Institutionalized desublimation thus appears to be an aspect of the "conquest of transcendence" achieved by the one-dimensional society. … - Herbert Marcuse

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I think science and spirituality are one and the same, I don't think they're really different. . . quantum physics is validating all kinds of spiritual teachings.

Herbert Marcuse

Institutionalized desublimation thus appears to be an aspect of the "conquest of transcendence" achieved by the one-dimensional society. Just as this society tends to reduce, and even absorb opposition (the qualitative difference!) in the realm of politics and higher culture, so it does in the instinctual sphere. The result is the atrophy of the mental organs for grasping the contradictions and the alternatives and, in the one remaining dimension of technological rationality, the Happy Consciousness comes to prevail.

Absorb, Desublimation, Differences, Dimensions, Politics, Spheres

Same Author Quotes

The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.

Aggressively, Consuming, Handling, Men, People, Ties

Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination.

Liberty, Made, Powerful, Rule, Whole

The truth of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality to define what is real.

Art, Break, Lying, Real, Reality

Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the men and women who could change the world.

Art, Consciousness, Men, World

The means of communication, the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers to the producers and, through the latter to the whole social system. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood. . . Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior.

Attitude, Certain, Communication, Emerges, Mean, Products