A sustained critique arguing that the Enlightenment’s promise of human emancipation has been perverted: reason has become instrumental and calculative, turning into a means of domination rather than liberation, producing standardized mass culture, social regression, and conditions that enable authoritarianism; the authors trace how myth and instrumentalized rationality intertwine, eroding individual autonomy and moral judgment and showing that technical progress without critical, reflective thought perpetuates new forms of social control.