Political activism is not failing because people are too busy watching cat videos online, but because of a fundamental collapse of citizen leverage on institutions of power like governments and corporations.
Zeynep TufekciRead
Much of what ails our modern life is exactly because we reduce the value of a human being to a number, say salary or consumer power.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the tendency to measure a person's worth solely by quantifiable metrics like salary or consumer influence.
Zeynep Tufekci's quote highlights a fundamental issue in modern society where the intrinsic value of an individual is often overlooked and instead evaluated based on superficial metrics such as income or material possessions. This reductionist view undermines the complexity of humanity and the rich experiences that shape a person's life, thereby inviting a deeper consideration of how we define worth beyond mere numbers.
Themes
ValueHumanityWorthLifeSocietyMetrics
In practice
Example use cases
During a seminar on ethical leadership, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of recognizing and valuing individual contributions beyond financial metrics.
More from Zeynep Tufekci
All quotes βGiven exponential growth dynamics of infectious diseases, containing an epidemic is straightforward early on, but nearly impossible once a disease spreads among a population.
Zeynep TufekciRead
Remember, the Internet did not create freedom of speech; in theory, we always had freedom of speech - it's just that it often went along with the freedom to be ignored. People had no access to the infrastructure to be heard.
Zeynep TufekciRead
Attention, to a terrorist group, is often what the well-meaning, outraged response is to your two-bit Internet troll: it is the food that feeds them.
Zeynep TufekciRead
You might be tempted to think that China has a Streisand-effect problem, in which trying to censor an event creates even more publicity. But that assumes the Chinese government doesn't understand the Streisand effect, and that can't be right, because if one government understands attention dynamics online, it's China's.
Zeynep TufekciRead
A 'fair' fight between non-equals is not fair, and being blind to power is an implicit endorsement of the powerful.
Zeynep TufekciRead
Similar quotes
We have known for a long time that Prince Charles' empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant. He fell for the fake anthropologist Laurens van der Post. He was bowled over by the charms of homeopathic medicine. He has been believably reported as saying that plants do better if you talk to them in a soothing and encouraging way
Christopher HitchensRead
The most important question we must ask ourselves is, 'Are we being good ancestors?'
Jonas SalkRead
The best pleasures of this world are not quite true.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? ...If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example?
William ShakespeareRead
Each human being has the eternal duty of turning what is hard and brutal into_x000D_ a tender and subtle offering, what is crude into an object of refinement, what_x000D_ is ugly into a thing of beauty, confrontation into collaboration, ignorance into_x000D_ knowledge, hereby rediscovering the child's dream of a creative reality_x000D_ incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love
Yehudi MenuhinRead
If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all
C. S. LewisRead