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Glorification of the 'natural' is part of the ideology which protects an unnatural society in its struggle against liberation.

Herbert Marcuse

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Herbert Marcuse
Age: 81 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 19
Died: 1979
Died: July 29
Philosopher
Political Theorist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Berlin
Germany
Ideology
Gay
Protect
Struggle
Glorification
Society
Protects
Natural
Unnatural
Part
Liberation

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Hypostatized into a ritual pattern, Marxian theory becomes ideology. But its content and function distinguish it from classical forms of ideology it is not false consciousness, but a rather consciousness of falsehood, a falsehood which is corrected in the context of the higher truth represented by the objective historical interest.
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However, if free choice means more than a small selection between pre-established necessities, and if the inclinations and impulses used in work are other than those preshaped by a repressive reality principle, then satisfaction in daily work is only a rare privilege.
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To the degree to which they correspond to the given reality, thought and behavior express a false consciousness, responding to and contributing to the preservation of a false order of facts. And this false consciousness has become embodied in the prevailing technical apparatus which in turn reproduces it.
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The liberating force of technology the instrumentalization of things turns into ... the instrumentalization of man.
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Coming to life as classics, they come to life as other than themselves they are deprived of their antagonistic force, of the estrangement which was the very dimension of their truth.
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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 appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason.
Herbert Marcuse
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The unification of opposites which characterizes the commercial and political style is one of the many ways in which discourse and communication make themselves immune against the expression of protest and refusal.
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The people recognize themselves in their commodities they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.
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Nobody really thinks who does not abstract from that which is given, who does not relate the facts to the factors which have made them, who does not - in his mind - undo the facts. Abstractness is the very life of thought, the token of its authenticity.
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Thought that accepts reality as given is no thought at all.
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Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination.
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The avant-garde and the beatniks share in the function of entertaining without endangering the good conscience of the men of good will.
Herbert Marcuse
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Society ... can afford to grant more than before because its interests have become the innermost drives of its citizens.
Herbert Marcuse
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Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.
Herbert Marcuse
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Ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe.
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The range of socially permissible and desirable satisfaction is greatly enlarged, but through this satisfaction, the Pleasure Principle is reduced deprived of the claims which are irreconcilable with the established society. Pleasure, thus adjusted, generates submission.
Herbert Marcuse
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The closed language does not demonstrate and explain it communicates decision, dictum, command. Where it defines, the definition becomes separation of good from evil it establishes unquestionable
Herbert Marcuse
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This (functional - E.W.) language controls by reducing the linguistic forms and symbols of reflection, abstraction, development, contradiction by substituting images for concepts. It denies or absorbs the transcendent vocabulary it does not search for but establishes and imposes truth and falsehood.
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A work of art can be called revolutionary if, by virtue of the aesthetic transformation, it represents, in the exemplary fate of individuals, the prevailing unfreedom and the rebelling forces, thus breaking through the mystified (and petrified) social reality, and opening the horizon of change (liberation).
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This organization of functional discourse is of vital importance it serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioral rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason.
Herbert Marcuse