The chief cause of problems is solutions.
Eric SevareidRead
The biggest big business in America is not steel, automobiles, or television. It is the manufacture, refinement and distribution of anxiety.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that anxiety is a major industry in America, influencing people's lives more than traditional businesses.
Eric Sevareid emphasizes that anxiety has become a pervasive and monetizable aspect of American life, overshadowing more tangible industries such as steel, automobiles, or television. This highlights how societal pressures, fears, and stressors are not just personal experiences but are also commodified and managed by various sectors, making anxiety a significant cultural and economic force.
In practice
In a speech about mental health awareness, this quote can be used to underline the societal impact of anxiety.
We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about the Great Spirit. We do not want to learn that.
You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.
Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow.
Fundamentalism as it is called is not confined to the Muslim world. It is something that we have seen in different parts of the world. Let us hope that a dialogue between the followers of the three great monotheistic religions could help in putting an end to this.
Sometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.
Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change... If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual's circumstances β and that must include at least the possibility that they alter for the worse β then you don't have life after death; you just have death.
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