Peter Drucker notes that “the distinction between parent and daughter [companies] is increasingly blurring. In the transnational company, design is done anyplace within the system. Major pharmaceutical companies now have research laboratories in five or six countries, in the United States, . . . . Continue Reading »
We are living through a communications revolution. Maybe: While submarine fiber-optic cable is being laid under the world’s oceans (according to Anderson, it will be “the largest man-made structure in the world”), about 70% of the people in the world have never made a phone call. . . . . Continue Reading »
As an example of “cultural hybridization,” Walter Truett Anderson describes the residents of the German village of Roderau, where a number of Germans are fascinated with American Indian culture: “the chief Indian in Roderaui is Gerhard Fischer, who prefers to go by the name of Old . . . . Continue Reading »
Walter Truett Anderson says, “The postmodern condition is not an artistic movement or a cultural fad or an intellectual theory - although it produces all of those and is in some ways defined by them. It is what inevitably happens as people everywhere begin to see that there are many beliefs, . . . . Continue Reading »
Walter Truett Anderson suggests that postmoderns may be distinguished from others by the fact that they not only have a culture, but know that they have it. Or, put differently: “You do not choose to be premodern. If you choose, you are at least modern. If you know you are choosing, you are . . . . Continue Reading »
Christopher Lasch pointed to the therapeutic dimensions of 1960s radicalism: “Acting out fantasies does not end repressions . . . it merely dramatizes the permissible limits of antisocial behavior. In the sixties and early seventies, radicals who transgressed these limits, under the illusion . . . . Continue Reading »
Clem Whittaker, a pioneer in the political use of media during the 1930s and 40s, candidly explained his theory of campaigning in a speech to the PUblic Relations Society of America: “There are thousands of experts bidding for every man’s attention - and every man has a limited amount . . . . Continue Reading »
Walter Truett Anderson points to the US invasion of Grenada (1983) as an example of a postmodern public-relations war: “its primary purpose was to give the American public a ‘win,’ to flex the muscles of the Reagan administration, to allow Americans to (in the phrase current at . . . . Continue Reading »
A reader, Dan Glover, sent the following response to my hints about the Christian as “poem.” “Christ, the eternal Word, indwells his people and his people corporate. He is the Word which controls us with his words (‘go, make disciples . . . baptizing them in the name of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Walter Truett Anderson suggests that postmodernism takes is rise from the recognition of the social construction of reality. This means: The institutions, practices, and habits that make up the contents of social life are made by human beings; and even natural reality is known and experienced . . . . Continue Reading »
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