Surrendering autonomous thinking to a collective constitutes the deepest form of resignation

Evidence

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, 273

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes resignation from unconfused thinking — resignation is the act of capitulation, not an intellectual failure.
• ADDENDUM: ‘Your signature is required’ as administered compliance connects to the administered free time / culture industry argument about compulsory participation.
• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion — that thinking wrongly held to be unconfused is actually not what resignation is — reworks the ethical stakes of conformity in a dense, durable way.
• XREF: connects to: Postmodern resignation reduces action to existential necessity without hope of change. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 616