One Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse

[reggie]

One Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse

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excerpts from an astute Amazon reviewer
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3MM26T...cm_cr_rdp_perm

"It's fascinating when observing various societal/cultural trends,
tendencies and practices, to go back and see how it corresponds with
Marcuse's prophetic warning...and yes, that is meant quite literally:
this book is no less prophetic than Orwell's 1984, and what's more, is
far more chilling in its range and scope due to it's realistic
exploration of cultural indoctrination, mass delusion and mass denial.
In Orwell's novel, 1984, Winston Smith's world is controlled through
ideology, yes, but the Big Stick of state violence looms above
perpetually, ensuring the perpetuation of an automatized populace.

Marcuse's book, on the other hand, is an irrefutable postulation of
the Big Lie, the comfortably horrific ease in which society has become
fatally entangled within a stupor of brainwashed self deception,
welcomed, enthusiastic exploitation, zombie consumerism run amok,
repression and lunatic militarism."


"...the populace is strategically marginalized into apathy and
indifference, out and away from the concerns of policy making decisions
by vested interests who strive to make huge profits by 'dumbing down'
standards of humanity, tricking the public into subsidizing high end
military technology, and appealing to base attractions and
distractions (greed, superficiality, apathy) in order to secure the
compliance of a mass of stunningly indifferent, dumb people who are
actively participating in their own degredation and ultimate demise, if
only by their inability and/or unwillingness to acknowledge what should
be flagrantly obvious."

Additional Excerpts can be found online at
http://www.alternativeinsight.com/On...ional_man.html


At min 52:00 Century of the Self, part 2.

Social philosopher Herbert Marcuse's conclusion (early 60's) was anti-Freudian.

He said the desire to control people was wrong. that humans have inner drives which in the majority aren't violently evil. Repression of the individual by outer social authority leads to a schizophrenic existence...conforming and submitting to the controller's society repressing the self. Making them more dangerous than when left alone.

He switched the source of evil from the inner individual, to the society which is corrupt[this is a key point that is not to be ignored]. The sickness of society comes not from the individual, but from the society itself (it's controllers)

And if people do not challenge that, then they are submitting to evil.

This is the antithesis of socialism/communism. Marcuse had been a socialist as soldier, and as a student in Berlin after wwI. A Jew, he emigrated to Switzerland in 1933, and to America in 1940. In 1943-45 he worked for the OSS in Washington planning the de-Nazification of post war Germany.

Wikipedia says his work influenced Abbie Hoffman and other 60's anti-establishment activists.

This matches Loboczewski's Ponerization theory very well.

[don]

Re: One Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse

Thanks, Reggie, for bringing back a blast from the past. Haven't thought of Marcuse for some time.

Last night I watched the movie Air Force, considered by many one of the two finest movies made about the war during the war. The hero of the movie is not the pilot or the ground commander or any other individual but rather the aircraft itself, a B-17 named Mary-Ann. The crew is repeatedly emphasized as a group, together with the plane, that can only succeed by working and sacrificing for each other.

Compare that to today's digital heroes. An endless stream of superhero angst, the lone wolf against crime, and on and on and on... ad infinitum. A major contributor to America's psychic malaise.

Culture Collapse = No Exit.
Mice eating their tails.