Profit From Ongoing Disintegration

Statistics began life as a tool through which the state could view society, but gradually developed into something that academics, civic reformers and businesses had a stake in.  But for many data analytics firms, secrecy surrounding methods and sources of data is a competitive advantage that they will not give up voluntarily.
A post-statistical society is a potentially frightening proposition, not because it would lack any forms of truth or expertise altogether, but because it would drastically privatise them.  Statistics are one of many pillars of liberalism, indeed of Enlightenment.  The experts who produce and use them have become painted as arrogant and oblivious to the emotional and local dimensions of politics.  No doubt there are ways in which data collection could be adapted to reflect lived experiences better.  But the battle that will need to be waged in the long term is not between an elite-led politics of facts versus a populist politics of feeling.  It is between those still committed to public knowledge and public argument and those who profit from the ongoing disintegration of those things.
—    William Davies
From his article: “How Statistics Lost Their Power“
Appearing in:  “The Guardian“, dtd: January 19, 2017
I found it at:  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-statistics-lost-their-power-and-why-we-should-fear-what-comes-next
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In The Moment

As for increasing or furthering your understanding of reality, if you practice push-hands without attachment to results and without expectations of any sort you will gradually come to a state of functioning without the use of your discriminating intellect.  Your mind will not and really cannot draw distinctions of any sort as you push, because your reactions in attack and defense will then slow or stop altogether.  It is this state of mind, of being fully in the moment, which prepares the ground for flashes of enlightenment or of seeing the world more clearly.
—    Herman Kauz
From his book:  “Push-Hands: The Handbook For Non-Competitive Tai Chi Practice With A Partner“
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Foundational Pillar Of Civilized Discourse

The Enlightenment sought to establish reason as the foundational pillar of civilized discourse.  In this conception, logical argument matters, and the truth of a statement is tested by examination of values, assumptions, and facts, not by how many people believe it.  Cyber-enabled information warfare threatens to replace these pillars of logic and truth with fantasy and rage.
—    Herbert Lin
As quoted by:  Virginia Heffernan
In her article: “Clock Watchers: The Beautiful Benefits of Contemplating Doom“
In Wired Magazine, dtd: Apr 2019
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What About Freedom?

And what about the ideal of freedom, the principle that in America has served as a beacon for both the left and the right, the religious and the secular, for the past three hundred years?  This has become such a fundamental part of our thinking that we have all but forgotten its origin as an Enlightenment project.  But in fact no one before that era ever considered individual autonomy to be a “natural” right.
—   Brooke Allen
From her book:   “Moral Minority“
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