A Quote by Marshall McLuhan
Pornography and violence are by-products of societies in which private identity has been ... destroyed by sudden environmental change.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference.
The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornography, in this Puritan land of ours. Exploiting the apocalypse, selling the holocaust, is a pornography. For the ultimate selling job on ultimate violence one must read those works of fiction issued by our government as manuals of civil defense, in which you learn that there's nothing to be afraid of if you've stockpiled lots of dried fruit.
Free societies, which allow differences to speak and be heard, and live by intermarriage, commerce, and free migration, and democratic societies, which convert enemies into adversaries and reconcile differences without resort to violence, are societies in which the genocidal temptation is unlikely and even inconceivable.
I think we just have to look at all the ways in which we are violating the Earth, each other, economic violence, racial violence, environmental violence - where we are dominating and not cooperating .
Gang violence in America is not a sudden problem. It has been a part of urban life for years, offering an aggressive definition and identity to those seeking a place to belong in the chaos of large metropolitan areas.
The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage.
The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornography, in this Puritan land of ours.
Non-violence is very weak in the theoretical sense; it cannot defend itself. But it is most powerful in the action situation where people are using non-violence because they want desperately to bring about some change. Non-violence in action is a very potent force and it can't be stopped. The people who are struggling have the complete say-so. No man-made law, no human ruler, no army can destroy this. There is no way it can be destroyed... And so, if we have the capacity to endure, if we have the patience, things will change.
As you get closer to equality, you get more pornography. True patriarchal societies like Saudi Arabia do not allow pornography because women are not allowed to turn their bodies into a commodity; women are chattel.
Violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence.
Socialism, Communism, clandestine societies, Bible societies... pests of this sort must be destroyed by all means.
Violence is the quest for identity. When identity disappears with technological innovation, violence is the natural recourse.
We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.
Show me pornography which promotes violence against women, and I'll buy it.
When you think of how much violence, how much blood... how much has been destroyed to create the great nations, America, Australia, Britain, Germany, France, Belgium - even India, Pakistan. Having destroyed so much to make them, we must have nuclear weapons to protect them - and climate change to hold up their way of life... a two-pronged annihilation project.
However destructive may be the policies of the government and the methods and products of the corporations, the root of the problem is always found to be found in private life. We must learn to see that every problem that concerns us as conservationists always leads straight to the question of how we live. The world is being destroyed, no doubt about it, by the greed of the rich and powerful. It is also being destroyed by popular demand.
Related Authors
Auguste Comte Quotes
French
Sociologist
C. Wright Mills Quotes
American
Sociologist
Charles Horton Cooley Quotes
American
Sociologist
Deborah Tannen Quotes
American
Sociologist
Emile Durkheim Quotes
French
Sociologist
Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes
American
Sociologist
Ivan Illich Quotes
American
Sociologist
James W. Loewen Quotes
American
Sociologist
Jane Jacobs Quotes
American
Sociologist
Jean Baudrillard Quotes
French
Sociologist
Lewis Mumford Quotes
American
Sociologist
Matthew Desmond Quotes
American
Sociologist
Peter L. Berger Quotes
Austrian
Sociologist
Samuel P. Huntington Quotes
American
Sociologist
Theodor Adorno Quotes
German
Sociologist
Zygmunt Bauman Quotes
Polish
Sociologist