John Zerzan
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Ed's Favorite Quotations. Emphasis added. References below.

JOHN ZERZAN
     

   
Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization.

"Time is increasingly a key manifestation of the estrangement and humiliation that characterize modern existence."1a HUSSERL BAUDRILLARD

"The formation of a calendar is basic to the formation of a civilization. The calendar was the first symbolic artifact that regulated social behavior by keeping track of time."1b

" . . . [C]apital is increasingly technologized. . . The people who think that it's about surfing the Net and exchanging e-mail with your cousin in Idaho or something, obviously neglect the fact that the movement of capital is the computer's basic function."1c

"From the Latin re, or thing, reification is essentially thingification."1d

" . . . Anarchism is the attempt to eradicate all forms of domination. This includes not only such obvious forms as the nation-state, with its routine use of violence and the force of law, and the corporation, with its institutionalized irresponsibility, but also such internalized forms of patriarchy, racism, homophobia. . .
. . . Most fundamentally I would see Anarchism as a synonym for anti-authoritarianism."1e

" . . . Euclid developed his geometry, literally meaning "land measuring," explicitly to measure fields for reasons of ownership, taxation, and slave labor. Today the same imperative drives science, only now it is the entire universe we are trying to measure and enslave."1f

"The liberty that remains to us is essentially the freedom to choose among brands A, B, and C, and the KFC in Tienanmen Square expresses domination as surely as the suppression of human rights protesters there in 1989."1g

"A qualitatively different life would entail abolishing exchange, in every form, in favor of the gift and the spirit of play."1h FRIEDMAN

"The ultimate pleasure lies in destroying that which is destroying us, in the spirit of the Situationists, who, when asked how they were going to destroy the dominant culture, replied, 'In two ways: gradually at first, then suddenly.'"1i

" . . . [D]istrust of public institutions is almost total."1j


     
   

* Italics in the original.

1 John Zerzan (b. 1943). Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization. John Zerzan, 2002. Los Angeles, CA: Feral House.
a Time and Its Discontents, at 17.
b Ibid., at 25.
c
Against Technology, at 46.
d That Thing We Do, at 53.
e
Enemy of the State, at 67-68.
f
Ibid., at 77-78.
g
The Age of Nihilism, at 114.
h
Postscript to Future Primitive re the Transition, at 118.
i
We All Live in Waco, at 150.
j
We Have to Dismantle All This, at 159.

MK-BOOKS-ZERZAN-20071005.