politics
He looked at the human beings he had chained up and noted that they seemed to be the type of people who wore chains. So unlike other people. Frighteningly unlike! Later, in his cotton fields, he had them whipped and then made them go back to work and thought, They can’t possibly feel as we do. You can whip them and they go back to work. And having
... See moreZadie Smith • Intimations: Six Essays
Indeed, people speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.
Larissa Volokhonsky • The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue
I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.
No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear
Difficult times like war, famine, political protests have historically shaped our cultures, as a shared experience, and a shared suffering; one that ignites change. As art feeds and grows on culture, artists have always been at the forefront of the change it brings. Because it is through art that ideas—revolutionary, groundbreaking, and... See more
art in the face of adversity
Free time is mostly devoted to getting ready for work, going to work, returning from work, and recovering from work. Free time is a euphemism for the peculiar way labor, as a factor of production, not only transports itself at its own expense to and from the workplace, but assumes primary responsibility for its own maintenance and repair.
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
Free time is the product of the capitalist system, therefore not really free because owned by the boss class.
Dictators and tyrants routinely begin their reigns and sustain their power with the deliberate and calculated destruction of art: the censorship and book-burning of unpoliced prose, the harassment and detention of painters, journalists, poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists. This is the first step of a despot whose instinctive acts of... See more