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Multi-dimensionality of Human personality
Dr. Ramjee Singh
Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man is perhaps more relevant today because of its grasp of underlying structures and tendencies of contemporary socio-economic and political development. It provides a model analysis of the synthesis of business, the state, the media, and other cultural institutions under the hegemony of corporate capital. The way that the media and politics went along with Reganism in the 1980's or Bushism during the Gulf War or only few years back during Ayodhya episode in India indicate trends towards onedimensional thought and politics. The resurgence of militarism and terrorism, the syndrome of denial and projection and unleashing of aggressive energies finds a mass base of approval in those who have been conditioned to approve aggression. In short, one-dimensional society operates by staring erotic and destructive instinctual energies into socially controlled modes of thought and behaviour. Aggressive behaviour thus provides a social bond, unifying those who gain in power and self-esteem through identifying with forms of aggression against shared objects of hate. One-dimensional society and onedimensional man are the results of a long historical erosion of individuality, which can be interpreted as an extended protest against the decline of individuality in advanced industrial society, the cognitive costs of which include the loss of an ability to perceive another dimension of possibilities that transcend the pro-dimensional thought
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