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Culture

Last updated:  23 December 1998


That all men are alike is exactly what society would like to hear. It considers actual or imagined differences as stigmas indicating that not enough has yet been done; that something has still been left outside its machinery, not quite determined by its totality.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1974), Minima moralia. Reflections from damaged life. (First published in German 1951.) London (NLB), 102-103

Newness only becomes mere evil in its totalitarian format, where all the tension between individual and society, that once gave rise to the category of the new, is dissipated. Today the appeal to newness, of no matter what kind, provided only that it is archaic enough, has become universal, the omnipresent medium of false mimesis. The decomposition of the subject is consummated in his self-abandonment to an ever-changing sameness.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1974), Minima moralia. Reflections from damaged life. (First published in German 1951.) London (NLB), 238

An emancipated society, on the other hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1974), Minima moralia. Reflections from damaged life. (First published in German 1951.) London (NLB), 103

Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died, can inflict it administratively on innumerable people.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1974), Minima moralia. Reflections from damaged life. (First published in German 1951.) London (NLB), 233

So the experience of death is turned into that of the exchange of functionaries, and anything in the natural relationship to death that is not wholly absorbed into the social one is turned over to hygiene. In being seen as no more than the exit of a living creature from the social combine, death has been domesticated: dying merely confirms the absolute irrelevance of the natural organism in face of the social absolute.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1974), Minima moralia. Reflections from damaged life. (First published in German 1951.) London (NLB), 232

What has become alien to men is the human component of culture, its closest part, which upholds them against the world. They make common cause with the world against themselves, and the most alienated condition of all, the omnipresence of commodities, their own conversion into appendages of machinery, is for them a mirage of closeness.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1974), Minima moralia. Reflections from damaged life. (First published in German 1951.) London (NLB), 146-147

The new human type cannot be properly understood without awareness of what he is continuously exposed to from the world of things about him, even in his most secret innervations.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1974), Minima moralia. Reflections from damaged life. (First published in German 1951.) London (NLB), 40

The film has succeeded in transforming subjects so indistinguishably into social functions, that those wholly encompassed, no longer aware of any conflict, enjoy their own dehumanization as something human, as the joy of warmth. The total interconnectedness of the culture industry, omitting nothing, is one with total social delusion.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1974), Minima moralia. Reflections from damaged life. (First published in German 1951.) London (NLB), 206

The idea that after this war life will continue 'normally' or even that culture might be 'rebuilt' - as if the rebuilding of culture were not already its negation - is idiotic.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1974), Minima moralia. Reflections from damaged life. (First published in German 1951.) London (NLB), 55

The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1974), Minima moralia. Reflections from damaged life. (First published in German 1951.) London (NLB), 200

It's strange that so many American heroes die so young. Perhaps conservative America can't face that idealism. The reality was that beneath the ice-cream-parlour image, there was a festering pool of garbage. When waitresses in restaurants said 'Have a good day', it somehow felt that they were either administering the last rites or warning me that if I fucked up, I would get shot.
Davies, Ray (1995), X-Ray. The unauthorized autobiography. Harmondsworth (Penguin), 239-240

... each type of civilization has had diseases peculiar to it and at each period the various social groups in any community also have differed in this regard.
Dubos, René, Mirage of Health. Utopias, progress, and biological change. New Brunswick (Rutgers University Press), 1987, 178

Each civilization has its own kind of pestilence and can control it only by reforming itself.
Dubos, René, Mirage of Health. Utopias, progress, and biological change. New Brunswick (Rutgers University Press), 1987, 195-196

To live in the universe of high modernity is to live in an environment of chance and risk, the ineveitable concomitants of a system geared to the domination of nature and the reflexive making of history. Fate and destiny have no formal part to play in such a system, which operates (as a matter of principle) via what I shall call open human control of the natural and social worlds.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 109

