“Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
― The Canterville Ghost
― The Canterville Ghost
“The punishment of desire is the agony of unfulfillment”
― Poimandres
― Poimandres
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Aisling’s 2025 Year in Books
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