Multidimensional Dilemma

'Progress' is not a neutral term; it moves towards specific ends, and these ends are defined by the possibilities of ameliorating the human condition. (Marcuse, page 16)

I found the Marcuse reading extremely challenging in a variety of ways, most notably as I tried to decipher it in relation to the Carr interview while still reeling from last week's readings on television as a conduit for the hegemonic status quo. I certainly agree with Marcuse on a macro level and I find his statements powerful, especially when he writes: 

The distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those needs which demand liberation - liberation also from that which is tolerable and rewarding and comfortable - while it sustains and absolves the destructive power and repressive function of the affluent society. Here, the social controls exact the overwhelming need for the production and consumption of waste; the need for stupefying work where it is no longer a real necessity; the need for modes of relaxation which soothe and prolong the stupefication; the need for maintaining such deceptive liberties as free competition at administered prices, a free press which censors itself, free choice between brands and gadgets. (page 7)

Marcuse lays it all out: we live in a society where more and more we are fed to believe that we have a multiplicity of false needs that we rarely question; these 'needs' ultimately help to maintain the running hamster wheel of production and profit for the select few. 

Where I get tangled up is when I think about the role of the internet and new media in joining this ongoing charade that we are generally blind to. Carr's position on Marcuse, I imagine, is to agree that these new technologies are detrimental for us in that they weaken our reflective modes of thought, making us even more susceptible to this one-dimensionality of living. 

I don't know if I agree with him on this. Yes, these new technologies pose a threat to our current thought processing systems -- but I fear that Carr is too afraid of change. Couldn't the unforeseen outcomes be better for us? Couldn't they ultimately help to liberate us from this one-dimensionality?? Honestly, I think it's too early to tell. 

Flattening the Nation through Decontextualized Time and Space

The innovation of the telegraph can stand metaphorically for all the innovations that ushered in the modern phase of history and determined, even to this day, the major lines of development of American communications. The most important fact about the telegraph is at once the most obvious and innocent: It permitted for the first time the effective separation of communication from transportation. - Carey, page 203

Carey's analysis of the telegraph (and the railroad) takes us deeper down the rabbit hole we discussed last week regarding the imagined community of the nation by highlighting how the separation of communication from transportation broadened our sense of awareness of time. This shift in awareness significantly transformed trade, helped to centralize government power, and broadened a previously localized experience of time to a nationalized and standardized one. 

Transforming Trade 

Carey begins by addressing how the telegraph affected monopoly capitalism to the extent that it forced processes of production to adapt to the new, more rapid form of communication. He states,

the volume and speed of transactions demanded a new form of organization of essentially impersonal relations - that is, relations not among known persons but among buyers and sellers whose only relation was mediated through an organization and a structure of management. - Carey, page 205

My interpretation of this is that the organizational shift in business relations led to a more impersonal set of interactions among staff that both flattened and distanced the experience by making everyone faceless and therefore similar but also unknown. Carey later discusses how there was also a standardization of products (not just business interactions) that allowed for rapid trade of mass amounts of product to happen. I wonder whether one beget the other: Was capitalism already heading in this direction and needed a tool like the telegraph to best pull it off? Or did the telegraph set off light bulbs in businessmen across the country? I imagine it's a bit of both but I'm not sure where Carey stands. 

Centralizing Imperial Government

Carey brings up another example of how the separation of communication and travel broadened our awareness when he discusses how the transatlantic cable and the telegraph created "a system in which the center of an empire could dictate rather than merely respond to the margin" (page 212). Power was no longer local by default and I imagine that this must have had some major effects on how colonies were managed and self-perceived as a component of the empire. 

Carey also discusses the standardization of time and how this came about. I read this as another example of a structure that allowed us to imagine the nation as one community. I would agree with his statement on page 224 that: 

the control of time allows for the coordination of activity and, therefore, effective social control. 

I see it as another imagined layer to the social structures we create for ourselves, which frankly, is a bit worrisome! 

Amartya Sen and Protagoras vs. Plato

A division of responsibility that places the burden of looking after a person's interest on another person can lead to the loss of many important things in the form of motivation, involvement and self-knowledge that the person herself may be in a unique position to have. 
- Amartya Sen in Development as Freedom (1999)

After listening to the interview and reading a review of his book, I was drawn to bring out my copy of Development as Freedom that I read in undergrad in order to freshen my mind on his theories. And then I came across the above quote, underlined by myself 5 years ago! After reading Plato and Protagoras this week, this quote struck me as very pragmatic. 

In Plato's allegory of the cave, he argues that the individual who is able to reach Truth should be put in charge of the group so he can lead them towards it. In the fragments of Protagoras we learn of a completely different set of values: we only have what we experience and whether there's Truth or not, it behooves us to agree on the best choice for us somehow. Protagoras' study of language was perhaps an attempt at providing us with the tools necessary to discuss how we should find that "better" situation for ourselves, as a society. 

Reading the above quote again in this light and being aware that our world suffers many injustices and that even if there is an "ideal" we won't agree on it anytime soon or may be too selfish to pursue it, doesn't this quote just make SENSE? Shouldn't we be driving our own destinies regardless of Truth???

3 Sentences for Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound

Write 3 sentences, each one representing an idea of importance for you related to Aeschylus and our discussion. Do not write more than one sentence. If it helps, make believe that you are deciding what 3 sentences will remain of a larger work which no longer exists with the remaining sentences existing in no autograph manuscripts but only quoted by later thinkers. This is in addition to your normal journal ideas.

• Despite our individual mortality as humans, we possess an intrinsic need to progress, at times described as a "blind hope," but which is ultimately difficult to rationalize.

• Knowledge aligned with a moral purpose goes beyond brute force even if it doesn't save someone from the pain of that force.

• The source of morality is difficult to pinpoint and is often on the edge of subjectivity.