In this huge old occidental culture our teaching elders are books. Books are our grandparents!
Gary SnyderTags: books culture grandparents elders western-culture
What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.
Theodor W. AdornoTags: society philosophy civilization culture enlightenment critical-theory culture-critique decline western-culture the-west the-dialectic-of-enlightenment cultural-criticism dialectic decline-of-civilization dialectics the-enlightenment
In the pragmatist, streetwise climate of advanced postmodern capitalism, with its scepticism of big pictures and grand narratives, its hard-nosed disenchantment with the metaphysical, 'life' is one among a whole series of discredited totalities. We are invited to think small rather than big – ironically, at just the point when some of those out to destroy Western civilization are doing exactly the opposite. In the conflict between Western capitalism and radical Islam, a paucity of belief squares up to an excess of it. The West finds itself faced with a full-blooded metaphysical onslaught at just the historical point that it has, so to speak, philosophically disarmed. As far as belief goes, postmodernism prefers to travel light: it has beliefs, to be sure, but it does not have faith.
Terry EagletonTags: life philosophy belief religion faith atheism capitalism metaphysics islam postmodernism pragmatism western-culture islamism grand-narratives islamic-fundamentalism islamic-terrorism philosophical-scepticism western-world
In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.
Samuel P. HuntingtonTags: international-relations culture western-civilization cultural-biases western-culture westernization
The ufo is nothing more than an assertion of herself by the Goddess into history, saying to science and paternalistically governed and driven organizations: You have gone far enough. We are going to turn the world upside down. Your science is going to be shown up for what it is, nothing more than a pleasant metaphor usefully extrapolated into the production of toys for healthy children. That's what science is good for.
It is not some meta-theory at whose feet every point of view from astrology to acupressure to channeling need be laid to have the hand of science announce thumbs up or thumbs down.
Tags: science ufo rationalism western-culture scientism gaian-mind
Of all the consumer products, chewing gum is perhaps the most ridiculous: it literally has no nourishment – you just chew it to give yourself something to do with your stupid idiot Western mouth.
Half the world is starving, and the other’s going, ‘I don’t actually need any nutrition, but it would be good to masticate, just to keep my mind off things.
Tags: humor politics western-culture chewing-gum
If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.
Erich FrommTags: freedom society philosophy fame western-culture modern-relationships
The ego exists as a powerful force in Western man that cannot be dismissed or denied. The therapeutic goal is to integrate the ego with the body and its striving for pleasure and sexual fulfilment.
Alexander LowenTags: pleasure ego western-culture
With tybo men there isn't much difference between fucking and killing.
Tom SpanbauerTags: sex violence western-culture pagan-culture
The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. (p.272)
Victor Davis HansonTags: wealth society capitalism economics inequality utopia western-culture military-history progressivism income-disparity
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