“Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America—burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing? This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion.” ― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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Mass Brain Damage
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Mass Mind Brain Damage
Not just personal brain damage, not just one individual brain damage.
Brain damage of entire groups, mass mind brain damage. Mass man brain damage.
Reference:
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“The Galaxy Reconfigured or the Plight of Mass Man in an Individualist Society” - Marshall McLuhan
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"Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century" - Howard Bloom
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It's the culture.
The essential idea in Patterns of Culture is, according to the foreword by Margaret Mead, "her view of human cultures as 'personality writ large.'" Each culture, Benedict explains, chooses from "the great arc of human potentialities" only a few characteristics which become the leading personality traits of the persons living in that culture.