Activists From The United States

"[T]he personal responsibility vortex... sucks good people in... [W]e should redirect any effort that we are tempted to spend on personal responsibility, towards collective action... that can restructure the s that surround the market so that we... have a chance of altering the behavior."

"[T]here are two types of systems... One type... the costs of sustaining the system go to the benevolent. That system will inevitably evolve toward ruthlessness and instability. The converse system... where the costs of maintaining the society go to the ruthless evolves towards benevolence and stability. Whenever policy is in question, we should ask ourselves, "Does the policy lead in the direction of the one type or the other."

"[T]his feedback loop has re-engineered our system cryptically and turned it into an engine for the concentration of wealth and power. ...It has installed amongst an unelected group of very powerful and wealthy people effective power over any attempt to change from the status quo."

"As a member of the Intellectual Dark Web, I find myself at the vanguard of an emerging non-ideological, non-partisan movement. Along with and the (FIRE), we are fighting to restore and respect for competing perspectives."

"[I]n sectors of our economy where there is not a lot of room for utility-increasing innovations, we see an evolution towards ruthlessness... and that has interacted with... the central flaw in... our global system, with the U.S. at its head. What we have... are loops... Wealth that is made in the market is capable of increasing one's power over regulation. Power over regulation allows increased opportunity to make money in the market. This is a positive feedback loop. That should scare any engineer of biologist because positive feedback loops that are not bounded by some negative feedback force are unstable. They detonate. They explode."

"We need to place a firewall that is impermeable between the marketplace and the regulatory apparatus."

"Strategies evolve within markets and their larger regulatory context."

"[T]he boundaries of the evolutionary environment do not stop at the market's edge."

"[A]ll of our environmental problems look like... somebody making a profit for degrading what belongs to the rest of us. ...[T]his behavior should not be allowed within a marketplace. We are fracturing the world. We are liquidating it, we are draining it, we are denuding it, we are over-exploiting it. It is apparent to anyone... The idea that this should not be allowed is transparent."

"We have to ask ourselves, what fraction of the economic activity that surrounds us is profitable only by virtue of the fact that those who make the money are externalizing the cost to somebody else. If we were to eliminate such behaviors, we would... reduce the amount of activity by a lot... but we would reduce it by exactly the fraction of activities that shouldn't have existed in the first place."

"(6) In iteroparous organisms selection tends to co-ordinate rates of senescence between tissues, such that no one organ generally limits life-span."

"[C]aptive-rodent breeding protocols, designed to increase reproductive output, simultaneously exert strong selection against reproductive senescence and virtually eliminate selection that would otherwise favor tumor suppression. This appears to have greatly elongated the telomeres of laboratory mice. With their telomeric failsafe effectively disabled, these animals are unreliable models of normal senescence and tumor formation. Safety tests employing these animals likely overestimate cancer risks and underestimate tissue damage and consequent accelerated senescence."

"The agents in the market are responding to opportunities that we have left open. It makes no more sense to be angry at them... than it does to be angry at the mosquito for sucking your blood. ...[Y]ou have to close down the opportunity."

"Why is an evolutionary theorist talking about climate change? ...[C]limate change is not really a problem, it's more a symptom of a problem... that caused the financial collapse of 2008, that caused the in the Gulf in 2010, and the ongoing Fukushima disaster starting in March of 2011."

"One of the funny things is that I never ever ever called myself the QAnon Shaman, but the media said that I gave myself that name, that I called myself the QAnon Shaman. That never happened."

"In the case that... what is good for the company is somewhat different than what is good for society, the ruthless corporation has the greatest advantage... because it can do anything it wants, and the corporation that is bound by what's good for society can't do anything. The corporation that tries to balance these concerns finds that it competes best with the ruthless corporation the more ruthless it becomes, and the outcome is predictable."

