Abstract
'One-Dimensional Man' is another core text of my essay. Understanding that the mainstream media have always been promoting animation as children's entertainment has given a narrow minded view of the general public towards animation as a medium of art, platform for self-expression and discourse in the society. Also, there has been certain standard that society establish to the people who wants to pursue animation in further animation. The most common one is:' Oh, so you want to work for *insert the name of giant animation studio in America* '. Some others think of YouTube, TVs or advertising, which is seen as a risky job on the financial side.
Society recognised the importance of money to measure the worth of people under the capitalist system, and that money can buy happiness. Up to date, the consumerist lifestyle, trend and envy has become the main targeting of the corporations, and has trapped society in superficiality. Marcuse has critically analysed this condition of the advanced industrialised society as he wrote One-Dimensional Man (Published in 1964).
Quotes
‘Independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are being deprived of their basic critical function in a society which seems increasingly capable of satisfying the needs of the individuals through the way in which it is organised. Such a society may justly demand acceptance of discussion and promotion of alternative policies within the status quo.’
‘Under the condition of a rising standard of living, non-conformity with the system itself appears to be socially useless, and the more so when it entails tangible economic and political disadvantages and threatens the smooth operation of the whole.’
‘If the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself on the market, as a free economy subject, the disappearance of this kind of freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilisation.’
‘The technological processes of mechanization and standardization might release individual energy into a yet uncharted realm of freedom beyond necessity. The very structure of human existence would be altered; the individual would be liberated from the work world’s imposing upon him alien needs and alien possibilities.’
5.
‘The individual would be free to exert autonomy over a life that would be his own. If the productive apparatus could be organised and directed toward the satisfaction of the vital needs. Its control might well be centralised; such control would not prevent individual autonomy, but render it possible.’
7.
(False needs)
‘Those which are superimposed upon the individual by particular social interest in his repression: the needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice.’
False needs offer instant gratification to the individual. It is important not to be sustained because it halts the masses’ ability to recognise the essence of societal problem and to take chances to solve it.
‘The result then is euphoria in unhappiness. Most of the prevailing needs to relax, to have fun, to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements, to love and hate what others love and hate, belong to this category of false needs.’
Masses are used as an instrument for the ‘external power’ to fulfil societal satisfaction and function that has been predetermined by them.
‘No matter how much such needs may have become the individual’s own, reproduced and fortified by the condition of his existence; no matter how much he identifies himself with them and finds himself in their satisfaction, they continue to be what they were from the beginning - products if a society whose domain interest demands repression.’
8.
‘The only needs that have not been totally claimed for satisfaction are the vital ones - nourishments, clothing, lodging at the attainable level of culture. The satisfaction of these needs is the prerequisite for the realisation of all needs, of the unsublimated as well as the sublimated ones.’
9.
What we have to achieve is to overthrow the dominance of false needs and replace it with the true ones, abandoning the satisfaction that strains our freedom.
The ‘advanced industrial society’ is notoriously known for impeding the societal development towards liberation of the masses from the repressive authority that maintains the status quo. The social control has extended the need for frivolity which are therapeutic to the exhausted proletariats and provides escape from their arduous lifestyle in order to get back to it again. Deceptive liberty helps maintain the status quo: ‘free competition at administered price, a free press which censors itself, free choice between brands and gadgets.’
‘The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is not chosen by the individual.’
10.
‘The criterion for free choice can never be an absolute one, but neither is it entirely relative.’
Pre-conditioned class system
‘Sustaining social controls over a life of toil and fear - sustains alienation’
‘The spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies efficacy of control.’
Equalisation of class distinction:
‘Assimilation’ does not eliminates the class distinction, rather it is the homogeneity of the needs and satisfaction that are shared by the society controlled by the establishment.
‘Transplantation of social into individual needs, obscured the contrast between the two functions in reality.’
11.
‘We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of industrial civilisation: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to turn to waste into need, and destruction into construction, the extent to which this civilisation transforms the object world into an extension of man’s mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognises themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced.’
Technological means of social control is prevalent in the advanced industrial society is divisive in nature. It imposes formula and efficacy that trap the masses to fear the uncertain; alien to the status quo. The integration of such superficial thoughts are also catalysed by alarming social condition, such as mortality and the pressing needs to instigate peace through the enforcement of law.
The technological means of social control in contemporary industrial civilisation has successfully manifested the masses so they accept things that are appropriate to sustain the status quo, and dismiss all contradiction by deeming them ‘irrational’ and all counteractions ‘impossible’.
12.
‘The social controls have been introjected to the point where even individual protest is affected at its roots. The intellectual and emotional refusal ‘to go along’ appears neurotic and impotent’
The reality imposed by technology has penetrated the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious, as a result, masses lost their capacity to make a judgement that is not just the ‘mechanical reactions’ that is expected by the system.
13.
(One-dimensional mind)
The capacity of critical reasoning that comes internally from an individual has been crippled by the technological control, such that the root of opposition against the status quo are exterminated before subversive thoughts could even happen. The masses have come to terms and accepts the laws of their society as ‘the facts of life’. Efficiency of the capitalist system has stifled the masses from questioning its repressive nature.
‘The concept of alienation seems to become questionable when the individuals identify themselves with the existence which is imposed upon them and have in it their own development and satisfaction.’
‘The identification is not illusion but reality. However, reality constitutes a more progressive stage of alienation. The latter has become entirely objective; the subject which is alienated is swallowed up by its alienated existence.’
Societal progress created one-dimensional society which rejects radical ideas and their propositions. The ‘false consciousness’ is the new true consciousness justified by social norm established by the system, and passively consumed by the masses.
14.
‘The means of mass transportation and communication, the commodities of lodging, food, and clothing, the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which binds the consumers more or less pleasantly to the producers and, through the latter, to the whole.’
(Lack of objectivity)
Advertising becomes a lifestyle
Promotion of glamour to work against qualitative change in the society
The trend’s ‘common feature is a total empiricism in the treatment of concepts; their meaning is restricted to the representation of particular operations and behaviour.’
Sub-cultures: Materialism incorporates spiritual, metaphysical and bohemian lifestyle.
‘Such modes of protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviourism, its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet.’
16.
(Media publication: rationalising policies and narrow-mindedness/binary opposites)
‘One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information. Their universe of discourse is populated by self-validating hypotheses which, incessantly and monopolistically repeated, become hypnotic definitions or dictations.’
East-West contrast
East (Communism)
Instituted by communist regime, all other transcending modes of freedom are either capitalistic, or revisionist, or leftist sectarianism.
West (Liberal)
“Free World” other transcending modes of freedom are by definition either anarchism, communism, or propaganda.
“Socialistic” ideals encroached corporations; universal and comprehensive health insurance, environmental conservation from commercial activities, public services hurt profits.
‘In both camps, non-operational ideas are non-behavioural and subversive. The movement of thought is stopped at barriers which appear as the limits of Reason itself.’
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