This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
In the twentieth century the magnificent sensate house of Western man began to deteriorate rapidly and then to crumble. There was, among other things, a disintegration of its moral, legal, and other values which, from within, control and guide the behavior of individuals and groups. When human beings cease to be controlled by deeply interiorized religious, ethical, aesthetic and other values, individuals and groups become the victims of crude power and fraud as the supreme controlling forces of their behavior, relationship, and destiny. In such circumstances, man turns into a human animal driven mainly by his biological urges, passions, and lust. Individual and collective unrestricted egotism flares up; a struggle for existence intensifies; might becomes right; and wars, bloody revolutions, crime, and other forms of interhuman strife and bestiality explode on an unprecedented scale. So it was in all great transitory periods.
Aesthetic | Behavior | Control | Existence | Fraud | Individual | Man | Power | Struggle |
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
In such a culture, material values naturally become paramount, beginning with omnipotent wealth and ending with all the values that satisfy man's physiological needs and material comfort. Sensory utility and pleasure... become the sole criteria of what is good and bad... A further consequence of such a system of truth is the development of a temporalistic, relativistic, and nihilistic mentality. The sensory world is in a state of incessant flux and becoming. There is nothing unchangeable in it - not even an eternal Supreme Being. Mind dominated by the truth of the senses simply cannot perceive any permanency, but apprehends all values in terms of shift and transformation. Sensate mentality views everything from the standpoint of evolution and progress. This leads to an increasing neglect of the eternal values, which come to be replaced by temporary, or short-time, considerations. Sensate society lives in, and appreciates mainly, the present. Since the past is irretrievable and no longer exists, while the future is not yet here and is uncertain, only the present moment is real and desirable.
Beginning | Eternal | Evolution | Future | Good | Mind | Neglect | Nothing | Past | Present | Society | System | Truth | Wealth | World | Society |
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
Sensate culture, has these features: The defining cultural principle is that true reality is sensory – only the material world is real. There is no other reality or source of values. This becomes the ubiquitous organizing principle of society. It permeates every aspect of culture and defines the basic mentality. People are unable to think in any other terms. Sensate culture pursues science and technology, but dedicates little creative thought to spirituality or religion. Dominant values are wealth, health, bodily comfort, sensual pleasures, power and fame. Ethics, politics, and economics are utilitarian and hedonistic. All ethical and legal precepts are considered mere man-made conventions, relative and changeable. Art and entertainment emphasize sensory stimulation. In the decadent stages of Sensate culture there is a frenzied emphasis on the new and the shocking (literally, sensationalism). Religious institutions are mere relics of previous epochs, stripped of their original substance, and tending to fundamentalism and exaggerated fideism (the view that faith is not compatible with reason).
Culture | Economics | Entertainment | Faith | Little | People | Power | Reality | Science | Spirituality | Thought | World | Think | Thought |
A shared set of ethical values is the glue that can hold us together during an intense crisis. A key lesson from the SARS outbreak is that fairness becomes more important during a time of crisis and confusion. And the time to consider these questions and processes in relation to a threatened major pandemic is now.
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
Anarchism, the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more or less permanent — for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defense of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs. Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary — as is seen in organic life at large — harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.
Conduct | Defense | Government | Harmony | Life | Life | Nothing | Obedience | Organic | Society | Submission | Society | Government |
Peter L. Berger, fully Peter Ludwig Berger
There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the churches is mainly the heavier dosage of religious vocabulary involved.
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
A further consequence of such a system of truth is the development of a temporalistic, relativistic, and nihilistic mentality. The sensory world is in a state of incessant flux and becoming. There is nothing unchangeable in it - not even an eternal Supreme Being. Mind dominated by the truth of the senses simply cannot perceive any permanency, but apprehends all values in terms of shift and transformation. Sensate mentality views everything from the standpoint of evolution and progress. This leads to an increasing neglect of the eternal values, which come to be replaced by temporary, or short-time, considerations. Sensate society lives in, and appreciates mainly, the present. Since the past is irretrievable and no longer exists, while the future is not yet here and is uncertain, only the present moment is real and desirable.
Eternal | Evolution | Future | Mind | Neglect | Nothing | Past | Present | Society | System | Truth | World | Society |
Phyllis Schlafly, fully Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly
After Big Media, U.S. colleges and universities are the biggest enemies of the values of red-state Americans.
Pierre Trudeau, aka Pierre Elliott Trudeau, fully Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau
We must now establish the basic principles, the basic values and beliefs which hold us together as Canadians so that beyond our regional loyalties there is a way of life and a system of values which make us proud of the country that has given us such freedom and such immeasurable joy.
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
Sensate values “will be progressively destructive rather than constructive, representing in their totality a museum of sociocultural pathology….The Sensate mentality will increasingly interpret man and all values ‘physicochemically,’ ‘biologically,’ ‘reflexologically,’ ‘endocrinologically,’ ‘behavioristically,’ ‘economically’…[etc.].”
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
Real creativity will die out. Instead, we shall get a multitude of mediocre pseudo-thinkers and vulgar groups and organizations. Our belief systems will turn into a strange chaotic stew of science, philosophy, and magical beliefs. “Quantitative colossalism will substitute for qualitative refinement.” What is biggest will be regarded as best. Instead of classics, we shall have best-sellers. Instead of genius, technique. Instead of real thought, Information. Instead of inner value, glittering externality. Instead of sages, smart alecs. The great cultural values of the past will be degraded; “Michelangelos and Rembrandts will be decorating soap and razor blades, washing machines and whiskey bottles.”
Belief | Creativity | Machines | Past | Will |
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
Love is the supreme value around which all moral values can be integrated into one ethical system valid for the whole of humanity.
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
He that first started that doctrine, that knavery is the best defense against a knave, was but an ill teacher, advising us to commit wickedness to secure ourselves.
Defense | Wickedness |
In International Consequences the players must reckon to reap what they've sown. We have a defense against other defenses, but what's to defend us against our own?
Consequences | Defense |
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
It is a mistake to apply American democratic procedures to the faith and the truth. You cannot take a vote on the truth. The value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes.
Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL
All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
The family, as the fundamental and essential educating community, is the privileged means for transmitting the religious and cultural values which help the person to acquire his or her own identity. Founded on love and open to the gift of life, the family contains in itself the very future of society; its most special task is to contribute effectively to a future of peace.
Angela Merkel, fully Angela Dorothea Merkel, née Kasner
Our birth rate is now half that in 1965... When I am chancellor, family values will be enshrined in our taxation system.
I have gone from a Barry Goldwater Republican to a New Democrat, but I think my underlying values have remained pretty constant; individual responsibility and community. I do not see those as being mutually inconsistent.
Individual | Responsibility | Think |