load the last grocery bag into the car and we look back at the cart only to deeply contemplate how to handle the no-longer-needed thing that’s just sitting there staring at us. We look around for the nearest cart return station and try to minimize the amount of effort it will take to get the thing out of our way so that we can quickly make our escape back home. Isn’t it amazing how quickly we can change our minds about something that provided us so much convenience to all-of-a-sudden being something that is such an annoyance and has become such a hassle? Ah, but how quickly we do that for so much in life, eh?

    Read More »Glenn Danzig Quote on Shopping Carts and How They Are The Ultimate Litmus Test

      “Any hierarchy creates winners and losers.  The winners are, of course, more likely to justify the hierarchy and the losers to criticize it.  But (1) the collective pursuit of any valued goal produces a hierarchy (as some will be better and some worse at that pursuit no matter what it is) and (2) it is the pursuit of goals that in large part lends life its sustaining meaning.  We experience almost all the emotions that make life deep and engaging as a consequence of moving successfully towards something deeply desired and valued.  The price we pay for that involvement is the inevitable creation of hierarchies of success, while the inevitable consequence is difference in outcome.  Absolute equality would therefore require the sacrifice of value itself—and then there would be nothing worth living for.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 303)

        “Every word we speak is a gift from our ancestors.  Every thought we think was thought previously by someone smarter.  The highly functional infrastructure that surrounds us, particularly in the West, is a gift from our ancestors: the comparatively uncorrupt political and economic systems, the technology, the wealth, the lifespan, the freedom, the luxury, and the opportunity.  Culture takes with one hand, but in some fortunate places it gives more with the other.  To think about culture only as oppressive is ignorant and ungrateful, as well as dangerous.  This is not to say that culture should not be subject to criticism.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 302)

          “More often than not, modern parents are simply paralyzed by the fear that they will no longer be liked or even loved by their children if they chastise them for any reason.  They want their children’s friendship above all, and are willing to sacrifice respect to get it.  This is not good.  A child will have many friends, but only two parents—if that—and parents are more, not less, than friends.  Friends have very limited authority to correct.  Every parent therefore needs to learn to tolerate the momentary anger or even hatred directed towards them by their children, after necessary corrective action has been taken, as the capacity of children to perceive or care about long-term consequences is very limited.  Parents are the arbiters of society.  They teach children how to behave so that other people will be able to interact meaningfully and productively with them.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 124)

            “I didn’t learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn’t a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society… It means we don’t have to continue this way if we don’t like it.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut, via Nitch

              “One problem with our current society is that we have an attitude towards education as if it is there to simply make you more clever, make you more ingenious… Even though our society does not emphasize this, the most important use of knowledge and education is to help us understand the importance of engaging in more wholesome actions and bringing about discipline within our minds. The proper utilization of our intelligence and knowledge is to effect changes from within to develop a good heart.” ~ Dalai Lama

                “We are a population that is satisfied with sound-bite news, instant and opinionated political analysis, manipulative popular psychology, and insubstantial novels and magazines.  At the same time, and understandably, we feel the absence of meaning and are speechless when we learn of atrocities in our society.  We don’t know how to think about them because we don’t know how to think, and we don’t know how to think because we don’t believe that thinking for its own sake is worthy of our attention.  We educate our children to make a good living rather than to become thinking persons, and often we honor as celebrities those who have not made a genuine contribution to society but who mirror our own madness.”

                Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.

                  “Man’s chief purpose… is the creation and preservation of values, that is what gives meaning to our civilization, and the participation in this is what gives significance, ultimately, to the individual human life… The individual contribution, the work of any single generation, is infinitesimal; the power and glory belong to human society at large, and are the long result of selection, conservation, sacrifice, creation, and renewal — the outcome of endless brave efforts to conserve values and ideas, and to hand them on to posterity, along with physical life itself. Each person is a temporary focus of forces, vitalities, and values that carry back into an immemorial past and that reach forward into an unthinkable future.” ~ Lewis Mumford, Faith for Living

                    “Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders size the opportunity to change things for the better.” ~ Harry S. Truman

                      “It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse.” ~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

                        “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” ~ Nelson Mandela

                          “If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.” ~ Margaret Mead

                            “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” ~ Greek Proverb

                              “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditioned love will have the final word in reality.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

                                A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.