I read Propaganda and got scared after realizing to what extend it engulfs your life, whether you know it or not, need it or not. That partly, States are helpless but to employ it, that partly it's the individual's need for it that drives them. Think about it for a moment, our craving to be "informed", drives it too.
Then I started reading The Technological Society and it is very,very depressing. You start questioning your sanity that why is it that the rest of the world doesn't see it that way :). Read it half way and haven't had the courage to return to it. When almost everything you do comes within the realm of the inanimate process driving towards efficiency, it makes you wonder if there is any point to it.
It becomes difficult to function. Like the other commentator said, one needs some antidote to this aspect of reality. I really wish something like that existed.
Meditating on the Tao helped, Stoicism helps. Being with kids helps as they seem to be unaware of these things. But you feel helpless that they will grow into it and inherit it.
But again, glad I read them. Ellul lays it out really well with such clarity. If 1984 feels like a rainy day, Ellul is being alone in the Arctic winter.
The only way is to voluntarily, consciously, and simply reject it. Not to be a slave to efficiency, information. And start to rebuild again with this new understanding.