Herbert Marcuse: "The One-Dimensional Man"

(karma police, arrest this man [...]

he buzzes like a fridge 

he's like a detuned radio... 

-- radiohead karma police) 

"This book deals with certain basic tendencies in contemporary industrial society which seem to indicate a new phase of civilization. These tendencies have engendered a new mode of thought and behavior which undermines the very foundations of the traditional culture. The chief characteristic of this new mode of thought and behavior is repression of all values, aspirations and ideas which cannot be defined in terms of the operations and attitudes defined by the prevailing forms of [instrumental / mechanical] rationality. The consequence is the weakening and even the disappearance of all genuinely radical critique, the integration of all oppostion in the established system."

"A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom 

prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress."

"We may distinguish both true and false needs. “False" are those which are superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression: the needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice."

"The prevalence of repressive needs is an accomplished fact, accepted in ignorance and defeat, but a fact that must be undone in the interest of the happy individual as well as all those whose misery is the price of his satisfaction."