Industrial society appears rational precisely because it perpetuates the danger

Evidence

In Marcuse’s view, the powers of reason and freedom are declining in “late industrial society”: “With the increasing concentration and effectiveness of economic, political, and cultural controls, the opposition in all these fields has been pacified, co-ordinated, or liquidated.” Indeed, reason has become an instrument of domination: “It helps to organize, administer, and anticipate the powers that be, and to liquidate the ‘power of Negativity.’ Reason has identified itself with the reality: what is actual is reasonable, although what is reasonable has not yet become actuality. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 34 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to turn waste into need, and destruction into construction, the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man’s mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 124 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Technological rationality has grown stronger while society grows more irrational — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 47; The atomic threat deflects public criticism away from causes inside industrial society; Technical rationality makes irrational social control appear reasonable and rational — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 124 (+5 more)

Related

• Technical rationality makes irrational social control appear reasonable and rational (similarity 0.90)
• Reason itself becomes an instrument of domination in late industrial society (similarity 0.87)
• Society’s rationality turns irrational once it could actually deliver peace (similarity 0.87)
• Technological rationality has grown stronger while society grows more irrational (similarity 0.87)
• Technological rationality erodes individual critical reason and produces mechanical conformity (similarity 0.86)
• Technological rationality functions as political rationality in industrial society (similarity 0.85)
• Society’s growth-propelling rationality is itself irrational despite apparent efficiency (similarity 0.85)
• Society’s growth profits from perpetuating the danger it claims to defend against (similarity 0.84)
• Technical rationalization hides who benefits from the machinery. (similarity 0.83)
• Scientific rationalism becomes an instrument of social domination (similarity 0.83)
• Technologically educated masses paradoxically exhibit readiness to accept despotism (similarity 0.82)
• Modernity’s disaster is not backwardness but the domination machinery itself. (similarity 0.81)
• Nationalization alone cannot alter technology’s embodied rationality (similarity 0.81)
• Technical rationality only serves those already in power (similarity 0.81)
• The rationality of art grows as society’s irrationality grows (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Reason itself becomes an instrument of domination in late industrial society #corroborates (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 34
• The atomic threat deflects public criticism away from causes inside industrial society #expands (0.80)
• Technical rationality makes irrational social control appear reasonable and rational #corroborates (0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 124
• Planned chance serves as an alibi for rationalized society #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 113