spitx

  Third, public transportation is generally valued more highly here than
  in other places for a variety of reasons.

  As an Austrian, NATO was never there to protect us.
  America was admired for setting an example as a 
  great nation where people can live freely.

  “Il faut cesser de penser et se retrousser les manches.”

  (Roughly translated: "We must stop thinking and roll up our sleeves.")

  In proposing a tax-cut law last week, Finance Minister Christine
  Lagarde bluntly advised the French people to abandon their 
  “old national habit.”

  “France is a country that thinks,” she told the National Assembly.
  “There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory.
   We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to 
   come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, 
   already. Roll up your sleeves.”

  "And then there is France. In the realms of cultural, 
  diplomatic, linguistic or economic policies, the French
  have long and eloquently insisted on their nation's 
  "exceptionalism." Yet a new form of exceptionalism, 
  no less eloquent, though far more brutal, now burdens 
  them: since 2011, France has seen at least a dozen men
  and women who have either set, or tried to set, 
  themselves aflame.

  The cradle of the Enlightenment, France now glimpses 
  a very different light, one that makes visible the 
  darkness of its economic and social malaise.

  The series of self-immolations has ranged across the
  country, from Flanders in the north through the suburbs
  of Paris to the Pyrenees in the south. No less varied 
  are the workplaces to each of these suicides: a lycée
  teacher, a carpenter, a company manager. Moreover,
  there is a mix of class and ethnic backgrounds: among 
  the victims are so-called "français de souche" (white 
  and native born French) as well as foreign nationals
  who had lived for years in France.

  Beyond the static of differences, though, one can see 
  common and disconcerting themes. In all of these cases,
  the victim was either unemployed or employed in a 
  position whose pressures ultimately grew intolerable.
  In the town of Beziers, a mathematics teacher slightly
  more than a year ago set herself on fire in the 
  school's courtyard--an "act of desperation" that 
  investigators attributed to "professional reasons." 
  Last summer in the Parisian suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie,
  an unemployed man, learning his welfare benefits had
  come to an end, immolated himself outside the local 
  unemployment office. In 2011, a France-Telecom employee
  in the southern city of Orange set a match to his 
  gasoline-drench clothing in a parking lot near his 
  office building--one among several suicides at the 
  company since it began to lay off employees in its 
  effort to restructure."

  "The arc of human progress is an illusory one" 

  "The arc of human progress - as defined by the narrow parameters of decreasing
   number of recorded human conflicts and genocides, declining number of
   incurable devastating medical conditions, improving/degenerating overall
   environmental health of the planet etc - is an illusory one." 

  "true human progress is illusory" (whatever the parameters that determine it)

  1. Knowledge is an absolute necessary element for the overcoming of 
     "cultural backwardness, blindness and folly" and to advance 
     "to ever more elevated stages of enlightenment and 
     civilization" and thereby the progress of humans.
  2. Human knowledge is said to be limited.
  3. Ergo, human progress will always be stunted by the said natural 
     limit of knowledge.    
  4. Further: There is no necessary condition that prevents humans from 
     reverting to the ways of the past once that limit has been reached.

  Animals with highly developed brains never simply accept 
  their fates. After all, they understand   that if they 
  manipulate nature in certain ways, at least some parts 
  of their fate can be averted!

  1. The human brain consists of a finite number of particles
     and energy states.
  2. This matrix of particles and energy states is less than 
     what exists in the cosmos.

  Ergo: The human brain has insufficient capacity to contain 
  a matrix containing the total map of all the particles and 
  energy states that exist in the cosmos.

  Ergo: A human's knowledge is limited.

  Further: All of the humans that exist, or will ever exist, 
  will always comprise a subset of the cosmos; Ergo, the 
  collective knowledge of humanity is also limited.

  That isn't convincing. All you have shown is there is not 
  a one to one ratio of particles in a  human brain and the
  sum of the universe. This isn't an indication of epistemic
  limitation. Although, I agree we have epistemic  limitations.

  "They (NSA) have prevented a very large number of harmful actions"

  "I don't see any alternative to trying to track all these groups 
  around the world who are trying to wreck the ordinary operations
  of life in America and probably kill a lot of people. I am not 
  persuaded that they (NSA) have done more harm than good"