Central Themes in the Work of Jacques Ellul

Elie wiesel had been a boy driven to his religion he would pray and cry as he did so. He would weep over the destruction

Advances in technology has altered the world as we know it, and it can only progress farther. Through the minds of many intelligent and devoted individuals across time technology has developed into a twenty first century deity. A young child one hundred years ago could never envision a world like ours today, ruled by ones and zeros. The media has affected us in ways that we can’t even comprehend and will continue to steadily provide humans with a faster and faster flow of information for years to come. But what is the cost to have all of the information you can imagine at your fingertips? The exponential increase in information that we process in all forms of media is affecting the way that we live by making society more alienated.

Jenkins talks about how the consumption of media products is a collective process, in other words, the collective intelligence is seen as an alternative source of media power. He describes how within popular culture, the collective meaning making is shaping and changing the ways religion, education, laws, politics, advertising and how the military operate (4). Jenkins discusses a process called “convergence of modes”, he explains that media and communication are becoming interconnected like the telephone and television.

Our main objective is to explore the mass media's effects on society and see how the media has affected out way of life. Not to mention, compare the life styles of

Elie Wiesel was one of the millions of people who were victims of not only crime but dehumanization, which had a negative effect on Elie’s personal beliefs with God, how he viewed himself and his interaction with other

Elie Wiesel’s God is more than a substantial part of his life. When Elie first

Then in 1944 Elziere arrived to the Holocaust , the jail of all jails, with an mind and heart following God. As the months continued the urge to believe gradually disappeared and started to blame him. This quote from Eliezer says

“Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.” After World War I Germany had suffered great loss. Their economy was especially weak. The German people desperately seeked for a leader that could help them. Adolf Hitler had won over the people of Germany and gained control. Many thought he would be the one to save them. Hitler slowly began turning everyone against the Jews. He said the Jews were the ones to blame for their country’s problems. Hitler began sending them to concentration camps in order to exterminate them, this was known as the Holocaust. Between five to six million Jews were killed. Elie Wiesel experienced all of these horrors right in front of his very own eyes, alongside his father.

Before the events of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel was devoted to the Cabbala and all of Moshe the Beadle’s teachings. His father is not always too keen on Elie Wiesel’s view on Cabbalism. Wiesel spends whole evenings at the Synagogue almost every day with Moshe the Beadle. They would ask questions and discuss their beliefs in the darkness of the building. Wiesel states, “I believed profoundly” (1). Elie Wiesel is so immersed with his religion to the point it becomes first instinct in his mind, and he strives for more knowledge. Elie Wiesel is confident with his religion until Moshe the Beadle asks him a simple question, “Why do you pray?” Wiesel (2). Elie Wiesel responds internally, “Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (2). . Elie Wiesel’s strong connection with his religion will cause him to experience extreme losses later in his life.

Before Eliezer had experienced the Nazi filled wrath of the camps, he was religious and very faith-based. Wiesel was committed in his religion, “One day I asked my father to find me a master who could guide me in my studies of Kabbalah.” he wanted nothing more than to learn more about God. He was ready to spend more of his time on his religion, spending it with a ‘master’. In the eyes of one Jewish boy, God is capable of saving, “‘Oh God, Master of the Universe, in your infinite compassion, have mercy on us…’” (Wiesel 20). Even when they were starting to be rounded up by Nazi soldiers, he prayed to the Lord, in hopes of receiving leniency. Unfortunately, Eliezer does not continue to show traits of his younger self.

But Elie Wiesel thought differently. He was not able to understand why God wanted all this pain, deaths, and catastrophe to the Jewish people. He thought that it does not make sense to praise God, after seeing how

In this essay I will be looking at the theories of Edward Burnett Tylor and Émile Durkheim, and comparing them to see which theory I think gives a better explanation about what religion is, or whether religion is actually definable. On the one hand we have Tylor’s theory that tells us that religion is belief in spiritual beings and that religion is just a step on the way to reaching full evolutionary potential. Durkheim’s theory, however, says that religion is very much a social aspect of life, and something can only be religious or “sacred” if it is something public (Durkheim 1965:52). Ultimately these theories do not give us an outright explanation about what ‘religion’ is, but there are aspects of the theory that can be used to gain an understanding or idea.

Karl Marx and Fredrick Engel are considered as the most influential figure in the history for

“The medium is the message,” uttered by the late media scholar and theorist Marshall McLuhan, and they have been revered and dissected ever since they were spoken. There has been several different interpretations on the premise of McLuhan’s words, and the meaning behind them. The best way to start unraveling his theory, is to get a general understanding of the terms used in his famous quote. In McLuhan’s own words, a medium is simply “an extension of ourselves.” Simply put the medium personifies or enhances what we as humans cannot do on our own. In a mass media perspective this means the use of technology including radio, television, and the Internet to project our thoughts, feelings, and senses (Frederman) . Finally, it is important to

Certain media theorists such as Sherry Turkle do an incredible job on studying these properties of technology and their bearing on us, but sometimes seem to dwell on the negative side of the analysis. In short some of these media theorists do astonishing work studying the impact socially that using and communicating through modern technology has, but then takes a negative stance due to their archaic understanding of what is capable with these technologies. We have come so far in the past years in advancing humanity and its natural predicaments while being heavily reliant on technology to communicate. Not noting that advancement is pessimistic and