VL page 77 Sasha & Turn.2

[Terrance]

> 
> Not to mention that a self described sexually licentious person (not to
> say robotic terminator) is well on the way to becoming the next governor
> of California, an event that will be easily absorbed into our
> consciousness as a step toward diversity.


Paul, I haven't been paying attention to the California Governor story.
How could I miss it? All Politics is Loco, says The NY Times Sunday
Magazine, but I've not read it. But I get your point and it's a good
one. Just the fact that Arnold is a serious contender should have people
cracking Marcuse's books open. 

 
> 
> Chapter 3 of One-Dimensional Man (source of quote) takes up the concept
> of Repressive Desublimation, which more or less means that the free and
> easy ways of American civilization and culture--particularly in the area
> of sexuality--that began accelerating exponentially in the 60s is not
> liberating as might have been expected but is actually being put to work
> in the service of the established order. (the way I read this is that if
> eventually everything is allowed there will be no room left for freely
> pursuing the forbidden but I'm not a philosopher)

He says that the established order makes use of free literature and art,
the ideals of humanism, the sorrows and joys of the individual, and so
on,  to sell its cold war struggle ( i.e., to condemn communism) to the 
public. The public buys it despite the fact that the established order
is undermining and subverting these very ideals and the public knows it.
It's kind like they way we know that a politician is lying or selling us
with slick advertising when she says that America is the land of
opportunity and every child must have a an equal opportunity to succeed.
The public knows that the politician is selling and they know what she
is selling, but they want to buy it, they want to buy and take home a
commodity because exchange value, not truth value, is comfortably
numbing and preserving of the status quo. Change is frightening.
Difficult. Sloth is the wide and easy road. And, while Americans may
celebrate the ghosts marching to a different drummer, they would rather
watch the tube than march. 




> 
> Marcuse is not new to turning concepts on their head. In his 50s book on
> Freud he promoted the possibility of nonrepressive sublimation.
> 
> That H.M. is some Orwellian dude.
> 
> P.