In The World Of The Celebrity, The

The Very Shaping Of History Now Outpaces The Ability Of Men To Orient Themselves In Accordance With Cherished Values.

The More We Understand What Is Happening In The World, The More Frustrated We Often Become, For Our Knowledge Leads To Feelings Of Powerlessness. We Feel That We Are Living In A World In Which The Citizen Has Become A Mere Spectator Or A Forced Actor, And That Our Personal Experience Is Politically Useless And Our Political Will A Minor Illusion.

For We Cannot Adequately Understand 'man' As An Isolated Biological Creature, As A Bundle Of Reflexes Or A Set Of Instincts, As An 'intelligible Field' Or A System In And Of Itself. Whatever Else He May Be, Man Is A Social And An Historical Actor Who Must Be Understood, If At All, In Close And Intricate Interplay With Social And Historical Structures

If You Do Not Specify And Confront Real Issues, What You Say Will Surely Obscure Them. If You Do Not Embody Controversy, What You Say Will Be An Acceptance Of The Drift To The Coming Human Hell.

By The Power Elite, We Refer To Those Political, Economic, And Military Circles Which As An Intricate Set Of Overlapping Cliques Share Decisions Having At Least National Consequences. In So Far As National Events Are Decided, The Power Elite Are Those Who Decide Them.