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That’s free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing – the truly democratic thing about it – is that you don’t even have to be a player to lose.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying… We’ve shopped till we dropped alright, face down on the floor.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

People Roles Unique
In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shite fundamentalists.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Matter Spiritual War
The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Fashion Halfhearted Many Other Possible Truth
Whenever people can access deities directly without the intervention of a religious hierarchy, they don’t need to have hierarchy so much.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Need People Religious
When you watch television, you never see people watching television. We love television because it brings us a world in which television does not exist.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Love People Television Watches World
Marriage probably originated as a straightforward food-for-sex deal among foraging primates. Compatibility was not a big issue, nor, of course, was there any tension over who would control the remote.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Compatiblity Foraging Issue Sex
From an entertainment point of view, the Solar System has been a bust. None of the planets turns out to have any real-estate potential, and most of them are probably even useless for filming Dune sequels.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Real Science Views
I think it’s tragic that we have this human capacity, which appears to be hardwired, or so the evolutionary biologists say, for collective joy. We have these techniques for generating it that go back thousands of years, and yet we tend not to use this.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Biological Joy Say Thinking Years
Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Clever Evolution Favors
There is the fear, common to all English-only speakers, that the chief purpose of foreign languages is to make fun of us. Otherwise, you know, why not just come out and say it?
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Fun Language Purpose Speaker
There is a reason why America produced the most vigorous feminist movement in the world: We were one of the only countries in which the middle class (which is wealthy by world standards) customarily employed its own women as domestic servants.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Class Country Feminist Movement Vigorous
Middle-class-led reform movements, from the Progressive Era to the War on Poverty, have been marred by an elitist distance from the would-be beneficiaries of reform.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Class Distance War
The fact is that heterosexual sex for most people is in no way free of the power relations between men and women.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Men People Sex
Whether you work outside the home or not, never tell them [your children] that being a mommy is your ‘job.’ Being a mommy is a relationship, not a profession.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Children Home Job Mother
Considering the absence of legal coercion, the surprising thing is that men have for so long, and, on the whole, so reliably, adhered to what we might call the breadwinner ethic.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Coercion Long Men
Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Loss Oneness Self

That’s free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing – the truly democratic thing about it – is that you don’t even have to be a player to lose.

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That’s free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing – the truly democratic thing about it – is that you don’t even have to be a player to lose.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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