"The electorate is starved for honest debate and for the good governance that follows from it. My advice to this body is to put the nation and its core values ahead of partisanship and join us in the center to end this cultish power-grab, and return us to a forward path as a nation."

"I believe we have a very broken relationship, at least in the US but probably across the West, where we ask candidates for office about policies that they are going to enact. And it's like a reflex where we want them to tell us 'I'm going to do this this that you want' so they promise us stuff, it doesn't work, they don't have the power to enact it when they get in office or they never meant it in the first place. And we would be much better off, counterintuitive as this sounds, if we assessed their character and their patriotism instead of their policy proposals. My feelin is: I actually don't care what you think of policy. If you impress me, that you're a patriot, that you love the country that I'm a part of, that you want to see it improved, and that your values align with mine so that improved to you also means improved to me, then all I want to know is that you're good at evaluating what policies might get us there."

"Antagonistic pleiotropy, the evolutionary theory of senescence, posits that age related somatic decline is the inevitable late-life by-product of adaptations that increase fitness in early life. That... provides the foundation for an integrative theory of vertebrate that reconciles aspects of the 'accumulated damage' 'metabolic rate', and 'oxidative stress' models."

"There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and underappreciated roles... and a group encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness, which is... crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself."

"[Stalin] had a deep sense of what I can only call the "will of the people"; he had matchless technique in releasing that will in action. Lastly, he had the conviction, and was able to give it to others, that his actions carried mankind forward to a better way."

"One of the first Americans to go down into the famine district was Anna Louise Strong, who ever since has spent most of her time in the Soviet Union and through her writing and lecturing has contributed so much toward greater understanding of the Soviet Union in America."

"We hypothesize that (1) in vertebrates, a telomeric fail-safe inhibits tumor formation by limiting cellular proliferation. (2) The same system results in the progressive degradation of tissue function with age."

"No voice today can be final about the Stalin era. Stalin is one of those who are judged by long history, the character of whose work grows clearer as it recedes from view. What we know, at least, is that he set out in 1928 to build socialism in one country, a backward peasant land surrounded by a world of foes. When he began, Russia was peasant, illiterate; when he finished, it was the world's second industrial power. Twice over he thus built it, once before the Hitler invasion and again upon the war's ruin. That stands to his credit forever; he engineered that job."

"[The Molotov–Ribbentrop] was not an alliance, such as the USSR offered Britain and France; it was merely an affirmation of neutrality such as the USSR had had with Germany since 1926, but which had fallen into disuse under Hitler. Molotov reported that the USSR signed because "the conclusion of a pact of mutual assistance (with Britain and France) could not be expected." The signing of the Pact at the moment when Europe, from hour to hour, awaited Hitler's attack on Poland, changed the balance of forces in Europe. [...] East Europe clearly hoped that the Pact, while it might not stop Hitler's attack on Poland, would stop the eastward spread of the war. Hitler's allies were angry. Mussolini and Franco openly disapproved. Terrible was the blow to Tokyo, for Japan was already fighting the USSR on the edge of Mongolia, and was reported have told Hitler that she would be ready by August to join "the big push.""

"In capitalist Britain, the factory appeared as a weapon of exploitation for profit. In the USSR, it was not only a means to collective wealth, but a tool consciously used to break past shackles."

"The [Soviet] Constitution was a direct challenge to Nazi-Fascism, then in power in Germany. The Nazis called democracy outworn; all Soviet speakers hailed democracy and socialism as "unconquerable." Hitler preached "superior and inferior races." Stalin challenged him in one of the most sweeping statements ever made of human equality: "Neither language nor color of skin nor cultural backwardness nor the stage of political development can justify national and race inequality"."

"In all lands, whether for him or against him, Stalin created history."

"(3) These patterns are manifestations of an evolved antagonistic pleiotropy in which extrinsic causes of mortality favor a species-optimal balance between tumor suppression and tissue repair."