It is becoming plain that our liberal regime of equality and personal freedom depends, more than most theorists of liberalism have been willing to admit, on the existence and support of certain social assumptions and practices: the belief that each and every human being possesses great and inherent value, the willingness to respect the rights of others even at the cost of some disadvantages to one's self, the ability to defer some immediate benefits for the sake of long-range goals, and a regard for reason-giving and civility in public discourse.
Glendon, Mary Ann (1991), Rights talk. The impoverishment of political discourse. New York (The Free Press), 179

Social historians of the future no doubt will be amused by the fact that we late-twentieth-century Americans found it acceptable to discuss publicly in detail the most intimate aspects of personal life, while maintaining an almost prudish reserve concerning the political significance of family life.
Glendon, Mary Ann (1991), Rights talk. The impoverishment of political discourse. New York (The Free Press), 127

Everything comes to us in fifteen-second sound bites and photo opportunities. All possibility for ambiguity - the most precious trait of any adequate analysis - is erased.
Gould, Stephen Jay, Bully for Brontosaurus. Reflections in Natural History. New York (W.W. Norton), 1991, 101

We live in a profoundly nonintellectual culture, made all the worse by a passive hedonism abetted by the spread of wealth and its dissipation into countless electronic devices that impart the latest in entertainment and supposed information - all in short (and loud) doses of "easy listening".
Gould, Stephen Jay, Bully for Brontosaurus. Reflections in Natural History. New York (W.W. Norton), 1991, 100

It indicates a person who has not only good manners but who possesses a sense of balance, a sure mastery of himself, a moral discipline that permits him to subordinate voluntarily his own selfish interest to the wider interests of the society in which he lives. The gentleman, therefore is a cultural person in the noblest sense of the word, if by culture we mean not simply wealth of intellectual knowledge but also the ability to fulfil one's duty and understand one's fellow man by respecting / every principle, every opinion, every faith that is sincerely professed.
Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from cultural writings. London (Lawrence & Wishart) 1985, 282/283

One must speak for a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life that cannot but be intimately connected to a new intuition of life, until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality
Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from cultural writings. London (Lawrence & Wishart) 1985, 98

Common sense is not something rigid and stationary, but is in continuous transformation, becoming enriched with scientific notions and philosophical opinions that have entered into common circulation. 'Common sense' is the folklore of philosophy and always stands midway between folklore proper (folklore as it is normally understood) and the philosophy, science, and economics of the scientists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.
Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from cultural writings. London (Lawrence & Wishart) 1985, 421

The people themselves are not a homogeneous cultural collectivity but present numerous and variously combined cultural stratifications which, in their pure form, cannot always be identified within specific historical popular collectivities.
Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from cultural writings. London (Lawrence & Wishart) 1985, 195

I give culture this meaning: exercise of thought, acquisition of general ideas, habit of connecting causes and effects ... I believe that it means thinking well, whatever one thinks, and therefore acting well, whatever one does.
Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from cultural writings. London (Lawrence & Wishart) 1985, 23

Because we have put ourselves in our own zoo, we find it difficult to break out.
Hall, Edward T., Beyond culture. New York (Anchor), 1977, 6

1. The way in which people handle synchrony is both rooted in biology (bio-basic) and modified by culture.
2. Synchrony or lack of it is an index of how things are going and can be an unconscious source of great tension when synchrony is low, absent, or of the wrong kind.
3. On a practical level, absence or disturbances of synchrony can interfere with work and any group activity - in sports, on production lines, etc. Perhaps one of the things that is wrong with production lines is that they are impossible to sync with and are out of sync with the workers.
4. Music and dance, by extension transference, are looked upon as activities that are produced by artists and are independent of the audience. The data on synchrony strongly suggest that this is not so. The audience and artist are part of the same process.
Hall, Edward T., Beyond culture. New York (Anchor), 1977, 79-80

