The belief that the system delivers the goods sanctions atrocity at the margins.

Evidence

The Happy Consciousness—the belief that the real is rational and that the system delivers the goods—reflects the new conformism which is a facet of technological rationality translated into social behavior. It is new because it is rational to an unprecedented degree. It sustains a society which has reduced—and in its most advanced areas eliminated—the more primitive irrationality of the preceding stages, which prolongs and improves life more regularly than before. The war of annihilation has not yet occurred; the Nazi extermination camps have been abolished. The Happy Consciousness repels the connection. Torture has been reintroduced as a normal affair, but in a colonial war which takes place at the margin of the civilized world. And there it is practiced with good conscience for war is war. And this war, too, is at the margin—it ravages only the “underdeveloped” countries. Otherwise, peace reigns. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 374

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the two-dimensional vs one-dimensional thought distinction that grounds the whole book; also echoes the ‘administered society’ theme from earlier chapters. — connects to: Instrumental rationality carried to its extreme leads to totalitarian barbarism. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 797
• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘Happy Consciousness’ that rationally justifies atrocity by geographic marginality is a dense, unsettling observation — contentment and cruelty coexisting because the cruelty is out of view.

Broader Connections

• Instrumental rationality carried to its extreme leads to totalitarian barbarism. #expands (0.78) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 797