A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.
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Lionel Trilling, in his introducton to Beyond Culture (1976) by Edward T. HallBeverly Sills
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The soul seems to reside in the judgment, and the judgment would seem to be seated in that part where all the senses meet; and this is called the Common Sense and is not all-pervading throughout the body, as many have thought. Rather is it entirely in one part. Because, if it were all-pervading and the same in every part, there would have been no need to make the instruments of the senses meet in one centre and in one single spot; on the contrary it would have sufficed that the eye should fulfil the function of its sensation on its surface only, and not transmit the image of the things seen, to the sense, by means of the optic nerves, so that the soul — for the reason given above — may perceive it in the surface of the eye.
Leonardo da Vinci
The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.
Thomas Beecham
“With environmental progress continuing, environmental consciousness high among the American people and the environmental movement increasingly viewed as an obstacle to further environmental progress, both Earth Day and the environmental movement may have run their course.”
David A. Ridenour
The culture as a whole is losing its individual notes, its diversity. And this is… it's not only sad. It's devastating. It's devastating because routine language means routine thought. And it means unquestioning thought. It means if I can't — if new words cannot occur to me and new image does not occur to me, then what I'm doing is I'm simply repeating what I've heard.
And what we hear from an overpowering cultural force and the forces of homogenization, what we hear is sell, sell, buy, buy. That's it. That is the function.John Leonard
Functional communication is only the outer layer of the one- dimensional universe in which man is trained to target—to translate the negative into the positive so that he can continue to function, reduced but fit and reasonably well. The institutions of free speech and freedom of thought do not hamper the mental coordination with the established reality. What is taking place is a sweeping redefinition of thought itself, of its function and content. The coordination of the individual with his society reaches into those layers of the mind where the very concepts are elaborated which are designed to comprehend the established reality. These concepts are taken from the intellectual tradition and translated into operational terms—a translation which has the effect of reducing the tension between thought and reality by weakening the negative power of thought.
Herbert Marcuse
Sills, Beverly
Silva, Desmond de
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