Generating an artificial need for something is a kind of manipulation and so the people (we) get trapped in this so called cycle of manipulation and need.
Mass media and culture continues to fortify this cycle. The interesting and finally dialectic aspect of this cycle is, what Horkheimer and Adorno also state, that by offering people this kind of mass culture with a lots of choices, it is pretended that capitalist society offers a never seen before freedom for people.
But finally it is a “freedom without room to move”, a just illusory freedom without real alternatives. The freedom is limited to the choice of buying just different sorts of the ever-same.
Horkheimer and Adorno speak about the “illusion of competition and choice” This illusion is not least held up high by the mass media using advertisement and diversionary entertainment to keep people on this hedonistic circularity.
Source: http://polphilblog.wordpress.com/articles-and-essays/the-theme-of-alienation-in-max-horkheimers-and-theodor-w-adornos-dialectic-of-enlightenment-2/
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