Book: If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways.
Quotes of Book: If They Give You Lined Paper,
No number has ever done it for us. Not a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand. Even millions don't do it, and so every single year we pay our legislators to come up with more. But no matter how many prohibitions we come up with, they never do the trick, because no prohibited behavior has ever been eliminated by passing a law against it. Every time someone is sent to prison or executed, this is said to be "sending a message" to miscreants, but for some strange reason the message never arrives, year after year, generation after generation, century after century. Naturally, we consider this to be a very advanced system. book-quoteWhat humanity came up with and held on to during its first three million years was a social organization that worked well for people. It didn't work well for products, for motorboats and can openers and operettas. It didn't work well for the greedy, the ruthless, and the power hungry. That's what we have, a social organization that works beautifully for products - which just keep getting better and better every year - but very poorly for people, except for the greedy, the ruthless, and the power hungry. Our ancestors lived in societies that every anthropologist agrees were nonhierarchical and markedly egalitarian. They weren't structured so that a few at the top lived lives of luxury, a few more lived in the middle in comfort, and the masses at the bottom lived in poverty or near poverty, just struggling to survive. They weren't riddled with crime, depression, madness, suicide, and addiction. And when we came along with invitations to join our glorious civilization, they fought to the death to hold on to the life they had. book-quote
