Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions
George W Bush
The master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house
bell hooks
As society has elevated the status of victims past and present, it is unsurprising that passive aggression has become one of the dominant social dynamics of our age
…a number of modern thinkers have seen the restraint of aggression as the basis of a functioning society. Sigmund Freud characterised passive aggression as part of the irresolvable tragedy of the human condition – the voracious will of the individual and the conformist demands of society are ultimately irreconcilable. On the eve of the second world war…, …the spread of manners across Europe over many centuries went hand in hand with the establishment of the modern state, suppressing the excesses of violence and sexual flagrancy in society.
The great advantage of passive aggression is not only that it allows us simultaneously to exercise and to deny our aggression but that it weaponises our vulnerability. Instead of exposing our feelings of insecurity, passivity becomes a sneaky way of asserting ourselves. Perhaps we should call it aggressive passivity instead.
Josh Cohen
It’s a decades-old pattern common in Silicon Valley: before we automate, we offshore.
https://schmud.de/posts/2025-07-15-engineering-end-of-work.html