Assignment Instructions/ Description
This week you read about the affluent society (among other important topics such as Cold War politics, the Korean War, international agendas, etc.). In class, we focused mostly on operational construction of the affluent society, from marketing to piecemeal wages to credit finance. We also spent time discussing critics of this society as well as their vehicles for challenging it. Herbert Marcuse, in the reading excerpt from One Dimensional Man, essentially asserts all of this evidences not only the socialization of individuals into easily controlled and sated one-dimensional lives, but the irrationality of it all. What do you think about his critique? Does advanced industrial society over-homogenize us? Does the lack of labor and consumer choice lead to marginalization of creativity, freedom, autonomous thought, etc.? Does even the expression of resistance end up as part of the "system?" If not, what do you think he's overlooking or wrong about?
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