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9528123 as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency. fiction philosophy imaginary symbolic real ideology Slavoj Žižek
2a92e89 In a traditional German toilet, the hole into which shit disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness. In the typical French toilet, on the contrary, the hole is at the back, i.e. shit is supposed to disappear as quickly as possible. Finally, the American (Anglo-Saxon) toilet presents a synthesis, a mediation between these opposites: the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. [...] It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: each involves a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to excrement. Hegel was among the first to see in the geographical triad of Germany, France and England an expression of three different existential attitudes: reflective thoroughness (German), revolutionary hastiness (French), utilitarian pragmatism (English). In political terms, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English liberalism. [...] The point about toilets is that they enable us not only to discern this triad in the most intimate domain, but also to identify its underlying mechanism in the three different attitudes towards excremental excess: an ambiguous contemplative fascination; a wish to get rid of it as fast as possible; a pragmatic decision to treat it as ordinary and dispose of it in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic at a round table to claim that we live in a post-ideological universe, but the moment he visits the lavatory after the heated discussion, he is again knee-deep in ideology. philosophy toilets ideology Slavoj Žižek
307fb4f And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up. people political-revolutionary revolutionary-movement revolution ideology Terry Pratchett
3b9f6d2 Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility. history race-theory sophism final-solution historians marxism totalitarianism antisemitism ideology communism Hannah Arendt
e6622cd Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideology... we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom. freedom language ideology Slavoj Žižek
362b88a Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter, common to all human beings. laughter joy humanity angel-art appropriate-application common-ground cultural-boundaries cultural-demographics cultural-heritage cultural-literacy demographics universal-truths ideologies ideology-religion-war-compromise philosophy-for-millennials racial-division racial-identity social-philosophy sociological-imagination universal-love cultural-differences waging-peace ending-violent-jihad anti-racism ending-war faith-in-love interfaith-dialogue multiculturalismo faith-in-humanity peacism antiracism spiritual-philosophy joy-of-life coexistence cultural-relativism nonviolent-conflict-resolution human-condition universal multiculturalism love-for-humanity diversity universality race-relations weeping human-beings ideology Aberjhani
252aefb All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. politics religion magnetism science-fiction government mythology power ideology Frank Herbert
d7e59d8 "<<...you're too old not to have had, how shall I say, certain experiences. You've had bad internet dates. You've had people be creeps to you. You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world>> <> madness ideology Douglas Coupland
4546eec Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires. feminism politics radical-feminism imperialism domination society ideology oppression Bell Hooks
a3cbc8b Since ideology, particularly in it's shallower versions, is peculiarly destructive of the capacity to apprehend and appreciate irony, I suggest that the recovery of the ironic might be our fifth principle for the restoration of reading. ... But with this principle, I am close to despair, since you can no more teach someone to be ironic than you can instruct them to become solitary. And yet the loss of irony is the death of reading, and of what had been civilized in our natures. irony ideology Harold Bloom
d9ccefd And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was. revenge history czechoslovakia david-szmulevski east-germany hungary jewish-diaspora red-army secret-police nazis germans poland stalin camus eastern-europe israel jews ideology communism Christopher Hitchens
9163dd5 I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it's been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and Little Boy gradually mutated the whole state belief system into a debased form of Confucianism, in which traditional ancestor worship and respect for order become blended with extreme nationalism and xenophobia. Near the southernmost city of Kaesong, captured by the North in 1951, I was taken to see the beautifully preserved tombs of King and Queen Kongmin. Their significance in F.M.-L.B. cosmology is that they reigned over a then unified Korea in the 14th century, and that they were Confucian and dynastic and left many lavish memorials to themselves. The tombs are built on one hillside, and legend has it that the king sent one of his courtiers to pick the site. Second-guessing his underling, he then climbed the opposite hill. He gave instructions that if the chosen site did not please him he would wave his white handkerchief. On this signal, the courtier was to be slain. The king actually found that the site was ideal. But it was a warm day and he forgetfully mopped his brow with the white handkerchief. On coming downhill he was confronted with the courtier's fresh cadaver and exclaimed, 'Oh dear.' And ever since, my escorts told me, the opposite peak has been known as 'Oh Dear Hill.' I thought this was a perfect illustration of the caprice and cruelty of absolute leadership, and began to phrase a little pun about Kim Jong Il being the 'Oh Dear Leader,' but it died on my lips. religion caprice confucianism farce karl-marx queen-noguk tomb-of-king-kongmin veneration-of-the-dead vladimir-lenin absolutism totalitarianism korea nationalism xenophobia cruelty kim-il-sung kim-jong-il north-korea ideology communism Christopher Hitchens
