collective denial Quotes

Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.

Every age is blind to its own worst madness.

When genocide is committed, it must be seen. People must look at it with open eyes, not minimize its impact.

But we need to be very clear: because of our decades of collective denial, no gradual, incremental options are now available to us.

At any given moment, there is a sort of all pervading orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss large and uncomfortable facts.

What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one's ribs get re-broken again.

In the U.S.A., we want to sing along with the chorus and ignore the verses, ignore the blues. . . No one is going to hold up a cigarette lighter in a stadium to the tune of "mourn together, suffer together." City on a hill, though -- that has a backbeat we can dance to. And that's why the citizens of the United States not only elected and reelected Ronald Reagan; that's why we ARE Ronald Reagan.

Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,' said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?

I knew that I'd lived in New York too long when, a few years ago, I was on a subway going downtown, and it stopped at 14th Street. At the station, the doors opened, and the conductor announced that there was a bomb on board and we should evacuate immediately. Nobody moved. We just looked at each other, 'Do you see a bomb?' 'I don't see a bomb.' 'There's no bomb.' 'I've only got two stops - let's go for it.

Ignorant people remain ignorant because they have a secret agreement to call one another intelligent.

I think we have a cultural difficulty with looking at our problems.

The whole organization seemed to be in free fall, indulging in a collective fantasy in which experienced colleagues refused to admit that their every movement, every decision that was made and implemented, only led them one step closer to the abyss.

Haven't you lived in the South long enough to know that nothing is ever anybody's fault?

A man who saw a miracle would reject his eyes' witness, if those with him saw nothing.

People's ability to forget what they do not want to know, to overlook what is before their eyes, was seldom put to the test better than in Germany at that time.

Faking is a social activity in which people act together to draw a veil over unwanted realities and encourage each other in the exercise of their illusory powers.

We are constantly - in order to cope with painful realities - shuffling through third-rate, half-remembered fantasies taken from movies, from TV, from people we admire. We do this individually, we do it collectively - we tell stories to escape our most painful truths.

American culture is one that is so easily in denial. We have such a strange dichotomy, so hypocritical. The truth can be blaring in neon letters but our culture will find a reason not to hear what the truth is.

Human nature was all about shifting blame...and responsibility. How else could you explain concentration camps and genocide and all the awful things people did to each other every day? They just carried on life and pretended like the evil didn't exist, as long as it was happening out of their direct view.

When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant.

The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that by seeing nothing it might avoid Truth.

But you're not really allowed to complain about any of this, You're just supposed to be grateful. And obviously-I get it. You're lucky and you should appreciate your luck. But, I mean, it just seems if you even hint that there's a bad side to any of this people will be like-Liar! I guess it's because people want to have it as a dream

The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

One reason that we have collectively plugged our ears against a decade of dismal revelations about Bill Cosby is that he made lots of Americans feel good about two things we rarely have reason to feel good about: race and gender.