Very interesting quotation from Kurt Vonnegut.

[PatrickforB]

Did you know that if you put 100 black ants and 100 red ants in a jar, nothing will happen? But if you shake the jar hard, the ants start killing each other. The red ants consider the black ants their enemies, and the black ants consider the red ants their enemies. The true enemy is the one shaking the jar. The same thing happens in human society. So, before we attack each other, we should think about who is shaking the jar! - Kurt Vonnegut

Pretty profound if you think about it...

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. TFP.......so many of my genertation got fucked up in Nam or at home.

[PatrickforB]

3. Yeah, I missed out on Nam, thank God. I was born in 58, so the draft ended before

I would have had to go.

I was a stupid white suburban kid, and my dad was a WWII vet who had been in combat in the Pacific.

One day I was talking to him and remember asking him if he thought Vietnam would still be going on when I got old enough, and he looked at me and quietly said, "I hope not."

I hope you're OK now, cause even though my older cousins would say stuff like 'it don't mean nothin', it really did.

[Basic LA]

2. A go-to thinker in the anti-war days.

Wonder what he would make of our current stumbles.

[PatrickforB]

4. I don't know...I bet he'd say it was the libertarian billionaires just going to town

shaking that jar.

Funny, once in a while you run across a quote like this and it just hits you like a ton of bricks, you know?

[Basic LA]

5. I do indeed.

Vonnegut always saw right through the smoke & mirrors.

[teach1st]

6. Pretty sure that's not an accurate Vonnegut quote

From a Snopes fact check about that quote being attributed to David Attenborough

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/black-and-red-ants-attenborough/

This viral quote appears to have been inspired by a passage from author Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 novel "Cat's Cradle."

"I can't remember what all Frank had fighting in the jar that day, but I can remember other bug fights we staged later on: one stag beetle against a hundred red ants, one centipede against three spiders, red ants against black ants. They won't fight unless you keep shaking the jar. And that's what Frank was doing, shaking, shaking the jar."

[PatrickforB]

9. I stand corrected. Still a great quote though, because it rings very true.

Divide and conquer has been around throughout history, at least since Philip of Macedon, and probably earlier. Zinn wrote of it.

The jar is just a convenient analogy.

This is why so many people like Trumpy, you know - he shook the jar, gave us a whole bunch of enemies. Right out of Pogo, remember: "We have met the enemy and the enemy is us!"

[speak easy]

7. FaceBook is a jar

relentlessly shaken by algorithms.

[zanana1]

8. Trump shook the jar.

[AnnaLee]

10. I think it is on point. ntp