016.txt

a collection of mega hacking tools

advertisements, and sometimes it is not even consciously
intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For
instance, the content of entertainment programming is a
powerful form of propaganda. An example of indirect
coercion: There is no law that says we have to go to work
every day and follow our employer's orders. Legally there
is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild
like primitive people or from going into business for
ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild
country left, and there is room in the economy for only
a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of
us can survive only as someone else's employee.

74. We suggest that modern man's obsession with
longevity, and with maintaining physical vigor and sexual
attractiveness to an advanced age, is a symptom of
unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with respect to
the power process. The "mid-lffe crisis" also is such a
symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children
that is fairly common in modern society but almost
unheard-of in primitive societies.

75. In primitive societies life is a succession of
stages. The needs and purposes of one stage having been
fulfilled, there is no particular reluctance about
passing on to the next stage. A young man goes through
the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for
sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is
necessary for food. (In young women the process is more
complex, with greater emphasis on social power; we won't
discuss that here.) This phase having been successfully
passed through, the young man has no reluctance about
settling down to the responsibilities of raising a
family. (In contrast, some modern people indefinitely
postpone having children because they are too busy
seeking some kind of "fulfillment." We suggest that the
fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power
process -- with real goals instead of the artificial
goals of surrogate activities.) Again, having
successfully raised his children, going through the power
process by providing them with the physical necessities,
the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is
prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and
death. any modern people, on the other hand, are
disturbed by the prospect of physical deterioration and
death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend
trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance
and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment
resulting from the fact that they have never put their
physical powers to any practical use, have never gone
through the power process using their bodies in a serious
way. It is not the primitive man, who has used his body
daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration
of age, but the modern man, who has never had a practical
use for his body beyond walking from his car to his
house. It is the man whose need for the power process has
been satisfied during his life who is best prepared to
accept the end of that life.

76. In response to the arguments of this section someone
will say, "Society must find a way to give people the
opportunity to go through the power process." For such
people the value of the opportunity is destroyed by the
very fact that society gives it to them. What they need
is to find or make their own opportunities. As long as
the system GIVES them their opportunities it still has
them on a leash. To attain autonomy they must get off
that leash.


HOW SOME PEOPLE ADJUST

77. Not everyone in industrial-technological society
suffers from psychological problems. Some people even
profess to be quite satisfied with society as it is. We
now discuss some of the reasons why people differ so
greatly in their response to modern society.

78. First, there doubtless are differences in the
strength of the drive for power. Individuals with a weak
drive for power may have relatively little need to go
through the power process, or at least relatively little
need for autonomy in the power process. These are docile
types who would have been happy as plantation darkies in
the Old South. (We don't mean to sneer at the "plantation
darkies" of the Old South. To their credit, most of the
slaves were NOT content with their servitude. We do sneer
at people who ARE content with servitude.)

79. Some people may have some exceptional drive, in
pursuing which they satisfy their need for the power
process. For example, those who have an unusually strong
drive for social status may spend their whole lives
climbing the status ladder without ever getting bored
with that game.

80. People vary in their susceptibility to advertising
and marketing techniques. Some are so susceptible that,
even if they make a great deal of money, they cannot
satisfy their constant craving for the the shiny new toys
that the marketing industry dangles before their eyes. So
they always feel hard-pressed financially even if their
income is large, and their cravings are frustrated.

81. Some people have low susceptibility to advertising
and marketing techniques. These are the people who aren't
interested in money. Material acquisition does not serve
their need for the power process.

82. People who have medium susceptibility to advertising
and marketing techniques are able to earn enough money to
satisfy their craving for goods and services, but only at
the cost of serious effort (putting in overtime, taking
a second job, earning promotions, etc.). Thus material
acquisition serves their need for the power process. But
it does not necessarily follow that their need is fully
satisfied. They may have insufficient autonomy in the
power process (their work may consist of following
orders) and some of their drives may be frustrated (e.g.,
security, aggression). (We are guilty of
oversimplification in paragraphs 80-82 because we have
assumed that the desire for material acquisition is
entirely a creation of the advertising and marketing
industry. Of course it's not that simple. [11]

83. Some people partly satisfy their need for power by
identifying themselves with a powerful organization or
mass movement. An individual lacking goals or power joins
a movement or an organization, adopts its goals as his
own, then works toward those goals. When some of the
goals are attained, the individual, even though his
personal efforts have played only an insignificant part
in the attainment of the goals, feels (through his
identification with the movement or organization) as if
he had gone through the power process. This phenomenon
was exploited by the fascists, nazis and communists. Our
society uses it too, though less crudely. Example: Manuel
Noriega was an irritant to the U.S. (goal: punish
Noriega). The U.S. invaded Panama (effort) and punished
Noriega (attainment of goal). Thus the U.S. went through
the power process and many Americans, because of their
identification with the U.S., experienced the power
process vicariously. Hence the widespread public approval
of the Panama invasion; it gave people a sense of power.
[15] We see the same phenomenon in armies, corporations,
political parties, humanitarian organizations, religious
or ideological movements. In particular, leftist
movements tend to attract people who are seeking to
satisfy their need for power. But for most people
identification with a large organization or a mass
movement does not fully satisfy the need for power.

