autorave/philosophy

A spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a wolf cub changed Mark Rowlands's life. From that moment on he found human company never quite matched up

Our wide range of beliefs, some of which are clearly false, grew out of a uniquely human trait. Alone in the animal world, humans understand cause and effect, and that, he says, led ultimately to the invention of tools, the rapid rise of sophisticated technology, and of course, beliefs. Even the earliest humans understood that many events that shaped their lives resulted from specific causes. Therefore, there must be a cause behind every event. Searching for that cause..led to the rise of religion.

The essay on the "culture industry" demonstrates the regression of enlightment to ideology which finds its typical expression in cinema and radio. Here enlightment consists of above all in the calculation of effectiveness and of the techniques of production and distribution; in accordance with its content, ideology expends itself in the idolization of given existence and of the power which controls technology. In the treatment of this contradiction the culture industry is taken more seriously than it would implictly require.

But since its appeal to its own properly commercial nature, its acknowledgment of a qualified truth, has long been a subterfuge that it uses to evade responsibility for lies, our analysis keeps to the products' objectively inherent claim to be aesthetic images which accordingly embody truth, and demonstrates the nullity of social being in the nihilism of that claim.

I liked the tragedy behind this story. Didn't think it was predictable at all.