Colonial-Style

“Under the colonial regime, anything may be done for a loaf of bread or a miserable sheep.  The relations of man with matter, withing the world outside and with history are in the colonial period simply relations with food.  For a colonized man, in a contest of oppresion like that of Algeria, living does not mean embodying moral values or taking his place in the coherent and fruitful development of the world.  To live means to keep on existing.  Every date is a victory: not the result of work, but a victory felt as a triumph of life.”

-Frantz Fanon, 1963 (The Wretched of the Earth.  Middelsex, UK: Penguin.  Pg. 249)

Proliferating Bullshit

“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.  Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic.  This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled – whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others – to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.  Closely related instances arise from the widespread notion conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs.  The lack of any significant connection between a person’s opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more sever, needless to say, for someone who believes it is his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world”

-Harry Frankfurt, 2005 (On Bullshit.  Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.)

Moral (vs. Cultural?) Relativism

“Consider for example the doctrine of moral relativism.  By this I mean the doctrine that, starting from the (entirely reasonable) premise that one cannot fully understand any action except in the context of the actor’s cultural universe, concludes that as a consequence, no one has the right to stand in judgment over any action committed by someone with a fundamentally different world view…this is a doctrine that could only really emerge as a product of imperialism.  It could only have been produced by members of an elite population whose dominance over the world was so complete and so reliable that they could live their lives in full confidence that no one with a fundamentally different world view would ever be in a position of power over them…Pretenses to some kind of moral superiority, based on their unwillingness to morally condemn ‘the Other’, it seems to me, are often entirely underpinned by tacit support for real walls to shut real other people out…what basis would we have to criticize the structures of power  in the world, unless we at least admit that everyone in the world shares certain things in common?”

-David Graeber’s ‘Anti-Relativist Diatribe’, 2007 (Lost People.  Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.  Pg 386-7)