Culture

“The greatest threat to our civilization comes from within that civilization itself: our $64 euphemism for it is secularism. A much blunter word is godlessness. Our civilization, for all its churches and all its churchgoers, is predominantly a secular, godless civilization.”

 

— Life Magazine editorial excerpt, April 18, 1949

 

“A great part of the disaster of contemporary life lies in the fact that it is organized around feelings. People nearly always act on their feelings, and think it only right. The will is then left at the mercy of circumstances that evoke feelings. Christian spiritual formation today must squarely confront this fact and overcome it.”

 

— Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor Renovation of the Heart, p. 35

 

“I think it’s just the loss of family values. It’s the narcissism of our age, of people thinking only of themselves – not even of their family. When you lose those values of morality, you suddenly have no footing. And I think that’s when these people think there’s no problem with doing evil.”

 

— David Conn, Los Angeles prosecutor

 

“[K]ey persons within journalism (especially publishers and editors, and also journalism professionalizers from the ranks of the universities and the active press) actively sought to minimize and ultimately to undermine traditional religion”.

 

— Richard Flory, in “The Secular Revolution”

 

“The secularization of the institutions of American public life did not happen by accident or happenstance?.[It was] an achievement of specific groups of people, many of whom intended to marginalize religion. The people at the core of these secularizing movements, at least, knew what they were doing, and they wanted to do it”.

 

— Christian Smith, edtior, “The Secular Revolution”

 

“…College [has] more and more replaced the church as the source of new values, of new ethical outlooks.”

 

— Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), American fiction writer

 

*“Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history and culture also becomes a dead people.”

 

— Malcolm X (1925-1965), civil rights leader

 

“[Star Wars is] designed primarily to make young people think about the mystery. Not to say, ‘Here’s the answer.’ It’s to say, ‘Think about this for a second. Is there a God? What does God look like? What does God sound like? What does God feel like? How do we relate to God?’”

 

— George Lucas, “Of Myth and Men,” Time (4/26/99), p. 93.

 

“The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell . . .”

 

— G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer and Christian thinker

 

“It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.”

 

— Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), French philosopher, sociologist and theologian

 

“The only ground of hope for the continuance of our free institutions is in the proper moral and religious training of the children, that they may be prepared to discharge aright the duties of men and citizens.” “The only ground of hope for the continuance of our free institutions is in the proper moral and religious training of the children, that they may be prepared to discharge aright the duties of men and citizens.”

 

— President Zachary Taylor (1784-1850), on July 4, 1849

 

“Private opinion creates public opinion…That is why private opinion, and private behavior, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important.”

 

— Jan Struther (Joyce Anstruther/Placzek, 1901-53), British poet

 

“Culture is religion incarnate.”

 

— Chuck Colson, “BreakPoint”, 11/19/07

 

“Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”

 

—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French political/cultural researcher

 

“I fear we are too much concerned with material things to remember that our real strength lies in spiritual values.”

 

— President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), in 1946

 

“A culture that does not aspire to the divine becomes obsessed with the fascination of evil, reveling in the frivolous, the depraved, and the bestial.”

 

— George Gilder, Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute, scholar and author

 

“A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University’s Robert Putnam, one of the world’s most influential political scientists. His research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone—from their next-door neighbor to the mayor. “‘In the presence of diversity, we hunker down,’ said Putnam. ‘We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.’ “Professor Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, ‘the most diverse human habitation in human history.’”

 

— “The Financial Times”, October 2006, quoted in “California, Here We Come!” by Patrick J. Buchanan, 06/26/2009 www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32465

 

“It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based on the ideals of which Americans boast than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion.”

 

— President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), in 192

 

“But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another – slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in “Brave New World Revisited”, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. In “1984”, Huxley added, “people are controlled by inflicting pain.” In “Brave New World”, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”

 

— Neil Postman (1931-2003), American author, media theorist and cultural critic in “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, 1985)

 

“Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration.”

 

— Neil Postman (1931-2003), American author, media theorist and cultural critic in a talk given at the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik) on October 11, 1990 in Stuttgart.

 

“Television is altering the meaning of ‘being informed’ by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information — misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information — information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.”

 

— Neil Postman (1931-2003), American author, media theorist and cultural critic in “Amusing Ourselves To Death” (1985)