Enlightenment as Mass Deception - Book Report/Review Example

The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception All our lives were forever altered by the horror unleashed on September 11, 2001. Commercial jets as weapons of mass destructions. Our collective psyche resists: it remains nearly incomprehensible. Within minutes we came to feel much less safe and much less secure than when we had awakened that morning. Even before these barbaric acts of terrorism, markets and consumers were jittery. After a thrilling eight-year joy ride, the New Economy's bubble had burst. Once high-flying icons of the Internet disappeared or disappointed. Stocks and sentiments descended, layoffs began in earnest, and people wondered if the good times would ever roll again. No wonder that more people than ever before are asking, "How do I lead during times of chaos and uncertainty" Through the grief and anguish of all the tragedies, something truly amazing emerged. Sharp-elbowed bond traders on Wall Street, who once seemed more driven by greed than good, were seen openly weeping on television. CEOs of companies around the globe were advising us to "put families first." Acting as if they were one huge extended family, people across the United States and around the world began to come to each other's aid. They lit candles, held vigils, mourned, marched, sent money, gave blood, donated food and clothing, and went to religious services. Tragedy is often a force that brings people together, and one of massive proportions shows us how connected we really are. The times seem to be showing us that we need to reconsider our priorities. Instead of placing work at the top of our agendas, perhaps we should put family and friend in the number one spot. Will this shift to more compassion and collaboration last, or is it temporary Will life return to the hypercompetitive,24/7/365 world of September 10, 2001 Will profits replace people as number one on the corporate hit parade Not according to what we've learned. The competencies of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and interpersonal skills are ascendant. Today there's much more demand for leaders who are exemplary coaches and individuals who show respect for people from many different cultural backgrounds. Team players are more valued than ever. We aren't nave enough to say that the brand-meism of the 1990s is gone forever, but we are certain of one thing. If you want to place a winning bet on who will be successful as a leader in these times, bet on the more collaborative person who values people first, profits second. A decade ago we noted that technology had connected us into an electronic global village. That seems like and absurdly provincial statement to us, now that the Internet and wireless technology have shrunk the globe to the size of a mobile phone. You wake up in Beijing knowing that you can check your personal digital assistant and link to your office, whether it's in Berlin or Boston. And, thanks to these links, your can send an electronic order today to a factory half-a-world away, and the factory can manufacture and ship the goods you want by tomorrow. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Being globally connected means much more than it did in the 1990s. Although the Internet has been exploited for its commercial capabilities---buying, bill paying, bartering and brokering - its purpose, according to its inventors, is to help people work together. It's about sharing and supporting, not just buying and selling. It's a lesson being learned: the potential is there for leaders to reinvent how they use this powerful technology. So are the challenges. For instance, with access to information only a keystroke away, how do you lead in a globally connected world where hierarchy has become totally irrelevant How do you use technology to give power away, not concentrate it in the hands of those with the central servers How do you stay connected yet not invade people's privacy and personal space How do you use instant messages, pagers, PDAs, mobile phones, and e-mail to stay in touch --- without letting rule your life How do you lead a diffuse network of people scattered all over the planet, many of whom you may never meet And how do you allow technology to replace the most precious human moment - face - to - face contact We have learned earlier that knowledge had replaced land and financial capital as the new economic resource. Knowledge-added is the new value-added, we said, whether in goods or services. Well, guess what Intellectual capital is no longer supreme. It's all true that those with educational degrees have higher incomes and more opportunity, and it's still true that an organization's fitness to compete is dependent upon the mental fitness of the workforce. Even so, there's a new champ in the ring. It's social capital - the collective value of people who know each other and what they'll do for each other. It's human networks that make things happen, not computer networks. And leader who get extraordinary things done will be those who are right there in the middle of them. The tragedy of September 11 reinforce this on the global scale. We are indeed all connected and our alliances are key Social capital is amassed over years of investing in building relationships. Cash flow may be the measure of our ability to finance our work, but social capital is the measure of our ability to put that cash to good use. How do you help leaders learn that it's as much the human heart as the human head that makes the world go round Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses Social connection and social capital extend far beyond national boundaries. The network we're talking about is global. So is the economy. Capital flows easily and instantly from one nation to another, creating a kind of volatility that is very new to the world. The health of the markets in Tokyo affects the health of the markets in the New York. A horrendous disaster in New York's financial district causes markets around the world to plummet, erasing billions of dollars in asset value. From an economic perspective the world is boundaryless-and the implications for leadership extend beyond pure economics. The implications are cultural as well. With global economics comes a global workforce, a fact of life for which many executives are ill-prepared. English may be the language of business, understood whatever the accent; custom and culture, however, are far from uniform. Despite the electronic linkages-or perhaps because o them ---the world may be connected but it is far from a community. For all the talk of the global economy, the world is a pretty parochial place .There are more countries in the world today than a decade ago. Fierce tribal rivalries threaten domestic and international peace, and special interest lobbying tears at our sense of community. There are more products and services than a decade ago, breking the marktetplace into ever smaller bits. Whether your organization is large or small, public sector or private, service or goods, you're likely to have constituents from many countries-and even in our own country, from many segments. Each expects to be treated with respect-just as you do. Global leadership means global understanding. How do you lead in a world that is so fragmented How can a leader unite such a diverse and disparate constituency Base and Superstructural Marxist Theory Ever since people began to speculate about the nature of human society, their attention has been drawn to differences that can be readily observed between individuals and groups within any society. The term social inequality describes a condition in which members of the society have different amounts of wealth, prestige and power. All societies are characterized by some degree of social