The modern world is more confusing, diverse and susceptible to disruption than ever before; expressing the contradictions of its nature and ambivalent self-awareness in seemingly irreconcilably antagonistic conflicts; phrasing complex paradoxical questions while emphasising urgent longing for simple answers.
More powerful and able than ever at controlling their fate and place in life, today's people feel even more powerless, more threatened, more vulnerable than ever and have therefore become more susceptible than ever to radically simplified, aggressive mythologies and the lure of assured instant gratification.
Their alert and comprehensively suspicious consciousness exposes traditional beliefs as antiquated, self-deceptive, illusory worldviews. Oscillating between technological euphoria and doomsday sentiment as much as being conflicted over the idea of utopian abundance and the vision of a self-defeating world begging for a magical cure, the affluent society is in danger of perishing due to lack of vision and determination at exploring new concepts of innovation, inventiveness, resilience and sustainability. (Frederick J. Hacker, Terror 1973)
TO WHOM ALL/SOME OF THESE GOOD READS MAY CONCERN
Anyone prepared … anyone, anyone?!
Frame of Reference
Cal's Annotations | * To Whom "Kismet" May Concern In Turkey
Cal's Annotations | * Reminders On Faces Of Fundamentalist Islamic Terror(ism)
Faces Of Fundamentalist Terror(ism)
Taken Hostage: The American Experience
When Mike Wallace Confronted The Ayatollah (1979)
Aaron’s Nightmares in The Daytime!
[1] Frederick J. Hacker | Open Library: Dr. Frederick J. Hacker was born and raised in Vienna, Austria. He began attending the University of Vienna, but fled before the Nazis and finished his medical degree at the University of Basel in Switzerland in 1939. In 1940, he emigrated to the United States, where he worked in psychiatric clinics. In 1945, he founded his own clinic, the Hacker Psychiatric Clinic, with offices in Los Angeles and Lynwood, California, and the Hacker Foundation for Psychiatric Research and Education. He became a naturalized American citizen, and after the war he divided his time between California and Vienna. In 1968 he founded the Sigmund Freud Society in Vienna, serving as its president from 1968 to 1977. In 1969, he became well-known as a court-appointed expert in the trial of murderer Charles Manson. He taught at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Southern California's School of Medicine. In 1972, he worked with the West German government after the terrorist killings at the Munich Olympics, and in 1974, when Patricia Hearst was kidnapped, he worked her family as well. He published several books about aggression and violence. He was a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
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