22 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. Where there is no common power, there is no law; whereno law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justiceand injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were,they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses andpassions

      without laws there would be no injustice because there would be nothing to refer to determine if there was injustice. what about things that you just know to be wrong like murder? if there is no law against it, is it not wrong?

    2. No more are the actions that proceedfrom those passions, till they know a law that forbids them; which, till laws bemade, they cannot know, nor can any law be made till they have agreed uponthe person that shall make it

      people won't know right and wrong, or what is forbidden until someone tells them so. he's saying that you need someone in place to make the people agree upon laws so that they know the appropriate workings of society.

    3. In such condition there is no place for industry, because thefruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigationnor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodiousbuilding, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require muchforce, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time, no arts, noletters, no society, and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violentdeath, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

      In a place of continuous war, there is no room for comfort for any man. They are constantly being deprived of all the "good" things. may be describing some type of dystopia?

    4. So that in the nature of man we find three principal causes of quarrel. First,competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory

      this makes a lot of sense. there are a few wars and battles that I've read about in history class that ultimately boiled down to one of these three things and had no real political issue behind it.

    5. Again, men have no pleasure, but on the contrary a great deal of grief, inkeeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all

      people would not know how to live if there was so governing power

    6. And by consequence, such augmentation of dominion over men beingnecessary to a man’s conservation, it ought to be allowed him.

      is he saying that you have to have control over others in order to save yourself? rule or be ruled?

    7. nd therefore, if any two men desire the same thing which nevertheless theycannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and, in the way to their end, which isprincipally their own conservation and sometimes their delectation only,endeavour to destroy or subdue one another.

      this reminds me of kids on a playground fighting over a toy. If I can't have it, you can't have it. Although people grow up, we always participate in childish games when we don't get our way

    8. howsoever theymay acknowledge many others to be more witty or more eloquent or morelearned, yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves, forthey see their own wit at hand and other men’s at a distance.

      people can never believe that someone else has as much knowledge as they do. shows why people won't admit when they're wrong or when others truly know better than they do.

    9. Forprudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men inthose things they equally apply themselves unto.

      cautiousness and wisdom come with age and experience, you won't know these things until you've lived them.

  2. Jan 2024
    1. As a result, their neighbour is for them not only a potential helper or sexualobject, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacityfor work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, tohumiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him

      is he saying that it is not the nature of man to have friendship, but is always trying to cause pain and suffering?

    2. When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in theenvironment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves, and do not even need the child they have incommon to make them happy.

      just read an article for my socio of family class about families that don't have children and this is similar to one of the main points made in the article. couples without children are satisfied the the happiness and freedom of only having to focus on their partners and not having to delegate anymore of their love or time to children.

    3. We said there that man's discovery that sexual (genital)love afforded him the strongest experiences of satisfaction, and in fact provided him with the prototypeof all happiness, must have suggested to him that he should continue to seek the satisfaction ofhappiness in his life along the path of sexual relations and that he should make genital erotism thecentral point of his life

      is he saying that sex is the truest form of happiness?

    4. When this happened, themale acquired a motive for keeping the female, or, speaking more generally, his sexual objects, nearhim; while the female, who did not want to be separated from her helpless young, was obliged, in theirinterests, to remain with the stronger male.

      reducing women to just sexual objects and mothers when they truly play a much larger role in family and society

    5. Man has, as it were,become a kind of prosthetic God.

      good metaphor. people have made technological advancements that removed the barriers of nature, in efforts to be all knowing and all powerful like a god

    6. Happiness, however, is something essentially subjective

      There is no definite way to measure or examine happiness.

    7. but it is very difficult to forman opinion whether and in what degree men of an earlier age felt happier and what part their culturalconditions played in the matter.

      we don't know if our unhappiness is due to modern advancement or if humans have always felt this way because there were no records of the feelings of happiness before civilization

    8. And, finally,what good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we canonly welcome death as a deliverer?

      All the "perks" of modern civilization don't bring happiness, they just give us more time to be miserable?

    9. It wasdiscovered that a person becomes neurotic because he cannot tolerate the amount of frustration whichsociety imposes on him in the service of its cultural ideals, and it was inferred from this that theabolition or reduction of those demands would result in a return to possibilities of happiness.

      The pressures and expectations of society being a cause of unhappiness makes a lot of sense. It's very easy to for people to lead their lives in a way that makes them look good in society, rather than doing what's going to make them happy.

    10. I callthis contention astonishing because, in whatever way we may define the concept of civilization, it is acertain fact that all the things with which we seek to protect ourselves against the threats that emanatefrom the sources of suffering are part of that very civilization

      Sources of unhappiness that we try to shield ourselves from or be weary are are all around us because those things that happen to be the sources of unhappiness are also imbedded into being apart of civilization

    1. But "highly visible" social groups such as Blacks or women are differentfrom aggregates, or mere "combinations of people" (see French, 1975; Friedman and May, 1985; May, 1987, chap. 1). A social group is defined not primarily by a set of shared attributes, but by a sense of identity.What definesBlack Americans as a social group is not primarily their skin color; some persons whose skin coior is fairly light, for example, identify themselves as Black.Though sometimes objective attributes are a necessary condition for classifying oneself or others as belonging to a certain social group, it is identificationwith a certain social status, the common histor y that social status produces,and self-identification that define the group as a group

      This reminds me of an autobiographical short story that I read that was written by an Afro-Latina woman. She recounted her experiences as an Afro-Latina in America and how she did not identify with being a black American despite people often treating her as one due to her physical characteristics.

    2. (won't let me select the passage) On page 39, last paragraph... Just because a group of people benefits from the oppression of another group does not mean that they are oppressors?

    3. incommensurat

      not corresponding in size or degree or extent