A Quote by Christine and the Queens
There's a lack of ambition in politics in terms of what we expect from the government, what it means to have a state.
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Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
Every child is born sane, and then, slowly slowly, we civilize him - we call it the process of civilization. We prepare him to become part of the great culture, the great church, the great state to which we belong. Our whole politics is stupid, and then HE becomes stupid. Our whole education is ugly. Our politics means nothing but ambition, naked ambition - ambition for power. And only the lowest kind of people become interested in power.
Love says respect the other as an end unto himself or herself; never use the other as a means. Nobody is a means for you, everybody is an end. But then ambition will flop, and our whole educational system depends on ambitiousness, our politics depends on ambition, our religions depend on ambition.
We start making every child ambitious, and ambition means you cannot love; ambition is anti-love. Ambition needs fight, ambition needs struggle, ambition needs you to use others as a means.
I don't expect to ever put my family background to rest but I do expect to be taken seriously as a scholar, a writer and a Latin Americanist on my own terms, not defined through my parents and their history or politics.
Mind is politics, because mind is ambitious and ambition is the root of politics. If you are ambitious you are political. Your ambition may take the form of religion, but the politics is there. Then you are competing with other saints.
The Bible says we are to be salt and light. And salt and light means not just in the church and not just as a teacher or as a pastor or a banker or a lawyer, but in government and we have to have elected officials in government and we have to have the faithful in government and over time, that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking that they needed to avoid politics and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers.
Government means politics, and interference by government carries with it always the implication of coercion. We may accept the expanding power of bureaucrats so long as we bask in their friendly smile. But it is a dangerous temptation. Today politics may be our friend and tomorrow we may be its victims.
If we want to create new rules of globalization, then we can't just think in terms of the nation state. The nation state has long offered protection. But it suffers from the fact that many citizens increasingly fear that it can no longer protect them: The threat of transnational terrorism is growing. Freedom of movement rules in Europe facilitate social dumping. Regardless of the make-up of the next government, it must have clear ideas on how to overcome the lack of direction of recent years.
The whole society depends on creating ambition in you. Ambition means a conflict, ambition means that whatsoever you are, you are wrong - you have to be somewhere else. Wherever you are, you are wrong - you have to be somewhere else. A constant madness to be somewhere else, to be somebody else, is what ambition is.
It's still very relevant to how politics works within government, but in terms of the way into politics for an outsider, no, I don't think that would work. I don't know what would, other than... people are going online, and finding the single issue topics. I mean, look at the junior doctors' strike at the moment, or benefit cuts. That sort of cut across parties, and real pressure was felt in the government from inside and out.
Expecting the best means that you put your whole heart (i.e. the central essence of your personality) into what you want to accomplish. People are defeated in life not because of lack of ability, but for lack of wholeheartedness. They do not wholeheartedly expect to succeed. Their heart isn't in it, which is to say, they themselves are not fully given.
Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of government.
When you think of power, you think the state has power. When you look at it in terms of revolution, in terms of the state, you think of it in terms of Russia, the Soviet Union, and how those who struggled for power actually became victims of the state, prisoners of the state, and how that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We have to think of revolution much more in terms of transitions from one epoch to another. Talk about Paleolithic and Neolithic.
When you think of power, you think the state has power. When you look at it in terms of revolution, in terms of the state, you think of it in terms of Russia, the Soviet Union, and how those who struggled for power actually became victims of the state, prisoners of the state, and how that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We have to think of revolution much more in terms of transitions from one epoch to another.
Do you know what my ambition is in life? To be without ambition. As far back as I can remember I've been absolutely hag-ridden. I'd like to attain the state of mind that the Indians call Nirvana. That, for me, would happen if I were free of ambition.
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