Thursday, May 26, 2016

Daily Learn: Adorno



Three Significant Ways Capitalism Corrupts and Degrades Us
1. Leisure time becomes toxic - Free time should be an opportunity to develop ourselves and to acquire the tools to change society. But in the modern world, leisure has devolved into the "culture industry," designed to keep us distracted, unable to understand ourselves, and without the will to alter our political reality.

2. Capitalism doesn't sell us the things we really need - Our real wants are carefully shielded from us by capitalist industry so that we end up forgetting what we truly need and settle instead for desires manufactured for us by corporations without any true interest in our welfare. Though we think we live in a world of plenty, what we really require to thrive - tenderness, understanding, calm, community - are disconnected from the present economy.

3. There are proto-fascists everywhere.

The primary obstacles to social progress are cultural and psychological rather than narrowly political or economic.

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