Asocial

1974, Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, New York: Schocken Books, 1975, Chapter 5, pp. 127-128, All media operations are in effect desocialised […] . But it is then interesting that from this wholly unhistorical and asocial base McLuhan projects certain images of society […]

Mrs Alphen, from her deck chair, would call at him brightly, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, being so selfish and neglecting us ladies and all!” and she would gesture at the deck chair beside her, but he would only smile and scuttle away, realizing that he was asocial and a scoundrel.

In a nation which increasingly appears to prize social virtues, Howard Hughes remains not merely antisocial but grandly, brilliantly, surpassingly, asocial. He is the last private man, the dream we no longer admit.

She herself was already asocial at the age of six months and stiffened in her mother’s arms at this time, and such reactions, common in autism, she also finds inexplicable in terms of theory of mind.

And it’s maybe because of math’s absolute, wholly abstract Truth that so many people still view the discipline as dry or passionless and its practitioners as asocial dweebs.

Contrasting with the complete haphazardness with which the inmates are selected are the categories, meaningless in themselves but useful from the standpoint of organization, into which they are usually divided on their arrival. In the German camps there were criminals, politicals, asocial elements, religious offenders, and Jews, all distinguished by insignia.

The so­cial worker speaks of asocial behavior. The term is familiar to the young criminal. The social worker is able to explain the causes of this asocial behavior. But the delinquent could do it too, and in the very same terms.

“Remember, there was no on-paper legislation against blacks, so they were often admitted to work camps on trumped-up charges and under various crimes. Some were interned as Communists, or as immigrants, who wore the blue badge. Or as homosexuals, who wore the pink badge, or as repeat criminals, who wore the green badge, or asocials, who wore the black badge.”