d35de0a You had to be there to see what it looked like. They live in a dream, and we live in a nightmare. ideology Philip Roth
ad6ba8e Moreover, we have seen enough by now to know that technological changes in our modes of communication are even more ideology-laden than changes in our modes of transportation. Introduce the alphabet to a culture and you change its cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community, history and religion. Introduce the printing press with movable type, and you do the same. Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for their absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement. progress television culture utopia ideology technology Neil Postman
6bf5fc8 I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville. television philosophy public-discourse epistemology culture ideology Neil Postman
6b98bbd For no medium is excessively dangerous if its users understand what its dangers are. It is not important that those who ask the questions arrive at my answers or Marshall McLuhan's (quite different answers, by the way). This is an instance in which the asking of the questions is sufficient. To ask is to break the spell. culture ideology technology Neil Postman
d12b120 The last time I heard an orthodox Marxist statement that was music to my ears was from a member of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, during the mass slaughter in the country. 'The terms Hutu and Tutsi,' he said severely, 'are merely ideological constructs, describing different relationships to the means and mode of production.' But of course! marxism rwanda rwandan-genocide rwandan-patriotic-front tutsis ideology Christopher Hitchens
d7d1dc7 Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs. Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic key to my life. freedom religion social-science post-apocalyptic liberty science-fiction theology mythology tyranny power ideology Frank Herbert
4d92cca E nevoie de un dusman ca sa-i dai poporului o speranta. Cineva a spus ca patriotismul e ultimul refugiu al canaliilor: cine nu are principii morale se infasoara de obicei intr-un steag, iar bastarzii fac intotdeauna apel la puritatea stirpei lor. Identitatea nationala este ultima resursa a dezmostenitilor. Or, simtul identitatii se intemeiaza pe ura, ura impotriva celui ce nu-i identic. Trebuie sa cultivi ura ca patos cetatenesc. Dusmanul e prietenul popoarelor. E nevoie oricand de cineva demn de a fi urat ca sa te simti justificat in propria-ti mizerie. Ura este adevarata pasiune primordiala. Iubirea reprezinta o situatie anormala. national-identity ideology Umberto Eco
a335c7b I will contend until I am shot that art as soon as it is brought into contact with politics inevitably sinks to the level of any ideological trash. politics ideology Vladimir Nabokov
48a73c1 When we think of readapting mankind to a world of unity and co-operation, we have to consider that practically all the educational machinery on earth, is still in the hands of God-selling or Marx-selling combines. Everywhere in close co-operation with our nationalist governments, the oil and steel interests, our drug salesmanship, and so forth, the hirelines of these huge religious concerns, with more or less zeal and loyalty, are selling destruction to mankind. religion government ideology H.G. Wells
e953c31 Ashe, Kiever, Peters; that was a progression in quality, in authority, which to Leamas was axiomatic of the hierarchy of an intelligence network. It was also, he suspected, a progression in ideology. Ashe, the mercenary, Kiever the fellow traveler, and now Peters, for whom the end and the means were identical. intelligence spy ideology John le Carré
6a917c9 "Advice to young Samuel Gompers that might apply in many other areas: "Learn from socialism, but don't join it." -- politics group-think discipleship party ideology Barbara W. Tuchman
c3415dc Astrology fell into the class of a ...and not worth the efforts of the debunking engine Cicero had been born with in place of a brain. Cicero's capacities were reserved for lies that mattered. Ideology, though that word was yet unknown to him: the veil of sustaining fiction that drove the world, what people to believe. This, Cicero wished to unmask and unmake, decry and destroy. (p. 65) unmask ideology Jonathan Lethem
0f514e7 And this is the straight dope, right here. These people are not exactly human. They don the dress but they're like monkeys dolled up in the circus. They're clever and can learn, but that is all. ideology Philip K. Dick
da4357b Virulence is the sound of a self-selecting community talking to itself and positively reinforcing itself with no obligation to answer to anyone or look anyone in the eye. prejudice extremism openness ideology Thomas L. Friedman
f6b17aa Jewish guy did not know this, but 'oppression olympics' is what smart liberal Americans say, to make you feel stupid and to make you shut up. racism politics liberalism racism-in-america ideology oppression Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
3cbf296 "The ideological premise, however, "can" not be defective; it is sacrosanct. ... Whatever does not seem right, whatever does not fit, must be explained by something wrong outside of the ideology; for its perfection is beyond all doubt. In (t)his way the ideology immunizes itself by offering more and more hair-splitting accusations. Betrayal and the dark powers of inner and outer enemies lie in wait everywhere. Theories about conspiracies develop and conveniently hide the absurdity of the premise, necessitating and justifying bloody purges." sacrosanct enemies ideology Paul Watzlawick
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