Go Home, Occupy Movement!! (The McFB – Was Ist Das?)

Abstract

ABSTRACT.Revisiting Weber's theory and rethinking the writings of the US sociologist George Ritzer, author elaborates on a well-known argument of defensive modernization of Fukuyama, by claiming that throughout the entire human history a technological drive was aimed to satisfy the security (and control) objective; and that it was rarely (if at all) driven by a desire to ease human existence or to enhance human emancipation and liberation of societies at large. Author concludes that unless operationalized by the system, both intellectualism (human autonomy, mastery and purpose), and technological breakthroughs were traditionally felt and treated as a threat.Keywords: McDonaldization of Society, McEfficiency, McCalculability, McPredictability, McControl, Googlization, k(l)iki-Wiki-picky method, McSociety, quantum field, Cyber-iron cage, Gulag, Paris Hilton, Pirate Party, Occupy Movement, SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, Frank Zappa, way of life, silenceEver since, years ago, I coined the expression McFB way of and particularly since my intriguing FB articles (Is There Life after Facebook, I and II) have been published, I was confronted with numerous requests to clarify the meaning. My usual answer was a contra-question: If humans hardly ever question fetishization or oppose the (self-) trivialization, why then is the subsequent brutalization a surprise to them?Not pretending to reveal a coherent theory, the following lines are my instructive findings, most of all on the issue why it is time to go home, depirate, and search for a silence.Largely drawing on the works of the grand philosophers of the German Classicism and Dialectic Materialism, it was sociologist Max Weber who was the first - among modern age thinkers - to note that the industrialized world is undergoing a rapid process of rationalization of its state (and other vital societal) institutions. This process - Weber points out - is characterized by an increased efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control over any threat of uncertainty. Hereby, the uncertainty should be understood in relation to the historically unstable precognitive and cognitive human, individual and group, dynamics. A disheartened, cold and calculative over-rationalization might lead to obscurity of irrationality, Weber warns. His famous metaphor of the iron cage or irrationality of rationality refers to his concern that extremely rationalized (public) institution inevitably alienates itself and turns dehumanized to both those who staff them and those they serve, with a tiny upper caste of controllers steadily losing touch of reality.Revisiting, rethinking and rejuvenating Weber's theory (but also those of Sartre, Heidegger, Lukacs, Lefebvre, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Bloch), it was the US sociologist George Ritzer who postulated that the late 20th century institutions are rationalized to a degree that the entire state becomes McDonaldized, since the principles of the fast food industry have gradually pervaded other segments of society and very aspects of life (The McDonaldization of Society, a controversial and highly inspiring book of popular language, written in 1993).Thus paraphrased, Ritzer states that (i) McEfficiency is achieved by the systematic elimination of unnecessary time or effort in pursuing an objective. As the economy has to be just-in-time competitively productive, society has to be efficient as well. Corresponding to this mantra, only a society whose forms and contents are governed by business models, whose sociability runs on marketing principles is a successfully optimized polity. Premium efficiency in the workplace (or over broader aspects of sociableness) is attainable by introducing F.W. Taylor's and H. Ford's assembly line into human resources and their intellectual activity (sort of intellectual assembly line).1 Even an average daily exposure to the so-called news and headlines serves an instructive and directional rather than any informational and exploratory purpose. …