The Trouble With Reality Quotes

“The most violent revolutions in an individual’s beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one’s own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

“Even if each of our realities is unique, our common cultures and environments ensure that we share some fundamental principles. That is what enables consensus, and that is what is under attack. By degrading the very notion of shared reality, Trump has disabled the engine of democracy. As”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

“Citizens may recoil from paying for the news, he noted, because they see it as a natural right. But in the absence of consumer coin, the media must be fueled by advertisers seeking consumers and investors pursuing profit. Novelty and drama pay to keep the presses rolling, and so the “news” that supposedly informs reason becomes the dog wagged by its own tail.”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

“Meanwhile”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

“Michael Signer, author of Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies, wrote that true demagogues must meet four criteria proposed by Cooper: They must pose as a mirror for the masses; ignite waves of intense emotion; use that emotion for political gain; and break the rules that govern us.”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

“The modern masses do not believe in anything visible. . . . What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part.”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

“Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves. . . . It is just a very large version of Disneyland.”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

“we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. . . . Very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind.”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

“But in the absence of consumer coin, the media must be fueled by advertisers seeking consumers and investors pursuing profit. Novelty and drama pay to keep the presses rolling, and so the “news” that supposedly informs reason becomes the dog wagged by its own tail.”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

“Part of the problem stems from the fact that facts, even a lot of facts, do not constitute reality. Reality is what forms after we filter, arrange, and prioritize those facts and marinate them in our values and traditions.

Reality is personal.”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble With Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

“he contrasts two pivotal works of dystopian fiction: George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In Orwell’s vision, he notes, we are crushed by a merciless oppression imposed by others, whereas in Huxley’s vision, we are seduced, sedated, and satiated. We enslave ourselves. “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. “Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. “In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. “In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. . . .” Orwell,”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

“as eminent political theorist Hannah Arendt saw back in 1951: “Would-be totalitarian rulers usually start their careers by boasting of their past crimes and carefully outlining their future ones.”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time