I am posting this again because I am interested in comment: THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM (copyright Michael Yardley 2014) Ever wondered how we got here? How the individual lost his or her power? #liberty I am going to begin to have a go at something difficult. Explaining how we got to where we are today. This is just a rough draft, not polished at all - that takes time. Jumping in at the deep end, and acknowledging a debt to the work of many others (including Noam Chomsky and Adam Curtis), this is my first take... During World War I propaganda was developed and newspaper proprietors were co-opted into the war effort. The pictorial, tabloid, press was evolving in this era (and particularly important in an age before broadcasting). Lord Northcliffe (aka Alfred Harmsworth) owner of both The Times and Daily Mail was made Director of Propaganda. His influence was profound. Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitkin), who came to control the then hugely popular Daily Express, also held office as Minister of Information during the war. In this era techniques of scientific propaganda and perception management as it might now be termed were developed. The Home Front became as important as any other. Engineering consent became a strategic goal. After WWI, Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freuds nephew, accompanied Woodrow Wilson, the US president, to the Paris Peace Conference as what would now be called a media consultant. He was extremely successful with this and Wilson was received as a grand heroic figure partly because of Bernays skills. After the war Bernays turned his attention to the corporate world. He was the man who first persuaded women to smoke, and small investors to buy shares en masse. He did this by applying the depth psychology principles of his uncle to political and commercial affairs and developing what he now called public relations. He learnt how to press peoples buttons... how to get stories in the press. In 1928 he wrote a book called Propaganda. Clearly thinking himself a member of the unseen elite, he suggested that the manipulation of public opinion was required in a democracy: The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. The wall street crash ended Bernays reign of power temporarily, but he influenced many not least, and most extraordinarily, Dr. Goebbels who used his idea to build the propaganda machine of the Third Reich. The application of psychological methods to manipulate public opinion became routine, mass consumption as a doctrine - as it was now becoming - required that people kept buying even when they did not need something. Bernays would return to become one of the most influential men in America. Meantime, journalist and writer, Walter Lipmann, another key US thinker of the 1920s (and later the man who coined the phrase Cold War), and a man also considering the applications of depth psychology, noted in similar vein to the arch manipulator Bernays that the main tenet of democracy that human beings could be trusted to make decisions on a rational basis was wrong. And, as human beings were in his reality driven by irrational, unconscious, forces it was necessary to rethink democracy. What was needed he argued was a new elite to manage the bewildered herd. Psychological techniques - based again in the then fashionably Freudian depth psychology - would be applied to control the unconscious, potentially dangerous, feelings of the masses. Libidinous and aggressive urges would be directed into mass consumption. After WWII the processes became much more sophisticated. As well as depth psychology, the same mathematical analysis and systems used to create atom bombs and, later, early warning systems were also applied to human beings, society and social management (as well as finance). Much of the computerised modern world, the way government looks at managing people, has its origins in defence technology. Many academics famous for other things were originally funded by monies made available for defence from sometimes shadowy sources. The world wide web and AI, Artificial Intelligence, might be considered examples of this. Experiments with psychological control also continued. The US government had noted with concern that almost fifty perfect of combat casualty evacuations in World War II had been down to psychological issues. People were not as happy, or reliable, as had been thought it appeared. Something needed to be done, if democracy, for which read consumer capitalism, was to triumph over the spectre of communism. Freud had noted in his final writings that man was a dangerous, irrational, animal needing to be controlled - his daughter Anna taking over his work after his death. She liaised with government and industry on a grand scale on various control projects. Few of these have come to public attention, nor the sheer scale of the research effort focused on controlling the population in various ways. Truth is stranger than fiction in many cases, there is little need for conspiracy theory, the reality is truly disturbing for those who believe free will a good thing. US intelligence services had also noted the show trials in Moscow pre-war. Post war, and especially during the Korea conflict they saw the communists seemed to have mastered mind control. A huge effort was made to catch up. There were many excesses. During the MK Ultra project, innocent people were kidnapped off the street and had their minds were wiped with ECT and massive doses of LSD. New personalities were constructed in them. All sorts of similar controlling stuff was being researched. Less dramatic, but arguably of more long term significance were the focus groups and refined depth psychology used to discover how peoples buttons might be pressed both with regard to political and corporate agendas. The most pedestrian products also had these ideas applied to them. By adding an egg to a cake mix instead of water, one corporation discovered from the psychiatrists that a womans need to nurture might be fulfilled - their sales escalated exponentially. Similar techniques appear to have been used by both Clinton and Blair - who achieved victory by saying exactly what the psychologists and focus groups told them would appeal to electorate. The end of victory justified the means to them apparently. No-one told the public they were being cynically manipulated by the most sophisticated devices, that democracy was, effectively, being perverted. Though they may have guessed since. The thing that would surprise most is how precise and refined these techniques have now become, and how pervasive. Anyone who thinks they can escape their effects is naive. Every time we watch a screen or open a paper we are, literally, targeted. As you read this, there are probably ads directed at you from the analysis of personal data that has been amassed by this means. We are all now victims of an utterly materialistic, manipulative, system that sees us not as human beings but as machines. In Herbert Hoovers words Happiness Machines to be kept docile through consumerism. Our only role is to vote occasionally, to keep quiet, and to buy, buy, buy....
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 09:10:52 +0000
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