Vivienne Westwood's Active Response To Propaganda
ACTIVE RESISTANCE TO PROPAGANDA
Culture versus dogma
The world suffers from three evils: Nationalism, which has taken the place of religion, Organised Lying; and Non-Stop Distraction. The most pernicious of them is Non-Stop Distraction; the more you consume, the less you think.
These three evils can be summed up in one word: PROPAGANDA.
Culture is the antidote to Propaganda; by 'culture' is meant intellectual culture. Thinking involves doubt, all knowledge is uncertain: the Greek word for this is scepticism. It is the underlying principle of their discoveries and of their civilised values. By this method Democritus put forward the atomic theory in c420 BC.
I would define culture as the cultivation of the individual. (This is very different from today's cult of the individual -me, me, me!)
Education is of prime importance. We can educate children as individuals or as citizens.
On first consideration, there seems to be no antithesis between the good individual and the good citizen. Surely the good individual is inclined to administer to the good of the whole which is made up of good individuals, but in practical daily life the education which results from regarding a child as an individual is very different from that which results from regarding him as a future citizen.
Citizens as conceived by governments are persons who admire the status quo and are prepared to exert themselves for its preservation. Citizenship as an ideal is inadequate for it involves an absense of creativeness, and a willingness to acquiesce in the powers that be. This is contrary to what is overemphasized to prevent ordinary men from attaining the greatness of which they are capable.
PICTURE 1
PICTURE 2
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