Social Optimum. The person satisfied with his lot ought to be placed in a lower condition, because he might be as satisfied in that lower condition as he currently is, and other people envy his current condition. Because of his case, it is likely that the overall equilibrium is suboptimal. Being unsatisfied, even unhappy, is a good omen; there only needs not go off the rails, because then one becomes useless.

Business Cycles. The cycle implies to do nothing against recession but at the same time, because the population is impacted, to make believe everything is done. This is the function of politicians. In the case of those “in command,” the function can be best described as follows: Dispose of in case of need.

Make-Work. It is not because the economy needs our work that we are working. No, we are working because we wouldn’t know what to make of our free time.

If it is idleness that corrupts (Voltaire), then one should ask whether the brightest child is not as idle in school as the worst dunce.

Reading a newspaper is relying on partial and partisan rhetoric; reading two newspapers is a waste of time.

What used to be called the servile class are now called entrepreneurs. The house cook now runs a restaurant, the footman has opened an electrical and plumbing business, the housemaid is a self-employed cleaning lady. These are the entrepreneurs. As to the economy, it’s the technostructure that handles it.

Nothing great in the world has ever been achieved without passion (Hegel). A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do (Oscar Wilde).

The real problem is not mass unemployment but mass employment.

Mankind owes everything to cynics. What a cynic was the man who invented the wheel, who thought walking was foolish when the others said it was a duty.

Definition. The organization man is an intermediate state between man and the machine.

When the organization man wants to save his soul from complete mechanization, he turns to politics and becomes a politician. He plays at elections, at personal power… This is why the man who remains an organization man all his life hates the politician, who puts something human, however primitive, in his own life. Of course he despises him at the same time because, whereas he, the organization man, has an aura derived from the fact that he represents the corporation (“I represent the corporation”), the politician has an aura derived form the fact that he seeks to represent or actually represents the people, and that for sure has a peculiar smell.

Below good and evil: This is the life of the organization man.

At a Parisian café a cup of coffee is expensive because it is served to you by a grumpy waiter.

The principle of least effort is at the core of the economy because it conditions productivity. However, the organization man has a hierarchical, even a feudal outlook; his objective is to be well seen. Hence a burst of efforts and energy as spectacular as it is worthless.

To sacrifice oneself in order to provide one’s children with a better life than one’s life (meaning to legitimate one’s overwork) is as bright an idea as that of a life after death.

They say moral judgement relates to the act and not to the person. However, women permit to some what they take offense at from others.

Man can take his pleasure with any woman (who does not disgust him). Why would he consult anything but his interest in the choice of a mate?

Taking his pleasure with any woman, man is a pig. Furthermore, all great minds agree to say that work prevents one from cultivating oneself and thinking. Thus modern man, as condemned to work, is a dog. I say he is a rat too, but that is merely a personal opinion.

It is so complicated to be a woman that if a woman told the whole truth, not one man would comprehend her consistency.

Women are superior to men, except in their tastes, because they love men. Whereas men have noble tastes that incline them towards objects of a superior quality.

Politicians are proof that cretins can go far in life, and our societies cannot do without such a message of hope.

Rechtschreibreform. These last years the Germans have invented a few linguistic niceties such as Schifffahrt, Rollladen, Stopppreis, Schwimmmeister, &c, and they are serious about it, they really mean to write like that. Once the philosopher said, “Jeder Wohlgesinnte und Einsichtige ergreife also mit mir Partei für die deutsche Sprache gegen die deutsche Dummheit.” (Schopenhauer) (“I call every good-meaning and reasonable person to take side with me for German language against German stupidity.”) As we can see, it’s now too late! Who cares about Germans and Germany anyway?

Zillions of euros are spent in advertising aimed at associating in the male consumer’s mind this or that low-end product with success in courtship whereas everybody knows that, to succeed with women, one would rather earn more money than what allows to buy these cheap products.

What a person buys under the influence of mass advertising is what prevents him from distinguishing himself, when his goal is to distinguish himself. N.B. I’d say it pays the poor to distinguish himself from the poor surrounding him, in poor women’s eyes, but it impairs the rich to distinguish himself, because then he’s just an eccentric.

We sent people to the moon (so they say) but we can’t even make silent fridges. You just can’t buy a fridge for an open-plan kitchen without making a no man’s land of your living room due to the nuisance!

Mass culture is the engine of automatized consumption.

Oscar Wilde is like me, he can’t believe in the authenticity of ordinary people’s passions: “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” When asked about their life by social scientists, people remember a film they liked and tell the story.

My ancestors must have owned slaves, because I hate to work.

Scholars tell you work is good in order to keep not working.

From Dr Blau, evolutionary psychologist: “Those who make sexual pursuits too conspicuous a goal of their life are considered base. I am not saying these people are base, only that they are considered base, including by myself.”

June 2016