A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, ...thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: th...is is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in... darkness. It recognises neither pity nor pitilessness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most condensed format of the conversionist motif is the TV commercial, which has become essential to both network and religiou...s broadcasting. Embedded in its structure are sentiments from our religious and political heritage: salvation and choice. Newness of life can now be associated with a change of heart about politics, the purchase of a new car, or the selection of a beverage. A Pepsi commercial, for example, designed to fit the charismatic personality and gifts of singer Michael Jackson, became an invitation to make a decision and join in. Images and sounds of the soft-drink ad drew viewers into a growing throng of happy, dancing people following the steps of a dynamic cultural hero. Even couch potatoes might have been roused, vicariously at least, to skip lightly behind the agile Jackson as he led his ecstatic followers to the right choice. The conversionist call in this instance is to come on up to the good life through Pepsi. Nonetheless it plays upon the persuasive motifs of turning around and becoming a part of something larger.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Males more often operate in a detached and isolated fashion. Solitary work to master a skill is a common characteristic of male li...fe, and men are more quick to dismiss the claims of other people and even of their own emotions. This approach tends to make things (machines, ideas) at least as important as people in the man's inner life. Words such as rational, independent, and objective describe positive aspects of this tendency; cold, detached, unfeeling are words for the more destructive aspects. In contrast, women's lives are more likely to embody the theme of connection--both connection between people and connection between the emotional and intellectual parts of oneself. Women have less of a penchant for deciding things independent of the relevant network of connections. In most instances people matter more to them than things and they will put a faithfulness to human ties above dedication to "principle" or pure "independence" of judgment. It is testament to the male bias of our society that such qualities are often referred to with the demeaning names of "dependence" or "conformity."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For us necessity is not as of old an image without us, with whom we can do warfare; it is a magic web woven through and through us..., like that magnetic system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Parents need all the help they can get. The strongest as well as the most fragile family requires a vital network of social suppor...ts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you would see how interwoven it is in the warp and woof of civilization ... go at night-fall to the top of one of the down-town... steel giants and you may see how in the image of material man, at once his glory and his menace, is this thing we call a city. There beneath you is the monster, stretching acre upon acre into the far distance. High over head hangs the stagnant pall of its fetid breath, reddened with light from myriad eyes endlessly, everywhere blinking. Thousands of acres of cellular tissue, the city's flesh outspreads layer upon layer, enmeshed by an intricate network of veins and arteries radiating into the gloom, and in them, with muffled, persistent roar, circulating as the blood circulates in your veins, is the almost ceaseless beat of the activity to whose necessities it all conforms. The poisonous waste is drawn from the system of this gigantic creature by infinitely ramifying, thread-like ducts, gathering at their sensitive terminals matter destructive of its life, hurrying it to millions of small intestines to be collected in turn by larger, flowing to the great sewers, on to the drainage canal, and finally to the ocean.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a human being, goddamn it, my life has value.' So I want ...you to get up now, I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »