The cult of self dominates our cultural landscape. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity, and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, and manipulation, and the inability to feel remorse or guilt. This is, of course, the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. In fact, personal style, defined by the commodities we buy or consume, has become a compensation for our loss of democratic equality. We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy, and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. Once you get there, those questions are no longer asked. Chris Hedges
Some Similar Quotes
  1. The first duty of a man is to think for himself - Unknown
  2. You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker - Malcolm X
  3. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. - Vladimir Lenin
  4. The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution! - Albert Einstein
  5. The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too. - Malcolm X
More Quotes By Chris Hedges
  1. If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents,...
  2. Where else, but from the industrialized world, did the suicide hijackers learn that the huge explosions and death above a city skyline are a peculiar and effective form of communication? They have mastered the language.
  3. Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. It is not about the right attitude. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is action. Hope is doing something. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>The more futile, the more useless,...
  4. The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is...
  5. We are enjoined to love our neighbor, not our tribe.
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