84. Another way in which people satisfy their need for
the power process is through surrogate activities. As we
explained in paragraphs 38-40, a surrogate activity is an
activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that
the individual pursues for the sake of the "fulfillment"
that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs
to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is no
practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting
a little ball into a hole or acquiring a complete series
of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society devote
themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or
stamp-collecting. Some people are more "other-directed"
than others, and therefore will more readily attach
importance to a surrogate activity simply because the
people around them treat it as important or because
society tells them it is important. That is why some
people get very serious about essentially trivial
activities such as sports, or bridge, or chess, or arcane
scholarly pursuits, whereas others who are more
clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the
surrogate activities that they are, and consequently
never attach enough importance to them to satisfy their
need for the power process in that way. It only remains
to point out that in many cases a person's way of earning
a living is also a surrogate activity. Not a PURE
surrogate activity, since part of the motive for the
activity is to gain the physical necessities and (for
some people) social status and the luxuries that
advertising makes them want. But many people put into
their work far more effort than is necessary to earn
whatever money and status they require, and this extra
effort constitutes a surrogate activity. This extra
effort, together with the emotional investment that
accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces acting
toward the continual development and perfecting of the
system, with negative consequences for individual freedom
(see paragraph 131). Especially, for the most creative
scientists and engineers, work tends to be largely a
surrogate activity. This point is so important that it
deserves a separate discussion, which we shall give in a
moment (paragraphs 87-92).

85. In this section we have explained how many people in
modern society do satisfy their need for the power
process to a greater or lesser extent. But we think that
for the majority of people the need for the power process
is not fully satisfied. In the first place, those who
have an insatiable drive for status, or who get firmly
"hooked" on a surrogate activity, or who identify
strongly enough with a movement or organization to
satisfy their need for power in that way, are exceptional
personalities. Others are not fully satisfied with
surrogate activities or by identification with an
organization (see paragraphs 41, 64). In the second
place, too much control is imposed by the system through
explicit regulation or through socialization, which
results in a deficiency of autonomy, and in frustration
due to the impossibility of attaining certain goals and
the necessity of restraining too many impulses.

86. But even if most people in industrial-technological
society were well satisfied, we (FC) would still be
opposed to that form of society, because (among other
reasons) we consider it demeaning to fulfill one's need
for the power process through surrogate activities or
through identification with an organization, rather than
through pursuit of real goals.


THE MOTIVES OF SCIENTISTS

87. Science and technology provide the most important
examples of surrogate activities. Some scientists claim
that they are motivated by "curiosity" or by a desire to
"benefit humanity." But it is easy to see that neither of
these can be the principal motive of most scientists. As
for "curiosity," that notion is simply absurd. Most
scientists work on highly specialized problems that are
not the object of any normal curiosity. For example, is
an astronomer, a mathematician or an entomologist curious
about the properties of isopropyltrimethylmethane? Of
course not. Only a chemist is curious about such a thing,
and he is curious about it only because chemistry is his
surrogate activity. Is the chemist curious about the
appropriate classification of a new species of beetle?
No. That question is of interest only to the
entomologist, and he is interested in it only because
entomology is his surrogate activity. If the chemist and
the entomologist had to exert themselves seriously to
obtain the physical necessities, and if that effort
exercised their abilities in an interesting way but in
some nonscientific pursuit, then they wouldn't give a
damn about isopropyltrimethylmethane or the
classification of beetles. Suppose that lack of funds for
postgraduate education had led the chemist to become an
insurance broker instead of a chemist. In that case he
would have been very interested in insurance matters but
would have cared nothing about isopropyltrimethylmethane.
In any case it is not normal to put into the satisfaction
of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that
scientists put into their work. The "curiosity"
explanation for the scientists' motive just doesn't stand
up.

88. The "benefit of humanity" explanation doesn't work
any better. Some scientific work has no conceivable
relation to the welfare of the human race most of
archaeology or comparative linguistics for example. Some
other areas of science present obviously dangerous
possibilities. Yet scientists in these areas are just as
enthusiastic about their work as those who develop
vaccines or study air pollution. Consider the case of Dr.
Edward Tell