We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.
Interpretation
The quote critiques society's fixation on materialism and power dynamics.
Cornel West's quote highlights the pitfalls of a market-driven society that prioritizes consumerism, power, and pleasure above all else. It suggests that this obsession can lead to a devaluation of deeper values such as community, empathy, and ethical responsibility, urging individuals to reflect on what truly matters in life beyond material possessions.
In practice
In a discussion on the impact of materialism on mental health.
King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.
You've got to love yourself enough, not only so that others will be able to love you, but that you'll be able to love others.
Profound music leads us beyond language...to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.
And when I talk about love, I'm talking about something that's great, though, brother. I'm talking about something that will sustain you.
Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.
I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.'
Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.
Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.
You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.
Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.
The historical mission of our times is to re-invent the humanβat the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience.
In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.
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