The Mana of Mass Society by William Mazzarella

Author:William Mazzarella [William Mazzarella]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

Indeed, many ads make it seem as if selling a product is incidental to the more important task of reassuring consumers of, precisely, their “individual free will, choice, and human agency.” BMO Harris Bank, for example, promises “to act on your behalf because that’s the only half that matters.” If the ad makes me a bit queasy, then surely it offends less by its “creative” grammar than by flattering me with the opportunistic and insincere solicitude of a corporation that I know full well will only willingly act on my behalf if that “half” turns out to boost its bottom line. Even contemporary neuroscience suggests that “we” (by which it generally designates middle-class Euro-Americans) are invested, above all, in not so much the idea but more profoundly the feeling that we have autonomous agency: “The creation of a sense of agency is critically important for a variety of personal and social processes, even if this perceived agent is not a cause of action. . . . Conscious will is a cognitive feeling, like confusion or the feeling of knowing. . . . [I]t shares with the basic emotions an experiential component—we do not just deduce that we did an action, we feel that we did it. We resonate with what we do.”⁵⁷

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