To say that "the camera cannot lie" is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practised in its name.
Marshall McluhanRead
Only the small secrets need to be protected. The large ones are kept secret by public incredulity.
Interpretation
Lesser secrets require more protection, while the bigger truths are often ignored by society.
This quote by Marshall McLuhan suggests that minor secrets are vulnerable and need to be safeguarded, while greater secrets or truths are often dismissed by the public simply because they seem too incredible or unbelievable. It underscores a perspective on how society handles information, where larger truths go unnoticed, allowing them to remain safeguarded by the very disbelief of the masses.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of truth in journalism, this quote can illustrate how public perception shapes the disclosure of information.
To say that "the camera cannot lie" is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practised in its name.
A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.
In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses.
The news automatically becomes the real world for the TV user and is not a substitute for reality, but is itself an immediate reality.
Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.
The poet, the artist, the sleuth, whoever sharpens our perception tends to antisocial; rarely 'well adjusted,' he cannot go along with currents and trends.
To know God as the sovereign disposer of all good, inviting us to present our requests, and yet not to approach or ask of him, were so far from availing us, that it were just as if one told of a treasure were to allow it to remain buried in the ground.
There is no real evil in life, except great pain; all the rest is imaginary, and depends on the light in which we view things
.. the voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose the selfish theory.
We are so afraid of the idea of having to die... that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn.
Admittedly, there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face.
To begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology is the science of pure consciousness.
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