The Unhappiness Machine Quotes

“We need to not forget that there was a time in our history when all that we needed was some food and a pretty pebble that we had found in the river.  These items were enough, they genuinely felt like more than enough.”
― George Tsakraklides, The Unhappiness Machine: and other stories about Systemic Collapse

“If humans were highly sentient, they would “feel” and “sense” the pull of their umbilical connection to every other life form on Earth, which they literally share the same phylogenetic tree with. Humans have an admirable ability in identifying, analysing and recognising all of the things that they are doing wrong, and yet, carry on doing them anyway. Doing “what is right” is always sacrificed at the altar of greed and narcissism. Compassion and empathy are seen as unexpected, unwanted and unaccounted for overhead expenses within our capitalist system. They are “nice to have”, but a threat to the global “economy”. Compassion, empathy and emotional intelligence are not really seen as an “intelligent” brain function in our species. Manipulation and calculation, the side-effects of our tremendous brain power, are far more interesting and rewarding, and fit more closely our popularized definition of what “intelligence” is. In fact, “intelligence” today is a synonym for military terminology that means to collect information against the enemy.”
― George Tsakraklides, The Unhappiness Machine: and other stories about Systemic Collapse