Month: March 2019

Finally, the social institution controlling the  maintenance of the death concept has to harmonize its notions about the substance of death continuously with other significant slices of reality as  well, namely, with some changes of society and  culture. Consider the debates on reanimation and  euthanasia in the second half of the twentieth century. These debates constrained the Christian pastoral power to create its own standpoints, and to  partly rewrite some details of the Christian concept  of death such as other-worldly punishments of the  suicides.  These examples demonstrate that the complete  freedom of the attribution of meaning in the con-  struction of death concept is a mere illusion. This  freedom is significantly limited by the fact that these  beliefs are social products; in other words, that the  factors indispensable to the successful social process  of reality construction — to make a belief a solid and  valid reading of the reality for the "newcomers in  socialization" — are generally fairly limited. 
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“If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.” (Howard Zinn)

“When he recites his propaganda lesson and says that he is thinking for himself, when his eyes see nothing and his mouth only produces sounds previously stenciled into his brain, when he says that he is indeed expressing his judgment – the he really demonstrates that he no longer thinks at all, ever, and that he does not exist as a person.” (Jacques Ellul)

“Classic propaganda, as one usually thinks of it, is a vertical propaganda – in the sense that it is made by leader, technician, a political or religious head who acts from the superior position of his authority and seeks to influence the crowd below. Such propaganda comes from above. It is conceived in the secret recesses of political enclaves; it uses all technical methods of centralized mass communication; it envelops a mass of individuals; but those who practice it are on the outside. (Jacques Ellul)

“…propaganda…eliminates anxieties stemming from irrational and disproportionate fears, for it gives man assurances equivalent to those formerly given him by religion. It offers him a simple and clear explanation of the world in which he lives – to be sure, a false explanation far removed from reality, but one that is obvious and satisfying. It hands him a key with which he can open all doors; there is no more mystery; everything can be explained, thanks to propaganda. It gives him special glasses through which he can look at present-day history and clearly understand what it means. It hands him a guide line with which he can recover the general line running through all incoherent events. Now the world ceases to be hostile and menacing.” (Jacques Ellul)

“To warn a political system of the menace hanging over it does not imply an attack against it, but is the greatest service one can render the system. The same goes for man: to warn him of his weakness is not to attempt to destroy him, but rather to encourage him to strengthen himself… I insist that to give such warning is an act in the defense of man, that I am not judging propaganda with Olympian detachment, and that having suffered, felt, and analyzed the impact of the power of propaganda on myself… I want to speak of it as a menace which threatens the total personality.” (Jacques Ellul)

“That grueling process, which consumes much of one’s time as a composer, has little to do with history, Freud, gender, or the theory, but with ear and intuition and soul and stubborn patience, and all the other indefinable but irreplaceable quality that make good art good. So it was with “The Unanswered Question.” (Jan Swafford)