Alienation is made perfect in a lot of different directions.
Alienation from oneself,
alienation from a human character at all,
alienation from society.
The human is not a member of society in whole but substitutable member of a group. Within this group his character is only in limited ways individual, if it is at all.
The alienation the human being in modern mass society runs through is a dialectic of adjustment and equalisation on the one side and of isolation on the other side.
By becoming a just “functioning part” of society, being internally unaffected1 blunted by the phenomenon of mass culture and the use of an almost mere technological rationality, people loose the ability for real sociality. In Education after Auschwitz Adorno criticises in a very similar way the loss of the ability to love. People become monads, struggling in the social coldness and atmosphere of competition and hostility of everyday life. Alienation becomes finally an all-embracing phenomenon.
Alienation from oneself,
alienation from a human character at all,
alienation from society.
The human is not a member of society in whole but substitutable member of a group. Within this group his character is only in limited ways individual, if it is at all.
The alienation the human being in modern mass society runs through is a dialectic of adjustment and equalisation on the one side and of isolation on the other side.
By becoming a just “functioning part” of society, being internally unaffected1 blunted by the phenomenon of mass culture and the use of an almost mere technological rationality, people loose the ability for real sociality. In Education after Auschwitz Adorno criticises in a very similar way the loss of the ability to love. People become monads, struggling in the social coldness and atmosphere of competition and hostility of everyday life. Alienation becomes finally an all-embracing phenomenon.
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