Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Bevan warns that without careful management, technology like television will allow people to witness mass starvation passively.
In plain terms
If we are not careful, people will watch others starve while watching TV.
What can you take from it?
Technology can create passive observers of human suffering.

Where it applies

  • media consumption
  • social policy
  • ethical debate

Putting it to work

  • critique media impact
  • prioritize basic needs

Questions to consider

  • How does media affect our empathy?
  • What responsibility do viewers have?

Another view

Television itself is not the cause of starvation.

More from Aneurin Bevan

  1. The spectacle therefore afforded us by the United States is one of technical brilliance and social blindness.

    Permalink to quote #17
  2. We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.

    Permalink to quote #19
  3. We could manage to survive without money changers and stockbrokers. We should find it harder to do without miners, steel workers and those who cultivate the la…

    Permalink to quote #16

Related quotes

  1. The Internet is a medium only at the bit level. At the human level, it is a conversation that, because of the persistence and linkedness of pages, has elements…

    David WeinbergerDavid Weinberger quote #1
  2. Gennifer Flowers: I'm here with the Intercontinental Champion-- The Rock: Whoa, actually, Genny, it's The People's Intercontinental Champion. GF: Excuse me... …

    Dwayne (The Rock) JohnsonDwayne (The Rock) Johnson quote #2
  3. 'An ordinary man can in a day's time travel by train from a dead little town of empty squares, where the sun, the dust, and the wind amuse themselves in silenc…

    Alexis CarrelAlexis Carrel quote #3