Random Notes

To manipulate the truth, this is always a very easy recipe for the achievement of popularity and for gathering crowds of disciples; however, to secure this sort of demagogic success one must mutilate a complex reality.

“Propaganda eliminates anxieties stemming from irrational and disproportionate fears, for it gives man assurances equivalent to those formerly given him by religion. It offers him a simple and clear explanation of the world in which he lives - to be sure, a false explanation far removed from reality, but one that is obvious and satisfying. It hands him a key with which he can open all doors; there is no more mystery; everything can be explained, thanks to propaganda. It gives him special glasses through which he can look at present-day history and clearly understand what it means. It hands him a guide line with which he can recover the general line running through all incoherent events. Now the world ceases to be hostile and menacing. When he recites his propaganda lesson and says that he is thinking for himself, when his eyes see nothing and his mouth only produces sounds previously stenciled into his brain, when he says that he is indeed expressing his judgment - then he really demonstrates that he no longer thinks at all, ever, and that he does not exist as a person.” 

Men of thought, agile on the plane of ideas with fellows among books, they groped feebly in this matter of actual life and death.

A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies everything that in its units pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought.

Finally, Arendt insists that by understanding totalitarianism, we can see the hope that remains. This is crucial to understanding why Arendt embarked on her study of totalitarianism in the first place. Totalitarianism attempts to stamp out human spontaneity, because  human spontaneity is what can defeat it.

They reflect this trend so much because this is the only world they’ve ever known. That’s why I call them “generation me” because they have never known a world that put duty before self. A generation which lacks the importance of ethical and moral values.

Decadencia moral ocorreu nao pela densidade em si mas pela excessiva interacao social.

We are living a postmodern era in which the grand narratives of religion and political ideology have colapsed. In their place have emerged a crusading desire to right perceived wrong and the weaponization of identity, both accelerated by the new forms of social and news media. Narrow sets of interest now dominate the agenda as society becomes more and more tribal.

They were always there. First in the morning, continually through the day, and the last at night.