What's a quote that has stuck with you for your whole life?
I always loved browsing such posts on reddit, so thought I should make one on lemmy too
Edit: Usually these kind of posts only used to have excerpts from books or ancient proverbs, but now I am seeing a lot more quotes from shows/movies/games are also resonating with people. It’s pretty cool to see.
I have two that have stuck with me most my adult life-- and I find that they apply frequently.
I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow.
-- Judge Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty Speech, 1944
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
It's funny because lately I have been applying that quote to people being terrified of "AI". (I hate that we use that word to describe stuff like LLMs, but that's another topic.)
There are countless points in history where a technological advance has rendered some human labor less or no longer needed. There's nothing to be done about it; that's how progress works-- it's why we're not mostly farmers anymore.
The solution to technology rendering human labor less or no longer needed is for society to divorce the need to work from living a comfortable life. It's certainly not to try and hold back or eliminate the technology solely to protect human labor.
But don’t you feel like this is the one that we’ve been warned about a lot? I’m not concerned about losing my job; I’m worried about being killed by M3gan.
Oh I find this one to be bs. There are incredible things in this world that could have been meh or horrible and that changes the meaning in both quality and quantity. For example when lincoln made the continued subjugation proclamation.
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
-Thomas Paine
People uphold their own oppressors because of a need to uphold tradition. F**k the monarchy.
“Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people”
Perhaps its an overgeneralization, but I like the concept behind it and at least it keeps me from gossiping / talking about people behind their backs. I am mostly an average mind though, by this definition.
If you wish to keep slaves, you must have all kinds of guards. The cheapest way to have guards is to have the slaves pay taxes to finance their own guards. To fool the slaves, you tell them that they are not slaves and that they have Freedom. You tell them they need Law and Order to protect them against bad slaves. Then you tell them to elect a Government. Give them Freedom to vote and they will vote for their own guards and pay their salary. They will then believe they are Free persons. Then give them money to earn, count, and spend and they will be too busy to notice the slavery they are in.” - Alexander Warbucks
It’s a really good way to get rid of the mentality of one person can’t make a difference. Because everyone is a drop, and without so many drops, there is no ocean. Maybe one individual drop doesn’t truly make a difference alone. But what if every drop was gone?
It helps me feel that, even if the difference I make isn’t big enough to make an impact, an impact only exists BECAUSE of all the drops.
That goes for both positive and negative things. A thousand bad drops are needed to make a bad thing. A thousand good drops to make a good one.
Sorry to question it, seeing as you like it so much, but doesn’t that not make a difference if you’re still fairly sure there’s not enough other drops?
I prefer the starfish on a beach analogy for the same thing because it cuts others out entirely.
Hm. Good question, and I can’t say I have a great answer.
I like the starfish one too, the ocean one is just better for my mindset.
I guess accountability? The starfish story appeals more to personal ego (not using the term ego as a bad thing here), where as the ocean one feels more like accountability to me.
Starfish is saying that the little thing you do can help someone, even if it doesn’t solve the problem. Ocean one is saying that everyone is responsible, even if only a tiny bit in the grand scheme.
I kind of pair it with a mindset of if every drop thinks that they don’t make a difference, that adds up. One person can’t save the planet, but every person thinking they can’t save the planet means that you have that ocean of people all thinking that they don’t matter. And that’s a big problem.
Like I said, probably not the best answer. Just rambling what came to mind.
Hey, if it works for you, I guess. I find I’m easily frustrated if I imagine there’s a ton of other people working against me but that’s really my issue.
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