Yquotes.com

 

In the shift from direct democracy to representational democracy, the printed book became an embodiment of thought for the physically absent author; and so the popular art form of the popular book and the pamphlet re-presented ideas and contributed to the public space of political philosophies of the Enlightenment. Television, however, now brings forth this new kind of public space, and it calls into being this new world, not of the educated citizenry in a republic, but of the electropeasantry in the state of Entertainment. Recall how people stopped singing in pubs when they brought in the TV set, and you will appreciate the new passivity in which people stop voting for their representatives as TV takes over the electoral campaigns.
--
Thompson (1991) Play, from The American Replacement of Nature

 

William Irwin Thompson

» William Irwin Thompson - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

Crooning. A reprehensible form of singing that established itself in light entertainment music in about the 1930s. It recommended itself at first to would-be singers without voices who were unable to acquire an adequate technique and later to a large public because anything, however inartistic, is likely to become popular if only it is done often enough by a large enough number of people.

 

Eric Blom

 

Everything is discussed in this world, except for one thing: democracy. Democracy is not discussed. Democracy is there, as a kind of saint, from whom no miracles are expected, but that is there as a reference: "the democracy"; and we don’t notice that the democracy in which we live in is a kidnapped, conditioned and amputated one, because the power of the citizen, the power of each one of us, is limited, in the political sphere, I repeat, in the political sphere, to removing a government that we don’t like and replacing it by another one that we might come to like. Nothing else. But the important decisions are made in another sphere, and we all know which one it is. The great international financial organizations, the IMFs, the World Trade Organizations, the World Banks, the OECD, all of these... None of these institutions is democratic, so how can we continue to talk about democracy, if those who actually govern the world are not democratically elected by the people? Who chooses the countries' representatives in those institutions? Their respective peoples? No. So where is the democracy?

 

Jose Saramago

 

In our country, third-party candidates throughout the years have said there is not a dime's worth of difference between the candidates from the major parties. Well, that is clearly a campaign canard. But it may appear to be true if the public's knowledge of the important differences between candidates is limited to what the public sees and hears on television.
Putting it as strongly as I can, the failure to give free airtime for our political campaigns endangers our democracy.

 

Walter Cronkite

 

Your book contains direct analogies between us and the Hitlerite fascists. You book incorrectly describes our people, communists. Could we have won the war with the kind of people you describe? In your book you say positive things about religion, God, Catholicism. Your book defends Trotsky. You book is full of doubts about the legitimacy of our Soviet system.

 

Vasily Grossman

 

The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide difference.

 

Oscar Wilde