A society’s project of mastering nature becomes exclusive and totalizing once institutionalized.

Evidence

The choice itself results from the play of the dominant interests. It anticipates specific modes of transforming and utilizing man and nature and rejects other modes. It is one “project” of realization among others. But once the project has become operative in the basic institutions and relations, it tends to become exclusive and to determine the development of the society as a whole. As a technological universe, advanced industrial society is a political universe, the latest stage in the realization of a specific historical project—namely, the experience, transformation, and organization of nature as the mere stuff of domination. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 99

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains Marcuse’s evaluative sense of ‘project’ — each society embodies a historical choice, in principle with alternatives.
• XREF: connects to: Preserving nature within civilization always means dominating it more completely — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 145; Modern societies adopt a gardener’s stance of engineered order over nature — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 171; Depicted nature becomes a coded endorsement of industrial domination (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern societies adopt a gardener’s stance of engineered order over nature #expands (0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 171
• Bureaucratic planning and cultural rationalization create a totally administered society #expands (0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 35
• Depicted nature becomes a coded endorsement of industrial domination #expands (0.78)
• Sovereignty over nature required the modern state’s machinery to become real #expands (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 205