Analysis Of Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man

These needs can be biological like thirst or psychological arising from the need of recognition or belonging. A need can be aroused to a sufficient level of intensity when it alters a motive. A motive is basically a need that drives a person to seek satisfaction. Abraham Maslow is probably the most know psychologist who has examined these human needs. He sought to explain why humans are driven by different needs at different times (Kotler & Armstrong,

Advertisements speak to society, supposedly reminding its members constantly of their needs and wants (Barthel 8). How much of this is truly what society desires? According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a need encompasses the most primitive forms of goods and services that are required for survival, such as “food, shelter, clothing and healthcare” ("Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs"). On the contrary, a want is something a person would like to have, to add value to one’s life, and something deemed enjoyable based on one’s personal preference. Henceforth, the role of advertising plays on the very fact that these basic economic concepts of needs and wants come into play, and this essay aims to examine if advertising, indeed creates artificial needs,

All we have is our humanity-our soul and our individualism. In Grapes of Wrath and “Modern Times”, John Steinbeck and Charlie Chaplin suggest that the stability of those parts of us-our humanity-are taken away by the big corporations of modern times. Humanity is the ability to choose your actions based on your own faculty and morals. When our faculty and morals are compromised, whether it be because family, food, or quality of life are on the line, we are no longer human. In their works, Charlie Chaplin and John Steinbeck reveal that capitalism dehumanizes man by forcing him to become a machine lose his life’s purpose.

According to Lasch we have become a society of consumers rather than producers. Marx (1844) saw humanity as creative, purposive labourers or producers, where only the private ownership of the means of production prevented humanity from producing for need rather than for the profit of the capitalist, This modus operandi means that late capitalism has actually robbed us of the purpose of humanity as a species. However, Lasch identified that because production of many of the goods enjoyed by western society are now produced overseas, people conceive of themselves far more as consumers rather than as producers. By taking away our capacity to produce the goods that we consume, capitalism has removed the essence of human life for Marx and left us with nothing but an ache to constantly and remorselessly consume. This only leaves us with a distinct sense of dissatisfaction and a fear of not leaving any worthy evidence of our existence (Lasch). The fear of ‘no exist’ as Lasch puts it, is a deep void that the narcissist constantly and unsuccessfully tries to fill.

While the capitalistic structure dominates society and isolates power within key institutions, Herbert Marcuse and Jean Baudrillard analyze its impact on the individual. This capitalistic society we are engulfed in has altered our norms, perceptions, and beliefs in a manner which primarily benefit society’s upper elite. Industry owners as I will call them, exploit society for capitalistic gains; to increase their bottom line. This obsession with profits and power fuel unethical and immoral behavior by industry owners as they take advantage of the resources the average contributing member of society possesses. One could debate that the resource capitalism exploits to the greatest extent is the freedom of the individual. As capitalism grows

Marcuse argues that the capitalist system gives people what it wants them to want, that it generates needs supportive of mass consumption rather than stimulating creative human development. He believes that

Technology has been a constant in human life. Estranged Labor by Karl Marx and Michel Focualt’s Discipline and Punishment depict how technology has effected human history and the beginnings of new ways of thinking about the life and dignity of a human. Karl Marx’s reading, “Estranged Labor,” shows how technology can create mistrust and lessen the value of a human. Michel Focualt’s Discipline and Punishment unveils the beginning of new technology that is constantly evolving from horrifying beginnings to a slowly progressing future. Technology grows and changes every day. The new and old inventions effect the shape of human life indirectly or directly. This essay will argue that as humans evolved, the use of technology, old and new, has greatly effected how a human lives, learns, and understands the ever-changing world.

The purpose of this essay is to outline the argument that a ‘consumer society’ makes and remakes ‘inequality’. However, it is important to understand first what is meant by a consumer society and how ‘inequality’ relates to it. Therefore, this essay will first outline what a consumer society means before we define the term ‘inequality’ more closely.

In today’s society, particularly in America, we live in a culture of exploitation. This aspect of our society has become entrenched into our lives through the rewarding of those (both businesses and individuals) who adopt the mindset of materialistic values over intrinsic values. In this paper I will use both Marcuse’s concept of “false needs” in “The New Forms of Control” and the movie The Truman Show to argue that the technologizing of modern society has given way to a culture that allows and accepts the exploitation of people’s desires in order to control and profit from them.

The famous Rolling Stones song, you can’t always get what you want states, “You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you find, you get what you need.” The overall message is that sometimes people do not question themselves: “Is it a need,” or “is it a want?” With many people in today’s society looking for the newest and most outstanding thing in the market, it is very hard to show the fact that people may not need everything that they have or desire. Through a wide variety of selections, the textbook Interface English, edited by Joan Green, demonstrates the effect human nature has on people’s choices of products. Through these texts, the reader is confronted to investigate the answer to the main question: “What’s behind

At the time of the Holocaust, the Jews put into concentration camps reacted in several different ways. Some of them lost all hope and were destroyed because of their circumstances, however others thrived and grew because of this time. Also numerous things may have been thought to cause these responses to tragedy. The main reason that caused the different results in people, was the self motivation that they stored inside. Without motivation and encouragement, their souls could become destroyed; In response to the effects of the camps they become immune and aren’t devastatingly affected. The future of their lives depends on how they perceived this situation. To them it could have been a new beginning or an end to all.

Consumerism is in control of the world. While consumerism is in control, creativity is being thrown to the side. Fredrik DeBoer, an author and doctoral student, and Damien Walter, a course director and an author, both wrote about the topics of consumerism and creativity and how they impact culture but in completely different ways. Fredrik DeBoer’s article, “The Resentment Machine: The Immeriseration of the Digital Creative Class” discusses how consumption has led to competitiveness of individuals which in turn has led to capitalism and the media platforms being able to criticize what is worthy and unworthy. He argues that capitalism has reduced human life to a way to profit but states that he has no idea how to fix the problem. He states,

In response to Freud’s Civilisation and Its Discontents (1941), Marcuse’s Eros and Civilisation (1969) argues for a liberated, or

Corporate capitalism, according to Marcuse, creates the needs in human beings in which the purchase and use of technology and commodities becomes an indispensable feature of human actualization where people buy their own existence in

Bataille argues that in modern capitalist society, we are measured by our utility and production within this system. Material utility is restricted to production and to conserving goods whilst limited to reproduction and to the preservation of human life. As a result, we work within this framework where values, rules and laws have been created for us to work within, which, Bataille argues, restricts our liberty. Though utility is an apparent positive principle of capitalism, Bataille sees this as a principle of powerlessness and an incapability of being able to expend (Botting and Wilson, 1997, 192). He uses the example of a boy who wants to waste and destroy but cannot do this because he cannot justify it in utilitarian terms and is unaware that others also have this interest. The father of the boy is partly responsible for repressing the boy’s desire to waste and destroy through things he provides for him: a home, clothes food and partial recreation. This does not actually satisfy what the son’s desires are as there is something fundamental within the character of the son. Bataille is trying to demonstrate how in society, the father is like production, which provides us with the basic components of living but not what we really need and how this excess desire the boy has, needs to be satisfied. Rules and