Rationality itself has become the most effective vehicle of mystification.

Evidence

The technical achievement of advanced industrial society, and the effective manipulation of mental and material productivity have brought about a shift in the locus of mystification. If it is meaningful to say that the ideology comes to be embodied in the process of production itself, it may also be meaningful to suggest that, in this society, the rational rather than the irrational becomes the most effective vehicle of mystification. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 689

Categorization

• XREF: Maps onto today’s attention economy, where data-driven optimization and algorithmic rationalization mystify rather than enlighten; bridges directly to the reader’s stated purpose. — connects to: Rationality itself can be weaponized against the rational agent — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 366; Rationality becomes irrational once its success opens new possibilities; Irrationality arises from pushing rational self-interest to extremes. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 33
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the chapter’s core dialectical inversion — reason serving unreason — dense enough to sit with and connect outward.

Broader Connections

• Rationality itself can be weaponized against the rational agent #expands (0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 366
• Rationality becomes irrational once its success opens new possibilities #expands (0.75)
• Irrationality arises from pushing rational self-interest to extremes. #qualifies (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 33