“The foolish ask nothing better than not to have to understand anything, and they even used to get together and try not to understand, because the last thing of which a person is capable is to be malicious and foolish all by themselves. Without understanding, they form spontaneously into herds, not according to any particular affinities but in obedience to the petty ideology. They would far rather kill than have to think.”
George Bernanos, Under the Sun of Satan, 1926
“I think that a certain relatively small subset of people are predisposed through both nurture and nature to seek to monopolize the public economy by distorting the rules, in order to gain control over the many through the possession of key assets.
It is not a matter of need or survival or even rational economic preference; it is a pathology, a compulsion, an intense neurosis. We have seen this happen in large companies and in nations where fear and greed become the dominant forces of societal impulse. The coup de grâce is often the propagation of power to idiot sons and assorted mediocrities and sycophants, although the inherent instability of the principals is not to be discounted as a destructive force.
This tendency is kept in check by a balanced system of peer pressure, strong cultural mores, and public laws and regulations which tend to suppress unproductive and outright destructive impulses. But when the acquisitors gain an undue influence in the system then we have an enormous accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few, and a growing tension between sustainability and collapse.
The concentration of power tends to increase the probability of uncorrected and self-propagating policy errors. This is why the majority passes laws, sanctions, and reforms to prevent a collapse from recurring when the memory of the disaster and its causes is fresh in their minds. Over time the safeguards are weakened and overcome as the public grows complacent, and the cycle is repeated again as it arises from enduring quirks in the variety of human nature.”
Jesse, Inequality and the Credit Crisis, 1 September 2008
“The mob believes everything it is told, provided only that it be repeated over and over. Provided too that its passions, hatreds, fears are catered to. The grosser, the bigger, the cruder the lie, the more readily is it believed and followed. The mob has no memory; needless to pretend to any truth: the mob is radically incapable of perceiving it: the mob can never comprehend that its own interests are what is at stake.”
Alexandre Koyré, Réflexions sur le Mensonge, 1943