The classification system is an excellent example of how the majority of Western peoples have been trained to think. Since the days of Linnaeus, the system has been highly respected and occupies a prestigious niche in the edifice of Western thought. Things could not have developed in any other way. The result has been, however, that whichever way we Westerners turn, we find ourselves deeply preoccupied with specifics (remember the neurons in the eyes), to the exclusion of everything else. This is true today of our four main institutions, which absorb most of the energy and talent of this country: business, government (including defense), science, and education. Even the ecologists, who should know better, are frequently in dispute because each of the leading figures thinks he has a corner on the truth. The questions that must be answered are: Where do we go for the overview? Who is putting things together? Who are the experts in the high-context integrative systems? Who knows how to make the type of observations necessary to build integrative systems of thought that will tell us where we stand?
Hall, Edward T., Beyond culture. New York (Anchor), 1977, 123

We are only peripherally tied to the lives of others. It takes a long long time for us to become deeply involved with others, and for some this never happens.
Hall, Edward T., Beyond culture. New York (Anchor), 1977, 65

Each culture has its own characteristic manner of locomotion, sitting, standing, reclining, and gesturing.
Hall, Edward T., Beyond culture. New York (Anchor), 1977, 75

There are hundreds if not thousands of different situational frames in cultures as complex as our own. These frames are made up of situational dialects, material appurtances, situational personalities, and behavior patterns that occur in recognized settings and are appropriate to specific situations. Some common settings and situations are: greeting, working, eating, bargaining, fighting, governing, making love, going to school, cooking and serving meals, hanging out, and the like. The situational frame is the smallest viable unit of a culture that can be analyzed, taught, transmitted, and handed down as a complete entity. Frames contain linguistic, kinesic, proxemic, temporal, social, material, personality, and other components.
Hall, Edward T., Beyond culture. New York (Anchor), 1977, 129

[Culture] refers to the codes with which meaning is constructed, conveyed, and understood ... cultures are maps of meaning through which the world is made intelligible. Cultures are not simply systems of meaning and value carried around in the head. They are made concrete through patterns of social organization.
Jackson, P., Maps of meaning. An introduction to cultural geography. London (Unwin Hyman), 1989, 2

The success of Prozac says that today's high-tech capitalism values a very different temperament. Confidence, flexibility, quickness, and energy - the positive aspects of hyperthymia - are at a premium.
Kramer, Peter D. (1993), Listening to Prozac. A psychiatrist explores antidepressant drugs and the remaking of the self. New York (Viking), here: 297

Maxim 451:
No fools are so difficult to manage as those with some brains.
La Rochefoucauld (1959), Maxims. Translated with an introduction by Leonard Tancock. London (Penguin), 94

Maxim 256:
In every walk of life each man puts on a personality and outward appearance so as to look what he wants to be thought; in fact you might say that society is entirely made up of assumed personalities.
La Rochefoucauld (1959), Maxims. Translated with an introduction by Leonard Tancock. London (Penguin), 71

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.
Wilderness was never a homogeneous raw material. It was very diverse, and the resulting artifacts are very diverse. These differences in the end-product are known as cultures. The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.
Leopold, Aldo (1970), A Sand County Almanac. New York (Ballantine Books), 264

[M]odern society is indeed often, at least in surface appearance, nothing but a collection of strangers, each pursuing his or her own interests under minimal constraints.
MacIntyre, Alasdair (1981), After virtue. A study in moral theory. Notre Dame, Indiana (University of Notre Dame Press), 233

If the linguistic behavior blocks conceptual development, if it militates against abstraction and mediation, if it surrenders to the immediate facts, it repels recognition of the factors behind the facts, and thus repels recognition of the facts, and of their historical content. In and for the society, this organization of functional discourse is of vital importance; it serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioral rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 97

If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator - the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value counts.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 57

The functional language is a radically anti-historical language: operational rationality has little room and little use for historical reason.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 98

