I didn't say they had no part to play. Had transistors not been invented there'd be no televisions and hence no MTV, but we don't blame transistors for the popularity of the flannel shirt. The point was that advertisers neither decided, nor encouraged the trend. They may have helped finance the technology which allowed it, but so did bankers, accountants, HR managers... — Isaac

I think their influence is exaggerated. — Isaac

The hole needing filling is the problem. — Isaac

I didn't say they had no part to play. Had transistors not been invented there'd be no televisions and hence no MTV, but we don't blame transistors for the popularity of the flannel shirt. The point was that advertisers neither decided, nor encouraged the trend. They may have helped finance the technology which allowed it, but so did bankers, accountants, HR managers... — Isaac

Are you familiar with Milgram's thoughts on Arendt? — Isaac

I think that's spot on. — Tom Storm

Are you familiar with Milgram's thoughts on Arendt? — Isaac

I think you're overestimating the intent behind advertising. — Isaac

Have they? Or are they a consequence of a culture of consumerism? — Isaac

[Marcuse] argues that "advanced industrial society" created false needs, which integrated individuals into the existing system of production and consumption via mass media, advertising, industrial management, and contemporary modes of thought. This results in a "one-dimensional" universe of thought and behavior, in which aptitude and ability for critical thought and oppositional behavior wither away. Against this prevailing climate, Marcuse promotes the "great refusal" (described at length in the book) as the only adequate opposition to all-encompassing methods of control. — wiki

False consciousness is a term used in Marxist theory to describe ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the exploitation intrinsic to the social relations between classes. Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) used the term "false consciousness" in an 1893 letter to Franz Mehring to address the scenario where a subordinate class willfully embodies the ideology of the ruling class.[1][2][3] Engels dubs this consciousness "false" because the class is asserting itself towards goals that do not benefit it. — wiki

The Supreme Leader lives, if you notice, a capitalist life, amassing wealth like how entrepreneurs in capitalist societies are allowed to. The rest - ordinary folk - are prohibited from engaging in any private enterprise. — Agent Smith

If it wasn't your politicians, it'll be your parents, your work colleagues, your wife/husband/significant other... — Isaac

making the relation between the individual and society one that presumes the moral justice of social circumstance — unenlightened

You do not even see what a terrible inditement of our society it is that we cannot, despite our enormous wealth and sophistication, even feed and house ourselves adequately to the climate. — unenlightened

Advertisers may be responsible for creating a desire among people for the latest chocolate bar — Isaac

What I was doing politically 50 years ago had some small local success, — unenlightened

Marxism, it seems, in but a coupla years, spawns dictators (cults of personality). — Agent Smith

but no advertisers were involved in the initial preference for flannel shirts in the 90s, — Isaac

The problem is not manipulation, it's manipulability. — Isaac

...why not clarify once and for all The Truth... — Hanover

This Forum in particular has been of no help so far. — Hanover

Quite clearly the aim of socialism is man. It is to create a form of production and an organization of society in which man can overcome alienation from his product, from his work, from his fellow man, from himself and from nature; in which he can return to himself and grasp the world with his own powers, thus becoming one with the world. Socialism for Marx, was, as Paul Tillich put it, "a resistance movement against the destruction of love in social reality." — Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, p. 51

Socialist prospects in the United States? Poor to DOA. — Bitter Crank

I did my stint as a volunteer for the Cyrenians, many years ago, and later formed a residents association in Leeds that succeeded in getting about 150 homes taken off the condemned housing list where they had been languishing for twenty years and got them all refurbished and brought up to standard. — unenlightened

I have become lazy and apathetic. — unenlightened

To all. Please don't respond to troll posts as your replies are likely to be deleted along with the posts. — Baden

And from some of the more questionable passages in Herr Nietzsche (who is great nevertheless overall.) — igjugarjuk

I don't build roads or power stations, but we do. — unenlightened

I read the Communist Manifesto - and most of the two volumes of Das Capital. — karl stone

It's the Marxian genocides that bother me. I mean, these ideas have resulted in genocides - not just one, but several genocides, many times greater than those Hitler perpetrated, and for which Hiltler is quite justifiably vilianised. How on earth can you sanitize this dogma? — karl stone

It must start out from the principle that the blessings of mankind never came from the masses but from the creative brains of individuals, who are therefore the real benefactors of humanity. It is in the interest of all to assure men of creative brains a decisive influence and facilitate their work. This common interest is surely not served by allowing the multitude to rule, for they are not capable of thinking... — Shitler

How about quotes from Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler - would that be acceptable? — karl stone

And I cannot understand it either. — unenlightened

Self-realization - i.e., expression and creative use of the individual's capacities - can occur only as the individual confronts and moves through anxiety-creating experiences. The freedom of the healthy individual inheres in his capacity to avail himself of new possibilities in the meeting and overcoming of potential threats to his existence. By moving through anxiety-creating experiences, one seeks and partially achieves realization of himself. He enlarges the scope of his activity and, at the same time, measure of selfhood. It is also a prerequisite to working through the anxiety. — Ibid, p. 354

Offering perhaps Marx's most detailed pronouncement on programmatic matters of revolutionary strategy, the document discusses the "dictatorship of the proletariat", the period of transition from capitalism to communism, proletarian internationalism and the party of the working class. It is notable also for elucidating the principles of "To each according to his contribution" as the basis for a "lower phase" of communist society directly following the transition from capitalism and "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" as the basis for a future "higher phase" of communist society. In describing the lower phase, he states that "the individual receives from society exactly what he gives to it" and advocates remuneration in the form of non-transferable labour vouchers as opposed to money. — wiki

One may state that one of the main goals of man today is “escape from boredom.” Only if one appreciates the intensity of reactions caused by unrelieved boredom, can one have any idea of the power of the impulses engendered by it.

Usually overlooked in the discussion of the effect of the portrayal of violence is that inasmuch as portrayal of violence has an effect, boredom is a necessary condition.

In either instance the bored person himself produces the source of excitation if it does not offer itself ready-made. The bored person often is the organizer of a “mini-Colosseum” in which he produces his small-scale equivalents of the large-scale cruelty staged in the Colosseum.

The motive for these killings does not seem to be hate, but as in the cases mentioned before, an unbearable sense of boredom and impotence and the need to experience that there is someone who will react, someone on whom one can make a dent, some deed that will make an end of the monotony of daily experience. Killing is one way of experiencing that one is and that one can produce an effect on another being. — Ibid

The adult, too, feels the need to reassure himself that he is by being able to effect. The ways to achieve a sense of effecting are manifold: by eliciting an expression of satisfaction in the baby being nursed, a smile from the loved person, sexual response from the lover, interest from the partner in conversation; by work— material, intellectual, artistic. But the same need can also be satisfied by having power over others, by experiencing their fear, by the murderer’s watching the anguish in the face of his victim, by conquering a country, by torturing people, by sheer destruction of what has been constructed. The need to “effect” expresses itself in interpersonal relations as well as in the relationship to animals, to inanimate nature, and to ideas. In the relationship to others the fundamental alternative is to feel either the potency to effect love or to effect fear and suffering. In the relationship to things, the alternative is between constructing and destroying. Opposite as these alternatives are, they are responses to the same existential need: to effect. — Ibid