Gabosegangwe Media Projects

19/09/2022

Essentials

"Our prejudices are so deeply rooted that we never think of them as prejudices but call them common sense." ~ George Bernard Shaw
Book: https://amzn.to/3Pr8YTE
Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw

19/09/2022

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
— George Bernard Shaw

15/09/2022

Essentials

/ Frederick Douglass /
"Born a slave, Frederick Douglass educated himself, escaped, and made himself one of the greatest leaders in American history."
-goodreads
"Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Likewise, Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave. Douglass wrote three autobiographies, describing his experiences as a slave in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which became a bestseller and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bo***ge and My Freedom."
W
Born: Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1817 or 1818, Cordova, Maryland, U.S.
Died: February 20, 1895 (aged 77–78), Washington, D.C, U.S.
Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass / My Bo***ge and My Freedom / Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

15/09/2022

Essentials

“It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.”
― Stephen Hawking

13/09/2022

A remembrance of writer and moral force Barbara Ehrenreich

13/09/2022

Essentials

"Don't fight your demons. Your demons are here to teach you lessons. Sit down with your demons and have a drink and a chat and learn their names and talk about the burns on their fingers and scratches on their ankles. Some of them are very nice."

-- Charles Bukowski

09/09/2022

Essentials

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”

~Lawrence Ferlinghetti (After Khalil Ghibran) 2007

08/09/2022

Essentials

"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Book: https://amzn.to/3TPgMlp
The Portable Nietzsche

05/09/2022

Essentials

There's always a third choice in life. Even if you think you're stuck between two impossible choices, there's always a third way. You just have to look for it. ~Marcus Sedgwick

(Book: Revolver https://amzn.to/3CZLqmf)

04/09/2022

Essentials

Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

"Every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step towards the diminution of war, every step towards better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organised Churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so. I do not think that I am."

— Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

Why I Am Not a Christian (1927) is an essay by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. The ideas contained within were, and often still are, considered controversial, contentious and - to some of the religious - blasphemous.

31/08/2022

Essentials

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty. ~Lawrence Ferlinghetti

(Book: Ferlinghetti's Greatest Poems https://amzn.to/3e6HaXK)

(Art: Photography by David Gaberle)

25/08/2022

Essentials

Narcissists do show a lack of concern for others, but they are equally insensitive to their own true needs. Often their behaviour is self-destructive... Narcissism denotes an investment in one's image as opposed to one's self. Narcissists love their image, not their real self. They have a poor sense of self; they are not self-directed. Instead, their activities are directed toward the enhancement of their image, often at the expense of the self. ~Alexander Lowen

(Narcissism: Denial of the True Self https://amzn.to/3dY6TBL)

(Art: Painting by Francis Bacon)

22/08/2022

Essentials

Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests'. ~Albert Camus

(Book: Notebooks 1935-1942 https://amzn.to/3PFQkHC)

18/08/2022

Essentials

We are all exceptional cases. Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself. If you tell a criminal that his crime is not due to his nature or his character but to unfortunate circumstances, he will be extravagantly grateful to you. ~Albert Camus

(Book: The Fall https://amzn.to/3SOJi6e)

16/08/2022

Essentials

Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort. ~Erich Fromm

(Book: Escape from Freedom https://amzn.to/3JSRGO5)

(Art: 'Illusion of Freedom', 2019 by Igor & Marina)

16/08/2022

Essentials

It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. ~George Orwell

(Book: 1984 https://amzn.to/3C3XzWH)

(Art: Collage by Joe Webb)

16/08/2022

Essentials

I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means. ~Joseph Conrad

(Book: Heart of Darkness https://amzn.to/3Ca6Z34)

09/08/2022

Essentials

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

08/08/2022

Essentials

“The First Human Who Hurled An Insult Instead Of A Stone Was The Founder Of Civilization.”
-Sigmund Freud

Instagram :https://bit.ly/3OESSWi
YouTube : https://bit.ly/3zBD16w

07/08/2022

Essentials

Because we are imperfect souls, our knowledge is imperfect. The history of learning is an adventure in overcoming our errors. There is no sin in being wrong. The sin is in our unwillingness to examine our own beliefs, and in believing that our authorities cannot be wrong. ~Neil Postman

(Book: The End of Education https://amzn.to/3JujmJ7)

(Art: Photograph by Gueorgui Pinkhassov)

07/08/2022

"The United States emerged at Hiroshima as the arbiter of world affairs and self-appointed policeman of the globe."
— Bertrand Russell (1970)

[ FULL CITATION ]

“Violence is not new to America. White men of European stock seized the lands of indigenous Indians with a ferocity which endured until our own times. The institution of slavery shaped the character of the nation and leaves its mark everywhere. Countless “local” wars were mounted throughout the twentieth century to protect commercial interests abroad. Finally, the United States emerged at Hiroshima as the arbiter of world affairs and self-appointed policeman of the globe.”

— Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Russell’s America: Volume II 1945–1970, Part II, The Entire American People Are On Trial, Ramparts magazine (March 1970), p. 474

The Entire American People Are On Trial, Ramparts magazine (March 1970) was published one month after Bertrand Russell's death.

Bertrand Russell was a prominent anti-war activist; he championed both anti-British and American imperialism and went to prison for his pacifism during World War One. Later, he campaigned against N**i Germany, then sharply criticized Stalinist totalitarianism, attacked the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War, and was one of the world's most outspoken proponents of nuclear disarmament. Russell spent the 1950s and 1960s engaged in political causes primarily related to nuclear disarmament and opposing the Vietnam War. The well known 1955 Russell-Einstein-Manifest was a document written by Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell calling for nuclear disarmament and was signed by eleven of the most prominent nuclear physicists and intellectuals of the time. In 1966–67, Russell worked with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre to from the Russell Vietnam War Crimes Russell Tribunal to investigate the conduct of the United States in the Vietnam War.

06/08/2022

Essentials

“You should not honour men more than truth.”
— Plato

06/08/2022

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness. ~William Saroyan

(Book: My Heart's in the Highlands https://amzn.to/3Q7VddU)

(Art: 'Evening', 1960 by Vyacheslav Shepelev)

05/08/2022

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on... So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything... The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all... We do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors...but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal... Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. ~Hunter S. Thompson

(Book: Letters of Note https://amzn.to/3JxQyPL)

01/08/2022

Essentials

“The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.”
— Victor Hugo

29/07/2022

The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

26/07/2022

Essentials

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you. ~Christopher Hitchens

(Book: Letters to a Young Contrarian https://amzn.to/3zwvupk)

25/07/2022

Essentials

“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.
If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

~Howard Zinn

21/07/2022

Essentials

During the second half of the 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union prepared for and anticipated a major war with one another. That major war never happened. Instead, the two superpowers faced off in a decades-long “Cold War” of espionage, intimidation, and conflict over and within proxy states. During most of the 19th and the early 20th century, a similar state of affairs existed between the British and Russian Empires—a tense superpower confrontation over the control of Central and South Asia that history remembers as “the Great Game,” a term popularized by the novelist Rudyard Kipling in 1901.

British leadership found the Russian conquest and annexation of Central Asia during the 19th century alarming. The Russians rolled relentless across the central Asian steppes defeating and absorbing the people there, adding to their empire a vast area that is now Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. As the British watched the Russian expansion, it seemed to them to be aiming directly toward India.

In the 19th century India was the crown jewel of the British Empire, its most prosperous and strategically valuable colony. Convinced that Russian expansion would eventually lead to an invasion of India, Great Britain acted aggressively to block and deter it, principally by working to keep the Ottoman and Persian empires out of the Russian orbit, and by attempting to create buffer states in Afghanistan and Tibet. Likewise, while the British feared and protected against Russian expansion into India, the Russians likewise worried that the British would invade and expand into Central Asia, using their formidable British Indian army.

The competition over Afghanistan would result in two costly and bloody Anglo-Afghan wars, and the fear of Russian expansion into Tibet would result in a British Indian invasion of the region in 1903. In fact, modern historians have concluded that Russia never had the intention or ability to invade India, and that the British never had the capacity or intention to invade central Asia.

The Great Game ended with the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, when the British and the Russians agreed to recognize the borders and their respective spheres of influence across central and south Asia, enabling them to end their rivalry and turn their attentions to the growing threat from the increasingly powerful and expanding German Empire.

The image is an 1878 cartoon depicting the Afghan Emir flanked by the Russian bear and the British lion.

21/07/2022

Essentials

The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed. The recurrent economic crises of past times were totally unnecessary and are not now permitted to happen, but other and equally large dislocations can and do happen without having political results, because there is no way in which discontent can become articulate. ~George Orwell

(Book: 1984 https://amzn.to/3PqRHec)

20/07/2022

Essentials

We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision. They are representatives of abstract forces who have reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of the past. There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers. The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident, inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push. ~William S. Burroughs

(Book: Interzone https://amzn.to/3PkD2Rv)

16/07/2022

A report reveals 80 percent of schools are dysfunctional. The Equal Education study looked into underperforming schools. It found shortages of study material, poverty and violence plague most schools. Junior Attorney at the Equal Education Law Centre, Pila-sande Mkuzo discussed the research with eNC...

14/07/2022

Essentials

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. ~Albert Camus

(Book: Notebooks, 1942-1951 https://amzn.to/3RpCKug)

11/07/2022

Essentials

Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved. ~Albert Camus

(Book: Notebooks 1942 - 1951 https://amzn.to/3RpCKug)

06/07/2022

Essentials

Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you. ~Milan Kundera

(Book: Immortality https://amzn.to/3RgsjZN)

27/06/2022

27/06/2022

Essentials

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
― Socrates
Book: Socrates: 100 Quotes on Life, Free Will, and Virtue
by Socrates, Gordon Jacobs

21/06/2022

“The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.”
— Aldous Huxley