September 2013

Thursday, September 26, 2013

The Greatest Speech Ever Made

This is Charlie Chaplin's final speech in The Great Dictator, and is unarguably the greatest speech ever given. Please consider these dear words and their relevance to our current state of affairs. This speech is a must see!



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“I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that.

We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.

Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair.

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder.

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite.

Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance!

Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!” ― Charlie Chaplin


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Monday, September 2, 2013

What's Wrong With Our Culture

Thought-provoking 5 minutes on the state of the world from the late, great Alan Watts, a man far ahead of his time. Created by The Omega Point Project.


“Your world is an illusion. From the day you were born, you have been conditioned. Your schools taught you to be quiet, neutral and numb. Your media desensitized you to the suffering of your fellow human beings and the system slowly isolated you until it somehow felt normal to feel alone on a planet with 8 billion other people on it.

You worked hard for the future with your reward always just around the next corner or just up the next step. Everything was tomorrow but tomorrow never came. And you realized too late that you had never lived at all. Something was missing and no matter how much you worked, partied or paid you could not disguise it.

You accepted it as natural for one to be wealthy whilst another is poor, or the absurd notion that we must pay back the debt of our own existence. We traded community culture for corporate comfort and our most precious resource, our time, as a commodity.

We need to move beyond revolution and into the next stage of human evolution. A time marked by unparalleled compassion and peaceful co-existence. The shape of which we can not foresee as it must be created together.

We will take no power back as we shall empower ourselves and we shall say:

We are the humans. We are awake now. We reclaim our destiny.”

- Anonymous

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