Civ Quotes

I said. "I'm fine. I have a little bit of a head ache, but I'm not dizzy or nauseous. I can walk and talk just fine, and I can remember everything." "Everything, huh? Don't self-diagnose, Doctor Fisher. Do you remember when the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought?" "The what?" "The Battle of Bunker Hill. We covered it in World Civ." "No, we did not." "We did, too. The unit on the American Revolution." "Davin, that was like, two years ago! I don't remember stuff like that!" "So, not everything." "Everything important." "That happens to have been a very significant battle," Davin reminded me, in a smug tone. ~ J.M. Richards

This is the moment when we have to decide: does a world exist outside ourselves and is that world worth fighting for? Another 200 species went extinct today. They were my kin. They were yours, too. If we know them as such, why aren't we fighting to save them with everything we've got? ~ Lierre Keith

Long sleeps the summer in the seed.

Verse CIV ~ Alfred Tennyson

The "norm" for humanity is love.
Brutality is an aberration.
We are not sinners by nature.
We learn to be bad.
We are taught to stray from our good paths.
We are made to be crazy by other people who are also crazy and who draw for us a map of the world which is ugly, negative, fearful, and crazy. ~ Jack D. Forbes

I think the biggest reason otherwise radical people don't want to face the necessity of ending industrial civilization is privilege. We're the ones reaping the benefits. We've sold out the rest of life on earth for convenience, creature comforts, and cheap consumer goods, and it's appalling. I'm sickened by this bargain. ~ Lierre Keith

Further, any way of life based on the importation of resources is also functionally based on violence, because if your way of life requires the importation of resources, trade will never be sufficiently reliable: if people in the next watershed over won't trade you for some necessary resource, you will take it, because you need it. So, to bring this to the present, we could all become enlightened, and the US military would still have to be huge: how else will they get access to the oil they need to run the economy, oil that just happens to lie under someone else's land? The point is that no matter what we think of the irredeemability of this culture's mass psychology or system of rewards, this culture–civilization–is also irredeemable on a purely functional level. ~ Aric McBay

Humans are only one species of millions. To kill millions of species for the benefit of one is insane, just as killing millions of people for the benefit of one person would be insane. And since unimpeded ecological collapse would kill off humans anyway, those species will ultimately have died for nothing, and the planet will take millions of years to recover. Rapid collapse is ultimately good for humans because at least some people survive. And remember, the people who need the system to come down the most are the rural poor in the majority of the world: the faster the actionists can bring down industrial civilization, the better the prospects for those people and their landbases. Regardless, without immediate action, everyone dies. ~ Aric McBay

The role of smart, radical activists is to encourage, protract, organize, and multiply the chipping away not only at the mythology of presumed supremacy, but at power and its social and physical infrastructure. To find weak points within scriptures and structures of the system, as one might examine an old block wall before demolition, seeking out crumbling mortar lines and cracked blocks. Then, to strike, and recruit more help - more and more - and strike, and strike, and bring it down. ~ Michael Carter

Someone once told me his idea for surviving a crash of civilization was to be a lone wolf, heading for the hills, with his rifle and knife, living off the land. "Nowadays, I'm more interested in staying behind and helping others," he said, "like after Hurricane Katrina. Coming together and rebuilding something that can last."

"How about BEFORE a disaster?" I asked.

"Even better. ~ Michael Carter

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need for our civ ilisation; but
no such system has a chance while men are so unhappy that mutual extermination
seems to them less dreadful than continued endurance of the light of day ~ Bertrand Russell

If we can't love our one and only home, what can we love? If we're unwilling to defend what we love, then what are we? ~ Michael Carter

Even if we're among the lucky few who benefit from civilization, we find ourselves curiously unsatisfied, plagued by stress, worry, and conflict... Like the addict who believes against all evidence that what he can't give up won't lead to suffering and death, our culture adheres to its ideas in spite of ample, clear evidence they will lead to suffering and death. ~ Michael Carter

Humans aren't going to do anything in time to prevent the planet from being destroyed wholesale. Poor people are too preoccupied by primary emergencies, rich people benefit from the status quo, and the middle class are too obsessed with their own entitlement and the technological spectacle to do anything. The risk of runaway global warming is immediate. A drop in the human population is inevitable, and fewer people will die if collapse happens sooner. ~ Aric McBay

Resistance is a simple concept: power, unjust and immoral, is confronted and dismantled. The powerful are denied their right to hurt the less powerful. Domination is replaced by equity in a shift or substitution of institutions. That shift eventually forms new human relationships, both personally and across society. ~ Lierre Keith

No successes we might have are guaranteed to last as long as industrial civilization stands. Conversely, most of our losses are effectively permanent. Extinct species cannot be resurrected. Overdrawn aquifers or clear-cut forests will not return to their original states on timescales meaningful to humans. The destruction of land-based cultures, and the deliberate impoverishment of much of humanity, results in major loss and long-­term social trauma. With sufficient action, it's possible to solve many of the problems we face, but if that action doesn't materialize in time, the effects are irreversible. ~ Aric McBay

Code of Civil Procedure §1161(2) prevents the landlord from claiming rent due more than a year before the service of the 3-day notice. See Fifth & Broadway Partnership v Kimny, Inc. (1980) 102 CA3d 195, 202. An argument could also be made on the ground of laches that it is inequitable for a landlord to wait a full year before demanding overdue rent. That argument was successfully made in Maxwell v Simons (Civ Ct 1973) 353 NYS2d 589, which held that it was unconscionable for a landlord to permit the tenant to fall more than 3 months behind in rent before bringing an unlawful detainer action based on the total arrearage. New York law required the tenant to pay the arrearage within 5 days or return possession. The court held that the landlord could base his eviction action only on the last 3 months' nonpayment of rent and would have to recover the balance in an ordinary action for rent. See also Marriott v Shaw (Civ Ct 1991) 574 NYS2d 477 and Dedvukaj v Mandonado (Civ Ct 1982) 453 NYS2d 965. In California, this reasoning, along with the cases cited above on "equitable" defenses, might be used to attack a 3-day notice to pay or quit demanding more than three months' back rent. ~ Myron Moskovitz