Tag Archives: mass media

Mass-media Culture: Daily Metta

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“The political domination of England is bad enough. The cultural is infinitely worse.… When the cultural domination is complete the political will defy resistance.” ~ Gandhi, Young India, July 9, 1925 Recently Thomas Friedman wrote that the (disastrous) result of the 2016 presidential election in the US “has much less to do with trade or… read more

Live and Move: Daily Metta

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“We have to live and move and have our being in nonviolence even as Hitler does in violence.” ~ Gandhi, Harijan, July 21, 1940 In practical terms, “live and move and have our being” would mean that our education (including its most powerful form, the mass media), our economy, our judicial system, and in short… read more

“Everyone a newspaper”–Daily Metta

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November 27: “Let everyone become his walking newspaper and carry the good news from mouth to mouth.” –Gandhi (Mahatma, vol. 6, p. 2) As the British rallied popular opinion, funds and other support for its war efforts in the 1940s, they tried to downplay the resistance efforts within India. This included censoring the press–not allowing… read more

“No easy task”–Daily Metta

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August 1: “It is no easy task to restrain the fury of a people  incensed by a deep sense of wrong.” –Gandhi (Young India, May 5, 1920) At the beginning of the Indian Freedom Struggle, when people wrote and spoke against participating in non-cooperation, Gandhi told them to “get out of their chairs” and actually… read more

Imagining the Unimaginable

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Last week the quiet town of Waseca, MN narrowly avoided becoming “one more in a long list of school shootings” (I will come back to this language of the CNN report).  A boy, 17 years old, had plotted to kill his family and bomb the town’s junior and senior high school, to “kill as many students… read more

Approaching Spiritual Death

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by Michael N. Nagler In 1925, Gandhi unveiled what he called the “Seven Social Sins” in his newspaper, Young India: Politics without principles Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Knowledge without character Commerce without morality Science without humanity Worship without sacrifice. Today I think we need to add an eighth: “Entertainment without common sense.”  The idea that we… read more

Art as murder

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“The only thing that you can control, and you must therefore control, is the imagery in your own mind.” – Epictetus Until today I didn’t even know there was such a thing as white supremacist music.  Wade Michael Page knew; the “domestic terrorist” who killed six people at the Oak Creek Sikh temple in Wisconsin… read more

The Batman Massacre: A Response

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By Michael Nagler I want to make an offer to my fellow Americans who are, like myself, reeling from the worst “random” shooting the country has ever seen.  My question: Have you had enough?  Because if you have, I can tell you how to stop this kind of madness.  I know that’s a bold claim,… read more