Radical ideas inevitably transform into domination to survive

Evidence

Asceticism and materialism, these opposites, are both ambiguous. Asceticism as the refusal to participate in a bad existing order coincides, from the standpoint of domination, with the material claims of the masses, just as asceticism as a means of discipline imposed by cliques aims to promote adaptation to the state of injustice. Materialistic acceptance of the status quo and private egotism have always been associated with renunciation, while the gaze of the non-bourgeois fanatic travels beyond the existing order materialistically to the land of milk and honey. True materialism abolishes asceticism, and true asceticism abolishes materialism. The history of the old religions and schools like that of the modern parties and revolutions teaches us that the price for survival is practical involvement, the transformation of ideas into domination. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 182

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The dialectical reversal claim — asceticism and materialism each secretly contain the other’s logic — is dense and paradigm-shifting, worth sitting with.
• XREF: Direct lineage to the thesis Burns draws on; also resonates with Weber’s Protestant ethic and the general claim that ideas cost survival by becoming institutions. — connects to: Enlightened thought itself contains the seed of its own reversal into domination — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 21; Enlightened progress remains entangled with domination and cruelty — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 200; Uncompromising world-rejecting ideals must be domesticated into organized systems to survive — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 179 (+1 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘the price of survival is practical involvement’ as a lens on how modern social movements (or startups, or political parties) betray their founding radicalism.

Broader Connections

• Uncompromising world-rejecting ideals must be domesticated into organized systems to survive #corroborates (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 179
• Enlightened progress remains entangled with domination and cruelty #corroborates (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 200
• Contemporary transformations are modernity’s self-radicalization, not its ending #expands (0.72) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 127