Joining a collective can be the true resignation, not detached thought
Evidence
For the individual, life is made easier through capitulation to the collective with which he identifies. He is spared the cognition of his impotence; within the circle of their own company, the few become many. It is this act - not unconfused thinking - which is resignation. No transparent relation prevails between the interests of the ego and the collective to which it assigns itself. The ego must abrogate itself, if it is to share in the predestination of the collective. Explicitly a remnant of the Kantian categorical imperative manifests itself: your signature is required. The feeling of a new security is purchased with the sacrifice of autonomous thinking. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 288
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: Adorno inverts the accusation: the mind that stays ‘unproductive’ is the resistant one, while capitulation-to-collective is performed as virtue. The Kantian line — ‘your signature is required’ — braids moral duty into groupthink in a way worth sitting with.
- XREF: Echoes my existing note that failed trust is answered with still more trust; and the diamond bourse finding that group reputation demands individual conformity. — connects to: Withdrawal, not participation, is now the only honest solidarity