Sublime

This idea of life as a work of art found its corollary in the emergence of the figure of the artist as the ideal, self-motivating, self-monitoring, and even self-employing worker.35

These peculiar encounters say something about a culture that marginalizes the invisibles. If a culture’s philosophy does not allow enough place for the other, give credit to the invisible, then the other must squeeze itself into our psychic system in distorted form. This suggests that some psychic dysfunctions would be better located in the dysfunc

It is not only information that they need—in this Age of Fact, information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it.

Of the many emerging descriptions of our social brain, for me the simplest and most elegant is the highly regarded Social Baseline Theory of Lane Beckes and James A. Coan, two researchers at the University of Virginia.

there was a time when social scientists saw themselves as shapers and designers of possible futures rather than only as analysts. H.G. Wells, for example, wrote that ‘sociology is the description of the Ideal Society and its relation to existing societies’, a view shared by very few sociologists today.

Would you characterize this media analysis as a “conspiracy theory” at all? It’s precisely the opposite of conspiracy theory, actually—in fact, in general this analysis tends to downplay the role of individuals: they’re just replaceable pieces.

The citizen of today in every developed country is typically an employee. He works for one of the institutions. He looks to them for his livelihood. He looks to them for his opportunities. He looks to them for access to status and function in society, as well as for personal fulfillment and achievement.

From the standpoint of Ely and the new generation economists, economic analysis and its application made up an inherently ethical task whose basic unit of analysis was the social whole. In this sense, their pronouncements were not socialist in a Marxist sense—that is, implying public ownership of capital and the ultimate displacement of capitalism—