I agree with you that Marcuse seems overly optimistic with regards to technology. We have seen his optimism before with regards to a civilization in the absence of surplus repression. Freud's view concerning the benefits of technological progress was more pessimistic. He said that although these things may seem to increase our happiness, most of them are a sort of “cheap enjoyment” similar to that “obtained by putting a bare leg from under the bedclothes on a cold winter night and drawing it in again”. This can relate to the discussion we had last class where the point was brought up that technological progress can create new problems that are solved with more technological progress and so on. In the future, there may be an unfixable problem that has terrible consequences. The quote that you posted by Dyson seems to address this. It should be noted that advances in technology are usually looked foreword to and seen as a good thing in our civilization.

If all of this is even possible, it would be very difficult to do, and is not likely to happen. I find academic cheating repulsive. An easier solution would be for people to just stop cheating. All freshman could be required to take a course which discusses ideas such as honesty, integrity, virtues, community, courage, justice, truth, etc.

1. For all academic writing, everyone has an online portfolio where all of their writing is submitted.
2. No one is allowed access the entire user profile accept for the user his/herself
3. professors/graders/reviewers can access documents only for their specific course or with permission
4. Technology compares a student’s paper to all of other papers, as well as all other students work submitted in the entire system.
5. System maintains an updated and accurate account of users writing style.
6. System tracks IP locations and would flag users for suspicion of cheating if, for example, a person submitted a paper from Boston for review in State College and then added further comments from Beijing.
7. When a person is proven to be a cheater, the writing style of the paid for material is flagged and is used to further identify individuals who have submitted work with that writing style profile.
8. Other security measures are added to create a systemic system capable that can accurately detect defects in academic integrity. e.g.: one specific and identifiable writing style profile that is found to be present in many different user submissions would raise suspicion and merit further investigation.

This comment was two long for one block, but I did not find it worthy a actual post on the main page because it is a subset to Dans post. This comment block, along with the next two comment blocks below should be seen as one comment.

We came to the conclusion in class that the solution to this problem was not technological, or at least that this solution is not what we should be focusing on. There may be a technological solution.

In class we discussed the inability to escape from the structure of society. We noted how a persons ties to society would likely remain even if they tried to escape. An example discussed was of a person becoming a hermit. A similar idea is mentioned by Henry David Thoreau who says that"our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance,
who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into
the woods from the cultivated stock". In a sense, a person can try to leave society and become a hermit, but he will still always be a part of the "cultivated stock".

It is likely that many of the people who participate in Buy Nothing Day simply make their purchases on a different day. If a consumer was to purchase some good "x" at a particular time, they would be acting most rationally if they purchased "x" when it was at it's lowest price. Imagine a likely case that the lowest price for good "x" was available on black Friday. Instead of taking advantage of this low price, a consumer participates in Buy Nothing Day and purchases "x" on a different day. This person is still a consumer. All else being equal, , they would have been better off if they made the purchase on black friday.

It is a nice thing to have an event that may raise awareness to certain criticisms of consumerism. But if you must participate in the system, it is best that you make wise purchasing decisions. Also, a good consumer should not fall for advertisements and selling techniques that attempt to attack his impulses and his pocket book.

To answer your question sre5023, surplus repression is at an all time low. Our lives are cake compared to the past.

I eat a variety of delicious foods every single day. I do not grow or produce any of these foods. I have access to millions of books, and a machine that contains much of the span of human knowledge. I usually enjoy some kind of entertainment or leisure daily. I bathe daily. I have a closet full of clean clothing that is washed by a machine. I can talk to my friends and family whenever I want; even if I am on the other side of the world. I'm 23 years old. I don't work any of these things, nor have I ever had a serious job. I am not really forced to do anything I don't want do except to follow a few rules which I don't really want to break anyway. I have never fought in a war, and I have never experienced famine.

After saying all these things, and then if I were to say that I was the victim of a repressive civilization, the average person at any point in history would likely say that I was crazy jerk. Our standard of living is much higher than it was in the past. We have the opportunity to pursue our own interests and make our own lives.

Most of these good things that I have discussed are not enjoyed by everyone in the entire world. There may have been a handful of people 1,000 years ago that had comparable luxuries and opportunities as the average American. We have come along way, so is there any reason that the trend of increasing standard of living should stop? One reason it may stop is a due to a finite amount of resources. Another reason is greed and cultural habits. Most people desire more stuff than is actually practical, and they have many things that they don't rally need. Another reason is that in order for us to enjoy all of the junk that we love to buy for low prices, someone needs to be repressed into making it.

It is absolutely, 100% possible to reduce the amount of repression globally. It would, however, require a huge lifestyle and attitude adjustment by the "haves" in the world. This might not even be that bit of a change, but It would be one that most would be unwilling or unable to make. Maybe these changes will take place over a long period of time, with advancements in technology, and better education.

I wanted to clarify my last point. After a second listen, some of the claims that I made at the end seem to me a bit rash. The point that was made was intended to say that a certain kind of civilization can effectively increases it's members allotted time to peruse their pleasure principles. It is true that we cannot constantly pursue our pleasure principle; for if we did we would not tend to our body's needs, and we would die. From this, we can say that there is a certain base line level of repression needed for the sustainment of life. Once this base line is satisfied, people could spend the rest of their time pursuing the pleasure principle. If people worked together in the right way, they could lower this base line. They could do this by doing the life sustaining requirements that they are good at and trading for the life sustaining things that they are less good at. This would provide everyone more time to do the things they actually wanted to do, and thus could be excepted as being good. (The key economics points that make this possible are comparative advantage, opportunity cost, and increasing returns to scale.)

I suggest that we read "Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" by Immanuel Kant. It is a very short essay that is available online.

We live in a society that generally considers new stuff to be good. This new stuff is also highly valued. There are many fads, trends, and fashions that have no practical advantage over the old stuff, but have greater value due to intricate social and cultural phenomena that we are all aware of. An excellent example of this is popular music. I am sure that the most popular stars of today’s mainstream music world can not even come close to attaining the complexity, genius, and musical ideas found in classical works and possessed by classical composers. Most people would agree with this last statement, but the majority of young people would likely be unwilling give up the new stuff to listen to the old stuff. I assume this occurs because it is not “in”, advertised, or repeated as much. This is certainly not true across all boards. Maybe there was a person in the 18th century that did not like music at all because the music that he would like did not become available until 200 years later. The question then becomes “Do you like something because it’s good, or do you like it because it’s popular.”? Or “is it popular because its good, or is it good because it popular?” There are many new things that come out today that are good because they either are new original ideas or improvements on existing ideas. We continue to benefit from these things such as new and improved software, better transportation, and improvements in medical technologies etc. These are real improvements that are good to purchase and spend money on. However, buying a striped scarf the one you have now is a solid color and is not cool anymore is something different that is also a large part of our economy today.

Dr, Long,

You are right that my arguments support the very thing that Horkheimer and Adorno criticize. I tried to use a system in order to calculate the utility of different decisions. I did this in an attempt to show that using my assumptions we could say that some decisions were better than others.

Could our reasoning methods really be based simply on the goals of our system of rule? As you pointed out, Horkheimer and Adorno say on pg. 81-83 that the "formalization of reason is merely the intellectual expression of mechanized production." I'm not entirely sure what he means by this but maybe he is saying that it is just the application of a certain process that yields results that are simply based on that process.

There is also a quote on pg. 81 that says "good things were once considered evil and evil things where once considered good.". If this were the case than my utilities could be totally different at different times in history and men may actually prefer to die or refrain from listening to the sirens. There is also a discussion of pleasure on these pages where they say that it is a social object of manipulation.