inequality. When a system of social inequality is based on hierarchy of groups, sociologists refer to it as stratification: a structured ranking of entire groups of people that perpetuates unequal economic rewards and power in a society. These unequal rewards are evident not only in the distribution of wealth and income but even in the distressing mortality rates of impoverished communities. Stratification involves the ways in which social inequalities are assed on from one generation to the next thereby producing groups of people arranged in rank order from low to high. Stratification is one of the most important and complex subjects of sociological investigation because of its pervasive influence on human interactions and institutions. Social inequality is an inevitable result of stratification in that certain groups of people stand higher in social rankings, control scarce resources, wield power, and receive special treatment. The consequences of stratification are evident in the unequal distribution of wealth and income within industrial countries. The Uses of Literacy (1957) - Richard Hoggart While the world marketplace is gradually being unified in terms of space and tastes, the profits of business are not equally shared. There remains a substantial disparity between the world's "have" and "have not" nations. It is clear that stratification matters, that class position quietly influences one's life chances. It can be important for people to have the feeling that they can hold onto or even improve their class position. But how significant is mobility in a class society such as the United States Ronald Reagan's father was a barber and Jimmy Carter began as a peanut farmer, yet each man eventually achieved the most powerful and prestigious position in the country. The rise of a child from a poor background to the presidency - or to some other position of great prestige, power or financial reward - is an example of social mobility. The term social mobility refers to movement of individuals or groups from one position of a society's stratification system to another. Raymond Williams: 'Culture' and 'Masses' Functionalist and conflict sociologists offer contrasting explanations for the existence and necessity of social stratification. Functionalists maintain that a differential system of rewards and punishments is necessary for the efficient operation of society. Conflict theorists argue that competition for scarce resources results in significant political, economic and social inequality. In everyday life, people in the United States are continually judging relative amounts of wealth and income by assessing the cars people drive, the neighborhoods in which they live, the clothing they wear and so forth. Yet it is not so easy to locate an individual within our social hierarchies as it would be in slavery or caste systems of stratification. In order to determine someone's class position, sociologists generally rely on the objective method. The objective method of measuring social class views class largely as a statistical category. Individuals are assigned to social classes on the basis of criteria such as occupation, education, income and residence. The key to the objective method is that the researcher rather than the person being classified makes a determination about an individual's class position. The first step in using this method is to decide what indicators or causal factors will be measured objectively whether wealth, income, education or occupation. The prestige ranking of occupations has proved to be a useful indicator in determining a person's class position. The term prestige refers to respect and admiration with which an occupation is regarded by society. Prestige is independent of the particular individual who occupies the job, a characteristic which distinguishes it from esteem. Esteem refers to the reputation that a specific person has within an occupation. Therefore, one can say that the position of president of the United States has high prestige, even tough it has been occupied by people with varying degrees of esteem. Marshall McLuhan: The Medium Is the Message Speed is a direct consequence of the technologies that connect us. We've been cranking up the pace for centuries now. The transcontinental railroad was one of the most significant innovations of the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States. Automobiles and highways, then airplanes and radar, sped up our expectations. The Internet changed our concept of mail. "Snail mail" was replaced by the instant message, one that beeps and flickers, saying, "Read me now. Answer me now." We've come to expect an instant response when we order, when we eat, when we work. Much of this has improved our lives, and it's lowered the costs of doing business. Yet it's also created a hurry-up culture and not everything-such a quality human relationships-can be hurried. How do you lead an organization that has to balance the importance of being responsive to family, employees, colleagues, customers, clients, and stockholders with the importance of "quality time" with those same individuals Roland Barthes: Image-Music-Text In human groups that are growing and changing, class lines are not immutable. Individuals alter their class positions and the boundaries and strata may change. It is important to understand the relationship among social mobility, structural change and moral panic. A central element in our culture is the value placed on improving one's position - through increased income, a job entailing more authority, an access to prestige, ability to have knowledge about technology. Social mobility is a long standing problem for sociologists. People stand at different points on ladders of wealth, prestige and power. If we want to know where we stand, we have to know where others stand. Social phenomena are always relational, and class standing is a relative matter. Thus, even though people's situation improve or worsen, their standing may remain as it was. Changes in cultural norms, technological achievements and economic and political affiliations have positive and negative implications and these changes need not cause moral panic for our society's standards have to keep up with the changing time in order for us to grow progressively. Michel Foucault. Discipline & Punish (1975), Panopticism According to Marx, exploitation of the proletariat will inevitably lead to the destruction of the capitalist system. But, for this to occur, the working class must develop class consciousness - a subjective awareness held by members of a class regarding their common vested interests and the need for collective political action to bring about social change. Workers must overcome what Marx termed false consciousness, or an attitude held by members of a class that does not accurately reflect its objective position. "And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at." (Marx, 485) A worker with false consciousness may feel that he or she is being treated fairly by the bourgeoisie or may adopt an individualistic viewpoint toward capitalist exploitation. By contrast, the class-conscious worker realizes that all workers being exploited by the bourgeoisie and has a common stake in revolution. 1-http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm 2-http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm 3-http://homepage.newschool.edu/quigleyt/vcs/base&super.pdf 4-http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm 5- Raymond Williams: 'Culture' and 'Masses' 6-Richard Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy 7-Marshall McLuhan: The Medium Is the Message** 8-Roland Barthes: Image-Music-Text (Chapter From Work to Text) 9-http://foucault.info/documents/disciplineAndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html Read More