Modern Dilemma Quotes

Modern Man is the victim of the very instruments he values most. Every gain in power, every mastery of natural forces, every scientific addition to knowledge, has proved potentially dangerous, because it has not been accompanied by equal gains in self-understanding and self-discipline.

The striking thing about love and will in our day is that, whereas in the past they were always held up to us as the answer to life's predicaments, they have now themselves become the problem.

The great menace of civilization in the present is that we offer an education with too little regard for the roots.

A new question has arisen in modern man's mind, the question, namely, whether life is worth living...No sensible answer can be given to the question...because the question does not make any sense.

Our Western society is showing its technological muscles in ever more threatening ways, but the experience of fear, anxiety and even despair has increased in equal proportion. Indeed, the paradox is that the powerful giants feel as powerless as a new-born babe.

"Science," of course, replaced "God" as a guiding concept for many people after Darwin. Or, really, the two were rolled up into a sticky ball. To some degree this was mindless worship of a miracle future, the pursuit of which has landed us in the fix we now inhabit.

What blinds us, or makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness that our beliefs have grown obsolete and should be put aside.... This is I think much of the problem of the modern dilemma: Direct experience has been discounted, and in its place all kinds of belief systems have been erected.... If you believe something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite; which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of committing yourself to this belief.

The modern version of Buridan's ass [a figurative description of a man of indecision] has a Ph.D., but no time to grow up as he is undecided between making a Leonardo da Vinci in the test tube or planting a Coca Cola sign on Mars.

E-mail is interesting. We can't live with it, and you can't live without it.

We belong to an age whose culture is in danger of perishing through the means to culture.

Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.

In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something.

Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view.

I feel like people with their camera phones and Twitter and Facebook, this kind of question like, 'How can I be present and also document my presence or document what I'm doing?' is something that's always on my mind, even when I'm not working as a filmmaker.

I like movies that project a dilemma of modern men and women who are overwhelmed by the system.

You know, I use organic products, but I get [laser treatments]. It's what makes life interesting, finding the balance between cigarettes and tofu.

We might enjoy essays, TED talks, and even Facebook posts bemoaning our dependency on tech, but judging by our enthusiastic adoption of these services, we're all in.

We are in the grip of a scientific materialism, caught in a vicious cycle where our security today seems to depend on regimentation and weapons which will ruin us tomorrow.