Technological rationality erodes individual critical reason and produces mechanical conformity

Evidence

Individual rationality, he claims, was won in the struggle against regnant superstitions, irrationality, and domination, and posed the individual in a critical stance against society. Critical reason was thus a creative principle which was the source of both the individual’s liberation and society’s advancement. The development of modern industry and technological rationality, however, undermined the basis of individual rationality. As capitalism and technology developed, advanced industrial society demanded increasing accommodation to the economic and social apparatus and submission to increasing domination and administration. Hence, a “mechanics of conformity” spread throughout the society. The efficiency and power of administration overwhelmed the individual, who gradually lost the earlier traits of critical rationality (i.e., autonomy, dissent, the power of negation), thus producing a “one-dimensional society” and “one-dimensional man.” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 23

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concise origin of the core term ‘one-dimensional man’ as the loss of autonomy, dissent, and the power of negation.
• XREF: The ‘mechanics of conformity’ thesis maps directly onto the modern attention economy’s absorption of critical attention, a key bridging concern for this reader. — connects to: Technologically educated masses paradoxically exhibit readiness to accept despotism; Technological and social progress produces psychological regression and instinctual fixation.; Scientific rationality reduces individual life to statistical ratios (+8 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that critical reason was historically won against superstition and then technologically eroded is the dialectical spine of the whole book, resistant to one-sentence summary.

Broader Connections

• Technical rationality makes irrational social control appear reasonable and rational #expands (0.90) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 124
• Technological rationality neutralizes guilt and conscience under reification #expands (0.88) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 346
• Technological rationality has grown stronger while society grows more irrational #expands (0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 47
• Systems are rational by reducing complexity without overburdening the individual #qualifies (0.72) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 324