A Quote by Christopher Lasch

The effect of the mass media is not to elicit belief but to maintain the apparatus of addiction. — © Christopher Lasch
The effect of the mass media is not to elicit belief but to maintain the apparatus of addiction.
The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.
Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced.
Advertising and the free society are closely connected. Advertising helps to make a free society remain so by increasing competition, and by helping to maintain the freedom of the mass media themselves. The free society is one where advertising and advertising agencies are likely to be in considerable demand, though it is true that even in a totally centralist society there would still be a need for organisations and people to have access to mass communication media.
The historic role of the consumer has been nothing more than a giant maw at the end of the mass media's long conveyer belt, the all-absorbing Yin to the mass media's all-producing Yang....In the age of the internet, no one is a passive consumer anymore because everyone is a media outlet.
I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.
Media literacy is not just important, it's absolutely critical. It's going to make the difference between whether kids are a tool of the mass media or whether the mass media is a tool for kids to use.
Mass media wants bright lights. Mass media wants crazy clothes.
Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!) offered alternatives, for those who were not prisoners to the mass media.
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.
I think stress is an addiction. It can be tied to work addiction or busyness addiction or success addiction.
The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. They want to get leaks, they want to get invited to the press conferences. They want to rub shoulders with the Secretary of State, all that kind of business. To do that, you've got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus.
So long as the UK continues to maintain its own identity, it is my belief that the US and the UK should maintain close relations.
Thinking about free speech brought me to media regulation, as Americans access so much of their political and cultural speech through mass media. That led me to work on the FCC's media ownership rules beginning in 2005 to fight media consolidation, working with those at Georgetown's IPR, Media Access Project, Free Press, and others.
Taken as a whole the mass media seldom rises to the level of deplorable trash, but it is also true that there is no mass audience in America for anything better.
The opposite of addiction is human connection. And I think that has massive implications for the war on drugs. The treatment of drug addicts almost everywhere in the world is much closer to Tent City than it is to anything in Portugal. Our laws are built around the belief that drug addicts need to be punished to stop them. But if pain and trauma and isolation cause addiction, then inflicting more pain and trauma and isolation is not going to solve that addiction. It's actually going to deepen it.
The drivenness in any addiction is about the ruptured self, the belief that one is flawed as a person. The content of the addiction, whether it is alcoholism or work, is an attempt at an intimate relationship. The workaholic with her work or the alcoholic with his booze are having a love affair. Each alters mood to avoid the feeling of loneliness and hurt in the underbelly of shame.
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