Under the repressive conditions in which men think and live, thought - any mode of thinking which is not confined to pragmatic orientation within the status quo - can recognize the facts and respond to the facts only by "going behind" them. Experience takes place before a curtain which conceals and, if the world is the appearance of something behind the curtain of immediate experience, then, in Hegel's terms, it is we ourselves who are behind the curtain. We ourselves not as the subjects of common sense, as in linguistic analysis, nor as the "purified" subjects of scientific measurement, but as the subjects and objects of the historical struggle of man with nature and with society. Facts are what they are as occurrences in this struggle. Their factuality is historical, even where it is still that of brute, unconquered nature.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 185

This (functional - E.W.) language controls by reducing the linguistic forms and symbols of reflection, abstraction, development, contradiction; by substituting images for concepts. It denies or absorbs the transcendent vocabulary; it does not search for but establishes and imposes truth and falsehood.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 103

The abbreviations (e.g. NATO, UN, USSR - E.W.) denote that and only that which is institutionalized in such a way that the transcending connotation is cut off. The meaning is fixed, doctored, loaded. Once it has become an official vocable, constantly repeated in general usage, "sanctioned" by the intellectuals, it has lost all cognitive value and serves merely for recognition of an unquestionable fact.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 94

The unification of opposites which characterizes the commercial and political style is one of the many ways in which discourse and communication make themselves immune against the expression of protest and refusal.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 90

Propositions assume the form of suggestive commands - they are evocative rathern than demonstrative. Predication becomes prescription; the whole communication has a hypnotic character. At the same time it is tinged with a false familiarity - the result of constant repetition, and of the skillfully managed popular directness of the communication. This relates itself to the recipient immediately - without distance of status, education, and office - and hits him or her in the informal atmosphere of the living room, kitchen, and bedroom.
The same familiarity is established through personalized language, which plays a considerable role in advanced communication.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 91-92

Where these reduced (operational - E.W.) concepts govern the analysis of the human reality, individual or social, mental or material, they arrive at a false concreteness - a concreteness isolated from the conditions which constitute its reality. In this context, the operational treatment of the concept assumes a political function. The individual and his behavior are analyzed in a therapeutic sense - adjustment to his society. Thought and expression, theory and practice are to be brought in line with the facts of his existence without leaving room for the conceptual critique of these facts.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 106-107

This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 78

In the realm of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 61

Without meaning, without substance, without aim: a mere 'public opinion'.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1992), Ecce homo. How one become what one is. Harmondsworth (Penguin), 84

The Germans are incapable of any conception of greatness: proof Schumann.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1992), Ecce homo. How one become what one is. Harmondsworth (Penguin), 58

As far as Germany extends it ruins culture.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1992), Ecce homo. How one become what one is. Harmondsworth (Penguin), 58

I believe only in French culture and consider everything in Europe that calls itself 'culture' a misunderstanding, not to speak of German culture.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1992), Ecce homo. How one become what one is. Harmondsworth (Penguin), 57

Cultures are not the source of all morals, only a limited set of morals. Cultures can be graded and judged morally according to their contribution to the evolution of life.

A culture that supports the dominance of social values over biological values is an absolutely superior culture to one that does not, and a culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values over social values is absolutely superior to one that does not.
Pirsig, Robert M., Lila. An inquiry into morals. New York (Bantam Books) 1991, 311

The paradigm of Western culture is that the essence of persons is dangerous; thus, they must be taught, guided, and controlled by those with superior authority.
Rogers, Carl R., A way of being. Boston (Houghton Mifflin), 1980, 201

If the time comes when our culture tires of the endless homicidal feuds, despairs of the use of force and war as a means of bringing peace, becomes discontent with the half-lives that its members are living - only then will our culture seriously look for alternatives.
Rogers, Carl R., A way of being. Boston (Houghton Mifflin), 1980, 205

