That is Adorno's characterization of pragmatism, in the context of an essay on the critical consciousness of Veblen. Adorno's objection to this is that it consigns the individual to eternal "adjustment" to existing conditions, because it rejects any concept of the (suppressed) potentiality immanent in the totality of a situation (basically, in his discussion, the elimination of scarcity). The difference, he notes, is a "nuance" ("like every distinction in philosophy"--wonderful!), but its consequence is that the "seriousness" of Veblen's pragmatism is "the seriousness of death."
I've always been a bit sympathetic to pragmatism, and accordingly skeptical of the dialectical "concept" that Adorno accuses it of lacking. However, it occurred to me for the first time just now that this describes how I go about approaching problems in my life, as well. If I'm feeling overwhelmed (i.e. more or less always), I list out the issues I'm dealing with, and I sort them into 3 categories: first, things I can't do much about, which I do my best to ignore; second, things I can break into steps I can put onto my calendar for the following few weeks; and third, long term problems and projects, which I tend push into the background, assuring myself that with the bite-sized steps I've scheduled for myself, I'm "being productive" and "making progress." In other words, I focus exclusively on what is "nearest," which can be tackled immediately, trusting that as a result I'm moving towards a good outcome in the distance, but with only the vaguest sense of how I'm going to get there from here, or even what "there" is going to be (whether, as it were, there will be any "there" there). This also creates a problem in that I end up doing things somewhat half-assedly, just so that I can "put it to sleep" and move on to the next step.
So concludes today's weird hybrid of philosophy and insecurity.
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