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by jerf 5615 days ago
Excessively anthropomorphizing the Man is a quick way to sketch civilization, but leads to a failure to understand it deeply. If I were going to put a word on it, it would be glib. Sort of Malcolm Gladwell-ish. It's not necessarily that it's wrong, it's just so incomplete a view that it might as well be wrong.
1 comments
nick_urban 5615 days ago
The term "The man" may be glib in many cases, but if we understand that "the man is us" then we reach some place more fundamental.

Heidegger has a fascinating analysis of this phenomena, which he calls "Das Man" or "The They". Most of the time, all of us are "the they" instead of being authentically ourselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology#.27The...

Note: if you decide to read Heidegger, it may take as much time as a television habit.

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jerf 5615 days ago
"may be glib in many cases"

I agree with you in general, but I think this is one of the "glib" cases in the original post. Buying into "vs. the Man" is, ironically, one of the Man's main tools in the contemporary US; there are entire ethnic cultures in the US being held back in no small part by the belief they are being held back by the Man, which in turn requires them to be externally rescued by the don't-look-too-closely-just-believe-we're-not-the-Man-Man.

There's truth in the "Man" analysis, but the escape is to transcend the narrative, not engage with it. (The synthesis of the man/vs. the man thesis and antithesis, I suppose.) Which I doubt you disagree with, I'm just being explicit.

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