I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.
Ursula K. Le Guin, ”A Left-Handed Commencement Address” (Mills College, 1983)
Ursula K. Le Guin, ”A Left-Handed Commencement Address” (Mills College, 1983)
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There’s a fundamental difference between Ethics and Morality. Spinoza doesn’t make up a morality, for a very simple reason: he never asks what we must do, he always asks what we are capable of, what’s in our power, ethics is a problem of power, never a problem of duty. In this sense Spinoza is profoundly immoral. Regarding the moral problem, good and evil, he has a happy nature because he doesn’t even comprehend what this means. What he comprehends are good encounters, bad encounters, increases and diminutions of power.
Gilles Deleuze, Lectures on Spinoza
Gilles Deleuze, Lectures on Spinoza
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The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its de-politicization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization ( you are sick because of your brain chemistry ). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals ( we can cure you with our SSRIs ). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.
Mark Fisher, Capitalism Realism
Mark Fisher, Capitalism Realism
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