The question of the stranger in a society which estranges everybody from it--while forcing everybody to assimilate their own alienation--takes cover under dubious and sinister masks.
Norman ManeaStichwörter: society immigration alienation assimilation emigration alien estrangement civics
What people are afraid of can tell us a lot about society.
Anne HoltIt is wrong to say that schoolmasters lack heart and are dried-up, soulless pedants! No, by no means. When a child's talent which he has sought to kindle suddenly bursts forth, when the boy puts aside his wooden sword, slingshot, bow-and-arrow and other childish games, when he begins to forge ahead, when the seriousness of the work begins to transform the rough-neck into a delicate, serious and an almost ascetic creature, when his face takes on an intelligent, deeper and more purposeful expression - then a teacher's heart laughs with happiness and pride. It is his duty and responsibility to control the raw energies and desires of his charges and replace them with calmer, more moderate ideals. What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have become but unruly, stormy innovators and dreamers of useless dreams, if not for the effort of their schools? In young beings there is something wild, ungovernable, uncultured which first has to be tamed. It is like a dangerous flame that has to be controlled or it will destroy. Natural man is unpredictable, opaque, dangerous, like a torrent cascading out of uncharted mountains. At the start, his soul is a jungle without paths or order. And, like a jungle, it must first be cleared and its growth thwarted. Thus it is the school's task to subdue and control man with force and make him a useful member of society, to kindle those qualities in him whose development will bring him to triumphant completion.
Hermann HesseStichwörter: school society church human-nature hermann-hesse tame beneath-the-wheel
What happened?
It took Gibbon six volumes to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, so I shan’t embark on that. But thinking about this almost incredible episode does tell one something about the nature of civilisation.
It shows that however complex and solid it seems, it is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed.
What are its enemies?
Well, first of all fear — fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague and famine, that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things, or planting trees or even planning next year’s crops. And fear of the supernatural, which means that you daren’t question anything or change anything.
The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions, that destroyed self-confidence. And then exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity.
There is a poem by the modern Greek poet, Cavafy, in which he imagines the people of an antique town like Alexandria waiting every day for the barbarians to come and sack the city. Finally the barbarians move off somewhere else and the city is saved; but the people are disappointed — it would have been better than nothing.
Of course, civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity—
What civilization needs:
confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one’s own mental powers. The way in which the stones of the Pont du Gard are laid is not only a triumph of technical skill, but shows a vigorous belief in law and discipline.
Vigour, energy, vitality: all the civilisations—or civilising epochs—have had a weight of energy behind them.
People sometimes think that civilisation consists in fine sensibilities and good conversations and all that. These can be among the agreeable results of civilisation, but they are not what make a civilisation, and a society can have these amenities and yet be dead and rigid.
Stichwörter: society civilization rome romans societies
Cosmetic surgery processes the bodies of woman-made women, who make up the vast majority of its patient pool, into man-made women.
Naomi WolfStichwörter: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty.
Naomi WolfStichwörter: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.
Or, if your ad revenue or your seven-figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it is an operable condition.
Stichwörter: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking "beautiful." If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill.
Naomi WolfStichwörter: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
Where woman do not fit the Iron Maiden [societal expectations/assumptions about women's bodies], we are now being called monstrous, and the Iron Maiden is exactly that which no woman fits, or fits forever. A woman is being asked to feel like a monster now though she is whole and fully physically functional. The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking "beautiful." If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill.
Naomi WolfStichwörter: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth.
Naomi WolfStichwörter: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging diets cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture
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