Each conquering belief system or philosophy replaces destroyed ideals with new ones, equally invented: it is not possible to endure the quotidian, while governing our impulses, without a system of constructed motivations to constrain and guide us. Shamanism and the secular social sciences are merely variant fabrications: the former vanquished the latter most effectively by inventing the idea of an ontological break between us and all those who came before us; and by disseminating this flattery as fact through a range of Ideological State Apparatuses harnessed to newly emergent mass communication systems. "We Whites descended from monkeys are no less affiliated than those who descend from heroes, totems, or clans. Soccer, rock and roll, drugs, elections, salaries, and schools affiliate perhaps as deeply as ancestors, race, the land, and the dead.” (Bruno Latour, On the modern cult of the factish Gods, 2010. Durham and London: Duke, p. 49) Comments are closed.
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