"British finance, which had strangled German democracy by demanding impossible reparation, helped Hitler with investments and loans. Every intelligent world citizen knew that these favors were given to Hitler because British Tories saw in him their "strong-arm gangster" against the Soviets."

"(4) With that trade-off as a fundamental constraint, selection adjusts telomere lengths—longer telomeres increasing the capacity for repair, shorter telomeres increasing tumor resistance."

"[To the question 'Were you, on January 6th, attempting to overthrow the government?':] No."

"(5) In environments where extrinsically induced mortality is frequent, selection against senescence is comparatively weak as few individuals live long enough to suffer a substantial phenotypic decline. The weaker the selection against senescence, the further the optimal balance point moves toward shorter telomeres and increased tumor suppression. The stronger the selection against senescence, the farther the optimal balance point moves toward longer telomeres, increasing the capacity for tissue repair, slowing senescence and elevating tumor risks."

"My philosophy was very much to embrace yourself and love what you are, instead of making you something you're not. Refine what you already have - don't change it at its core. That's always been my whole ethos."

"Most of my twenties I was focused on survival or self-destruction. I worked hard to get through the turbulence caused by my childhood, and I had come out stronger, smarter, and developed the tools to self-soothe and grow. Now I was ready to help others do the same. To have the opportunity to be able to do things for other people, to try to be my best authentic self and have that resonate in a way that inspires self-acceptance in others, was blowing my mind on a minute-by-minute basis."

"Being normal is being completely unique, because nobody's the same."

"We are all a beautiful jumble of layers, parts, and mixtures of experiences, but my most important part, and in my opinion everyone's most valuable part, is the one that chooses self-love instead of self-harm in the grand sweeping ways but also the little ways every single day."

"There are a million ways to reach recovery. Don't let anyone tell you you can't find a way that works for you."

"Life is so much a daily exercise in learning to love yourself and forgive yourself, over and over."

"More families should watch the Olympics together. To me, those are core American family values: Cheering on a corrupt institutional body that's super problematic with money and opportunity but we all pretend like it's an equal playing field and celebrate it - what's more American than that?"

"The reality is that LGBTQ+ people face challenges at disproportionally higher rates than their straight counterparts - drug use, sex work, and financial instability can be an unfortunate result. My privilege as a young cis white man whose parents weren't going to let me drown afforded me the ability to make those mistakes and live to talk about it."

"Just because we mess up doesn't mean all the lessons we learned are undone. Healing can be imperfect."

"It's... crucial that humanity come together, rise above these borders that divide us, and... have the People of the world have a voice at the global level, to... express the will of humanity globally... by bringing together the highest and best wisdom of all of us on the planet, not a race to the bottom like this current broken system. A new system that we invent with the incredible genius of humanity to... amalgamate... all of our best thoughts about how we can save the planet... how we can save our children."

"In 1953, Mr. Davis founded the World Government of World Citizens. He later created the ... that continues today to issue passports and other documents. To date, 950,000 people are registered as world citizens... In 1991... the State Department... determined [he] was not legally empowered to print such documents. Critics charged that Mr. Davis was hawking "false hope" to people who had few other places to turn for help."

"It's about a song and dance man on a mission to unite the world, to save this little ball... in space."

"His most-noted supporters included physicist Albert Einstein, the existentialist philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre, and author and philosopher Albert Camus."

"Albert Camus... and other French intellectuals formed "The Association for the International Registry of World Citizens and People's Assembly.""

"His radical proposal... was a world with no borders... in which all people belonged to the same global citizenry. ...[A] place of peace ...no need for war."

"World War II comes along and he finds himself... bombing the city of Brandenburg, and his own brother has been killed... [H]e says, "Why am I killing..? Why wasn't I arrested for killing..? Whey weren't they?" and he goes on a mission to figure out how he can save our world."

"[W]e now have a world government which... has an office in Washington D.C. and we have an office in Shanghai... We have an agency called the World Service Authority which issues these passports."