From the moment we are born our culture encourages us to believe that outer well-being is the source of inner fulfillment ... Wherever we turn the principle is confirmed, encouraging us to become 'human havings' and 'human doings' rather than human beings.
Russell, Peter, The white hole in time. Our future evolution and the meaning of now. San Francisco (Harper), 1992, 72

The self-talk of the ego-mind is so busy describing what is happening, judging whether it is good or bad for us, and telling us what we should think and do, that there is little opportunity for our inner knowing to be heard. Instead we remain attached to our assumptions, dreaming of the fulfillment we believe they will bring.
Russell, Peter, The white hole in time. Our future evolution and the meaning of now. San Francisco (Harper), 1992, 116

Looking to the material world for the satisfaction of our inner needs is the source of much fear. All fear is, in essence, fear of the future. We are afraid of things that have not yet happened, but which if they did might bring us pain, suffering, or some other discomfort - or stand in the way of some future contentment. And we are afraid that circumstances that are already causing us displeasure may continue in the future.
Russell, Peter, The white hole in time. Our future evolution and the meaning of now. San Francisco (Harper), 1992, 82

We tell ourselves that the more time we have at our disposal, the more opportunity we will have of finding greater happiness. But again we are looking to the future, to the times we will create. Again we miss the enjoyment of the present moment.
Russell, Peter, The white hole in time. Our future evolution and the meaning of now. San Francisco (Harper), 1992, 84

Self-worth and financial worth become indistinguishable.
Russell, Peter, The white hole in time. Our future evolution and the meaning of now. San Francisco (Harper), 1992, 77

The more ways we discovered to manipulate and change the world, the more our belief that we were individuals in control of our own destiny was strengthened. As our abilities grew we seduced ourselves into believing that such prowess could satisfy all our needs, psychological as well as physical.
This preoccupation with our own well-being led us to become increasingly self-centered. More and more we saw ourselves as separate individuals, each concerned with his or her own fulfillment, competing with others for the means to achieve it - and with all the dangers that that entails. Less and less were we prepared to devote ourselves to the group - indeed, the more industrialized we became, the more self-interest became a virtue.
Russell, Peter, The white hole in time. Our future evolution and the meaning of now. San Francisco (Harper), 1992, 102-103

This is our most dangerous addiction - our addiction to things. For it is this addiction that underlies the materialism of our age. And nowhere is this addiction more apparent than in our addiction to money.
Russell, Peter, The white hole in time. Our future evolution and the meaning of now. San Francisco (Harper), 1992, 76

But I cannot forgive those who did not care about more than their own glory or well-being. They thought they were civilized. They were despicable. Damn them all.
Sontag, Susan (1993), The volcano lover. A romance. London (Vintage Books), 419

... Oceanic malaise. I never saw anyone reading anything more demanding than a comic book. I never heard any youth express an interest in science or art. No one even talked politics. It was all idleness, and whenever I asked someone a question, no matter how simple, no matter how well the person spoke English, there was always a long pause before I got a reply, and I found these Pacific pauses maddening.
And there was giggling but no humor - no wit. It was just foolery.
Theroux, Paul, The happy isles of Oceania. Paddling the Pacific. New York (G.P. Putnam's Son), 1992, 341

How people act or feel on specific occasions had been reduced for Mr Bonner to the way in which he had been told people do act and feel.
White, Patrick (1994), Voss. London (Vintage), 103

To confess to the sin of not enjoying was something she would never have dared, so she pretended that she did not believe.
White, Patrick (1994), Voss. London (Vintage), 318

More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
Wilde, Oscar (1993), The Importance of Being Earnest. In: The complete plays, stories, poems, and novels. Bombay (Wilco International), 321-369, hier: 324

I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn't have enough energy to do anything else.
Yoshimoto, Banana (1995), Lizard. New York (Grove Press), 138

That's really what the mall is all about: money. At the mall the rule is: Credito, ergo sum - I shop, therefore I am.
Zafra, Jessica (1995), Twisted. Pasig, Metro Manila (Anvil publishing Co.), 142


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