“By its very efficiency, the high-rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all. For the first time it removed the need to repress every kind of anti-social behaviour, and left them free to explore any deviant or wayward impulses.”

— J. G. Ballard , book High-Rise

Source: High-Rise (1975), Ch. 3
Context: The more arid and effectless life became in the high-rise, the greater the possibilities it offered. By its very efficiency, the high-rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all. For the first time it removed the need to repress every kind of anti-social behaviour, and left them free to explore any deviant or wayward impulses. It was precisely in these areas that the most important and most interesting aspect of their lives would take place. Secure within the shell of the high-rise, like passengers on board an automatically piloted airliner, they were free to behave in any way they wished, explore the darkest corners they could find. In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to make possible the expression of a truly 'free' psychopathology.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "By its very efficiency, the high-rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all. F…" by J. G. Ballard?

J. G. Ballard 78

British writer 1930–2009

Related quotes

“Every social system is a functioning entity. That is, it is a system of interdependent structures and processes such that it tends to maintain a relative stability and distinctiveness of pattern and behaviour as an entity by contrast with its - social or other - environment, and with it a relative independence from environmental forces. It "responds", to be sure, to the environmental stimuli, but is not completely assimilated to its environment, maintaining rather an element of distinctiveness in the face of variations in environmental conditions. To this extent it is analogous to an organism”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Talcott Parsons (1942) "Propaganda and Social Control". in: Parsons (1954) Essays in sociological theory http://archive.org/details/sociologicaltheo00pars , p. 143

“Ideology … is therefore necessarily false; its social function is not to give agents a true knowledge of the social structure but simply to insert them as it were into their practical activities.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1990s, Ideology (1991), p. 136

“Every socialistic type of government… produces bad art, produces social inertia, produces really unhappy people, and it's more repressive than any other kind of government.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Interview, "My Afternoon with Frank Zappa", Larry Rogak, (New York writer and attorney) Zappa.com (May 8, 1980) http://www.zappa.com/messageboard/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11831

“The slave trade has another character; it is the very denial of every law, of all social order. Man-hunting constitutes a crime of high treason against humanity. It ought to be repressed wherever it can be reached, on land as well as by sea.”

Auguste, Baron Lambermont (1819–1905) Belgian politician

Source: New Africa; an essay on government civilization in new countries, and on the foundation, organization and administration of the Congo Free State, THE ORIENTAL SLAVE-TRADE, Page 132. https://archive.org/details/newafricaessayon00desciala/page/152/mode/2up Lambermont at the Berlin Conference.

“For if medicine is really to accomplish its great task, it must intervene in political and social life. It must point out the hindrances that impede the normal social functioning of vital processes, and effect their removal.”

Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) German doctor, anthropologist, public health activist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician

1849 (quoted in Pathologies of Power, by Paul Farmer, page 323).

“The social structure of a free, democratic society creates the psychological conditions for its greater internal peace.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 64

“Every human society which has endured long enough to leave records has had elaborate customs and institutions which were effective in instilling into the young the sentiments necessary for its perpetuation. Now for the first time in recorded history Western capitalism offers us a spectacle of a system which not only has given up altogether the task of moral education, but actually employs vast resources and the means of persuasion of unprecedented power to destroy the customs, norms and ideals indispensable for its survival; and to implant fundamentally anti-social attitudes which are incompatible with any reasonable social order. It would be miraculous if a social order which permits such massive anti-socialisation could fail to destroy itself.”

Stanislav Andreski (1919–2007) Polish-British sociologist

Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972)

“The forms of social organization produced the market, not the reverse… Instead of markets calling forth efficient forms of social organization, political and social interactions produced the structuring of sociologically effective markets.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 300

“Yeah, I support my troops
They wave black flags
They wear black masks
All the roads are closed
Smoke is rising from the fields
The monsters left their cages
An angel set them free.”

Tom Morello (1964) American guitarist and singer-songwriter

Flesh Shapes The Day.
Lyrics

“I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

2011-05-15 interview on * Meet the Press
2011-05-15
NBC, quoted in * Gingrich Calls GOP Budget 'Right Wing Social Engineering'
PBS
2011-05-16
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/05/gingrich-keeps-ryan-budget-at-arms-length.html
2011-05-28
2010s

“By its very efficiency, the high-rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all. For the first time it removed the need to repress every kind of anti-social behaviour, and left them free to explore any deviant or wayward impulses.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

J. G. Ballard 78

Related quotes

Related topics