Sections (TOC) :
• 1
27 Words; 182 Characters
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230 Words; 1,286 Characters
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• 7
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• 8
26 Words; 180 Characters
• 9
57 Words; 359 Characters
• 10
149 Words; 884 Characters
Sections (Content) :
• 1
From the plant to the university, society becomes an immense assembly line, where the seeming variety of jobs disguises the actual generalization of the same abstract labor.
• 2
...bureaucracy seems to be the sole organizational form compatible with capitalist hegemony...
• 3
...the Much Making of Things, --- not the making of beautiful things, not the joy of spending living energy in creative work; rather the shameless, merciless driving and over-driving, wasting and draining of the last lit of energy, only to produce heaps and heaps of things, --- things ugly, things harmful, things useless, and at the best largely unnecessary. To what end are they produced? Mostly the producer does not know; still less does he care. But he is possessed with the idea that he must do it, every one is doing it, and every year the making of things goes on more and faster; there are mountain ranges of things made and making, and still men go about desperately seeking to increase the list of created things, to start fresh heaps and to add to the existing heaps. And with what agony of body, under what stress and strain of danger and fear of danger, with what mutilations and maimings and lamings they struggle on, dashing themselves out against these rocks of wealth! Verily, if the vision of the Mediæval Soul is painful in its blind staring and pathetic striving, grotesque in its senseless tortures, the Soul of the Modern is most amazing with its restless, nervous eyes, ever searching the corners of the universe, its restless, nervous hands ever reaching and grasping for some useless toil.
• 4
...certainly the presence of things in abundance, things empty and things vulgar and things absurd, as well as things convenient and useful, has produced the desire for the possession of things, the exaltation of the possession of things. Go through the business street of any city, where the tilted edges of the strata of things are exposed to gaze, and look at the faces of the people as they pass, --- not at the hungry and smitten ones who fringe the sidewalks and plain dolefully for alms, but at the crowd, --- and see what idea is written on their faces. On those of the women, from the ladies of the horse-shows to the shop girls out of the factory, there is a sickening vanity, a consciousness of their clothes, as of some jackdaw in borrowed feathers. Look for the pride and glory of the free, strong, beautiful body, lithe-moving and powerful. You will not see it. You will see mincing steps, bodies tilted to show the cut of a skirt, simpering, smirking faces, with eyes cast about seeking admiration for the gigantic bow of ribbon in the overdressed hair. In the caustic words of an acquaintance, to whom I once said, as we walked, "Look at the amount of vanity on all these women's faces," "No: look at the little bit of womanhood showing out of all that vanity!"
• 5
Today we come across a person who acts and feels like an automaton, who never experiences anything which is really his; his experiences himself entirely as the person he thinks he is supposed to be; whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech; whose dulled despair has taken the place of genuine pain. Two statements can be made about this person. One is that he suffers from a defect of spontaneity and individuality which may seem incurable. At the same time, it may be said that he does not differ essentially from millions of others who are in the same position.
• 6
The urge to create is the first and most impelling force in their lives. If this urge is lacking in the mass of workers it is not at all surprising, for their occupation is deadly routine. Without any relation to their lives or needs, their work is done in the most appalling surroundings, at the behest of those who have the power of life and death over the masses. Why then should they be impelled to give of themselves more than is absolutely necessary to eke out their miserable existence?
• 7
...the hours for work and meals of laborers are fixed, and known by the ring of the bell.
• 8
Men became habituated to the factory, as children to school, but this "second nature" never overtook them completely nor turned them into enthusiastic addicts of monotony.
• 9
Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. They are infrahuman, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me...
• 10
...for the happiness of men they do not need such a life amid plants and animals, with the possibility of satisfying nearly all their daily wants by means of their own agricultural labor, but a life in industrial centers with infected air, and with increasing and ever increasing demands, the gratification of which is possible only by means of senseless labor in the factories. And the working men who are enmeshed in the temptations of their factory lives believe this and use all their efforts in a miserable struggle with the capitalists for the sake of hours of labor and additional pennies, imagining that they are doing some very important work, whereas the only important work, for which those working men who have been torn away from the land ought to use all their forces, should consist in finding a means of returning to a life amid Nature...
[Section 5.]
Chronology :
April 11, 2020 : Conformity -- Added.
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