Lecture XLIII (Nr. 0573)

[568] [such] as radio, movie, and television. There are, in all these things, some elements which one could call cultural goods of the past, which are brought especially in music, and there is much information, and the information problem leads to these extraordinary things like the $100,000-questions, in order to answer which, you must empty your mind of every meaningful content to take in innumerable facts, and then you might win the $100,000 on the basis of this ideal! But this is not the worst part of it. A much worse part is the SILENT PRODUCTION of patterns of thought which are not enforced, as in totalitarian countries, by

police power from outside, but which are mediated by the very soft form of taking from you, without any external enforcement, many hours of your day, and from children often, all the non-school hours of their day, and what is going on in school under the heading "Education for Adjustment" is often not much better---so that from early time on, this patternization is going on. Now here we are before a problem, namely, under these circumstances, is the resistance

against neo-collectivism in this country more possible than in the totalitarian countries? In the totalitarian countries, a resistance is a matter of danger of life. In this country the resistance is a matter of preserving INTERNALLY elements which can be preserved ONLY in the situation of solitude. I can tell you a discussion I had in the Business School two months ago, I think it was, about the meaning of business in our time, with very advanced students of a special group there; and the final question which I was asked was: "Now if you sum up all what you have told us"--- about the confusion of means and ends, the creation of means for ends which then themselves