“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”

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Hannah Arendt 85
Jewish-American political theorist 1906–1975

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“I propose that the aim of education is exactly the opposite, namely, the widening and deepening of consciousness. To the extent that education can help the student develop sensitivity, depth of perception, and above all the capacity to perceive significant forms in what he is studying, it will be developing at the same time the student's capacity to deal with anxiety constructively.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Psychology and the Human Dilemma (1967), p. 50
Context: The overemphasis on the Baconian doctrine of knowledge as power, and the accompanying concern with gaining power over nature as well as over ourselves in the sense of treating ourself as objects to be manipulated rather than human beings whose aim is to expand in meaningful living, have resulted in the invalidation of the self. This tends to shrink the individual's consciousness, to block off his awareness, and thus play into … unconstructive anxiety … I propose that the aim of education is exactly the opposite, namely, the widening and deepening of consciousness. To the extent that education can help the student develop sensitivity, depth of perception, and above all the capacity to perceive significant forms in what he is studying, it will be developing at the same time the student's capacity to deal with anxiety constructively.

“Hierarchy has had six thousand years of trial. It will never succeed for long in any form. … My opinion is that we are at the historical climax (the flash point) of the totalitarian period.”

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Source: Blood in My Eye (1971), p. 130

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“I have never been to the Right, nor have I been a Communist, because I have experienced, personally, both forms of totalitarianism.”

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“In fluxus there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods; individuals with something unnameable in common have simply naturally coalesced to publish and perform their work.”

George Brecht (1926–2008) American artist and composer

George Brecht (1963), cited in: Hannah Higgins (2002), Fluxus Experience. p. 69
Context: The misunderstandings have seemed to come from comparing fluxus with movements or groups whose individuals ‘have had some principle in common, or an agreed-upon program. In fluxus there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods; individuals with something unnameable in common have simply naturally coalesced to publish and perform their work. Perhaps this common something is a feeling that the bounds of art are much wider than they have conventionally seemed, or that art and certain long-established bounds are no longer very useful. At any rate, individuals in europe, the us, and japan have discovered each other’s work and found it nourishing (or something) and have grown objects and events which are original, and often uncategorizable, in a strange new way.

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“Education of the people will only then be possible, when the obstructions thereto have been removed. And that will not take place until the entire present system has been destroyed.”

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