Expect Resistance

I'm currently reading, among others, a book called Expect Resistance, written and published by the Crimethinc collective. I haven't gotten all that far, but so far, it's quite interesting and thought provoking... I figured I'd share a couple of short excerpts, to show you what I mean...

"Exchange economics presupposes a one-dimensional scale of value, according to which everything can be appraised: if an avocado costs a dollar, and a new sports car costs $20,000, then a sports car must be worth exactly twenty thousand avocados. But such equations are absurd. Can you calculate the financial value of a friendship, or the exchange rate of a clever joke for a meal tenderly prepared, the comparative worth of the sound of birds singing in the trees against the current market value of lumber? Those who would measure such things miss everything that is beautiful and unrepeatable about them; once one recognizes this, it becomes clear how pathological such calculations are in any context. To asses the commercial value of experiences and sensations, let alone trade in the very lives of the human beings around you with an eye to your own advantage, is to flatten the world for yourself and everyone you touch."

"Some call this a democracy--did you get a say in what the billboards you pass every morning say, what they go on repeating inside your head all day, the trees they cut down by your house to make room for the new gas station? How about the preservatives they put in the food you eat, or the conditions in the factories that produce them? What about your wages at work, or how much money the IRS takes from you? These aren't just inevitable "facts of life"--they are the manifestations of conflict as the system of human relations, every man for himself and force against us all. The leagues of intimidating red tape and the battering of woman, the biased news coverage and the inhumanity of factory farms, the jockeying for ascendance between colleagues and countries, all these are simultaneously expressions of the strife at the heart of our civilization and weapons which, used by factions fighting for survival on its terms, perpetuate it."

Peace,
Idzie