If you have an Internet-connected system, there's no wall currently that you can build that's high enough or deep enough to keep a dedicated nation-state or even a sophisticated criminal group out of your system.
The techno-industrial system is exceptionally tough due to its so-called "democratic" structure and its resulting flexibility. Because dictatorial systems tend to be rigid, social tensions and resistance can be built up in them to the point where they damage and weaken the system and may lead to revolution. But in a "democratic" system, when social tension and resistance build up dangerously the system backs off enough, it compromises enough, to bring the tensions down to a safe level.
Simulation is the situation created by any system of signs when it becomes sophisticated enough, autonomous enough, to abolish its own referent and to replace it with itself.
The fact that more than half of the young black men in any large American city are currently under the control of the criminal justice system (or saddled with criminal records) is not - as many argue - just a symptom of poverty or poor choices, but rather evidence of a new racial caste system at work.
The Internet may well disempower the nation state, but at the same time, it also strengthens certain specific state functions - like surveillance. As a political entity, it doesn't empower the nation sate. It creates the availability of much more data than the digestive system of the nation state could possibly assimilate.
I fast every Sunday. I don’t eat anything. Just juices. […] It flushes out the system, cleans out the colon. I think that’s great. To really make it work, you have to do it properly. That’s the sewer valve of the system. You have to keep that clean like you clean the outside of your body. All these impurities come out of your system because you’re not clean inside. It comes out in pimples or disease or through big pores. Toxins trying to get out of your system. People should try to keep themselves clean.
Whether it's threats to Medicare, cuts in education spending, or Internet privacy, the ramifications got young people out to vote and should be enough to keep them involved in our political system.
I am not bigoted enough for a system-and not even for my system.
Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system which is out of control, a system in which over 50% of young African American kids are unemployed. It is estimated that a black baby born today has a one in four chance of ending up in the criminal justice system.
Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.
By the 1890s, the leading Wall Street bankers were becoming increasingly disgruntled with their own creation, the National Banking System... while the banking system was partially centralized under their leadership, it was not centralized enough.
There is no way for the American economic system to function without advertising. There is no other way to communicate enough information about enough products to enough people with enough speed.
What makes humans unique is that evolution gave us the most incredible and sophisticated vision system, motor system, and language system, and they all work together.
We simply do not catch a high enough percentage of users to make the law a real threat, although we do catch enough to seriously overburden our legal system.
For something to collapse, not all systems have to shut down. In most cases, just one system is enough. For example, the human body is a system of systems. If just one system, such as the cardiovascular system, shuts down, death follows.
We need to reject not only outdated fossil-fuel technology, but also an outdated economic system and an outdated corporatist political system. The progressive view is that we are smart enough and ethical enough to not have to be subservient to corporations. We can create our own resilient, localized communities.
The lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride; The threshold high enough to turn deceit aside; The doorband strong enough from robbers to defend; This door will open at a touch to welcome every friend.