Mass Media

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Mass Media: Opposing Viewpoints
Opposing View Point Series

Pg 12
Asking North Americans about the pervasive influence of media in this culture is a bit like… asking fish about water. “Water. What water?” We live and breath media – but we are largely unaware of how they shape our lives. (Tom Montgomery – Fate, The other Side, March/April 1997)

Pg 36
Yet it is real, very real, and much, much more than “Just Television”. For those in their early teens, it is seeing 15,000 sexual acts or innuendoes and a total of 33,000 murders and 200,000 acts of random violence in a single year, according to the American Family Association.

Pg 62
By creating a maximum consumption society, advertising fosters attitudes that will ruin the planet. The Third world must exist solely to meet the needs of the first (us). In America, there is now one car for every person. To achieve the same ratio in the Third World, the auto/advertising industry must sell millions of gas guzzlers to, for example, China, where that many cars will ruin their environment. I have seen this in Bangkok, now a “prosperous”, polluted, clogged snarl of highways and gridlock. The films prime example of the attitude is the Gulf War. Where, to maintain “our way of life” (cheap oil), George Bush didn’t care how many Iraqis he had to kill and the Pentagon censored the News so we could not see the consequences of our policy.

Pg 63
One of my Fordham students, Courtney Shannon, had it right in her reflection paper on Henry David Thoreau: “Consumers have too many choices. There are hundreds of different brands of clothes, yet each brand does the same function of keeping a person covered. A Lexus and a Toyota are both modes of transportation, yet there is a price difference of over $40,000 between the two cars. The simplicity of life has been lost. Crime is the consumer’s partner. It is becoming nearly impossible to separate the two. The rich flaunt what they own. The poor demoralize themselves to get the material goods that will make them appear richer than they are.

Pg 89
Benjamin I. Page writes that, “Even if the public is capable of a high level of rationality and good sense, public opinion is bound to depend, in good art, upon the political information and ideas that are conveyed to it.”

Revitalized

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I was fortunate to be involved in a very motivating and inspiring meeting last night, with two of our communities’ great minds. After leaving the meeting I have decided that I am going to make time to update this blog and tweet more often.

So as a means to get my juices flowing and hopefully open up dialog with views of this blog I am going to plays excerpt from books I have read. They will not be in any specific order or thought pattern.

I hope all that decide to view and comment will do so with an open heart and mind.

Peace!

Obama in Baltimore

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One thing I was sure I would never, would be to stand outside and here a speach by any political figure in this country. While turns out that I actually did. Not only did I stand ouside for something close to five (5) hours but I did it in 20 degree heat.

Though I had on multiply layers of clothing I don’t think that is what was keeping me warm. It had to be the thoughts of the progress the so called African-American has made in this country. I was proud and am proud to say that I not only voted for change but rallied for it as well.

Secrets of the Heart

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Satan

The people looked upon Father Samaan as their guide in the field of spiritual and theological matters, for he was an authority and a source of deep information on venial and mortal sins, well versed in the secrets of Paradise, Hell, and Purgatory.

Father Samaan’s mission in North Lebanon was to travel from one village to another, preaching and curing the people from the spiritual disease of sin, and saving them from the horrible trap of Satan. The Reverend Father waged constant war with Satan. The fellahin honoured and respected this clergyman, and were always anxious to buy his advice or prayers with pieces of gold and silver; and at the every harvest they would present him with the finest fruit of their fields.

One evening in Autumn, as Father Samaan walked his way toward a solitary village, crossing those valleys and hills, he heard a painful cry emerging from a ditch at the side of the road. He stopped and looked in the direction of the voice, and saw an unclothed man lying on the ground. Streams of blood oozed from deep wounds in his head and chest. He was moaning pitifully for aid, saying, “Save me, help me. Have mercy on me, I am dying.” Father Samaan looked with perplexity at the sufferer, and said within himself, “This man must be a thief…. He probably tried to rob the wayfarers and failed. Some one has wounded him, and I fear that should he die I may be accused of having taken his life.”

Read the poem in full here>>

Secrets of the Heart

Gibran, Kahlil

Does what you learn change your physical?

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“The intensification and heightening of human consciousness was believed to cause biological and even cellular changes in the physical body of the initiate. This divinization of the individual body on the microcosmic level, comprised the goal and purpose of the evolution of human consciousness in general.”

The Temple in Man

R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz