Society’s growth profits from perpetuating the danger it claims to defend against
Evidence
If we attempt to relate the causes of the danger to the way in which society is organized and organizes its members, we are immediately confronted with the fact that advanced industrial society becomes richer, bigger, and better as it perpetuates the danger. The defense structure makes life easier for a greater number of people and extends man’s mastery of nature. Under these circumstances, our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appears to be the very embodiment of Reason. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 83
Categorization
- DEFINE: Introduces the mechanism by which particular interests get sold as universal and political needs become individual aspirations — core to one-dimensionality.
- XREF: connects to: Industrial society appears rational precisely because it perpetuates the danger; Growth and acceleration are now justified by threat rather than promise. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 719; Normalized risk of nuclear destruction ties people to the system producing it — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 342 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Industrial society appears rational precisely because it perpetuates the danger
#expands(0.95) - Growth and acceleration are now justified by threat rather than promise.
#expands(0.90) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 719 - Normalized risk of nuclear destruction ties people to the system producing it
#exemplifies(0.88) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 342 - Technological rationality has grown stronger while society grows more irrational
#expands(0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 47