More from Nyquist's "Origins of the Fourth World War"

More Chapter One excerpts from J.R. Nyquist's must-read "Origins of the Fourth World War" ...

- "Moral relativism begins with the premise that there isn't any truth. But is this really true?"

- "Today, there is no interest in conversing with one's neighbors; diversity hemmed-in and foredoomed; a flurry of unneeded face-lifts, butt-lifts, nose jobs, cheek implants, youthful images, diets, suctions, fastings, and purgings--the world falsified according to the rules of sex-appeal. This makes for a new society and a new escapism: an escapism detached from the religious impulses of old; an escapism by way of lowest common denominators. Ergo, an increase in sloth and fat; an increase in reactivity versus activity; a weakening of the moral muscle; a decline in originality coinciding with a thirst for novelty. Mind-set? Jaded. A need arises for the bizarre, the sick, the increasingly hysterical and emotional. We have come to expect a presentation of the world better than the world: more interesting, intense, and engaging--which leads to entertainment instead of church as the path to paradise; eclipsing the whole of real existence, even to the point of undercutting the human imagination. Enter television."

- "The essence of our society's connecting fabric is an idiot box. Type of shows? Comedy and drama; especially drama with 'happy' endings, non-tragic, without any sense of the inevitable--therefore, no sociological sense either. We now have an entire nation with the same vocabulary of vicarious experiences, with the same unrealistic expectations. Emphasis is on images rather than concepts; therefore, a lessening of mental agility; a shrinking of our vocabulary; the end of eloquence; a decline in reading; also an increased tendency to characterize one's adversary as evil; violence, terror, bloodshed as a stimulant suggestive of a 'snuff' movie."

- "War without loss is an immorality. That we have imagined otherwise merely demonstrates that our thinking has become inverted."

- "Today, as never before, the pariah is the only man with the chance to think for himself. Everyone else is relentlessly compelled by peer pressures. Everyone constantly blackmails everyone. The threat of ostracism easily molds the soft democratic soul into fashionable shapes.

- "The out-of-fashion individual, the outcast (perhaps the only real human being remaining) eats out of some dumpster on the edge of town."

- "Our law-abiding citizen of today--not moral, but tame, domesticated, lazy, comfortable."

- "The most commonplace psychiatric pathology of the last twenty-five years is something called 'character disorder.' This is merely another way of talking about moral decline without using the word morality."

Still a bit more next time.