Source: ADAM CURTIS bbc.co.uk
Sigmund Freud believed that individuals were not driven by rational thought but by primitive unconscious desires and feelings. Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays believed that this meant that it was too dangerous to let the masses ever have control over their own lives. Consumerism was a way of giving people the illusion of control while allowing a responsible elite to managing society.
Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticizing the motorcar. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.
Bernay’s most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.
It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today’s world.
Episode One: Happiness Machines
Episode Two: The Engineering of Consent
Episode Three: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Head—He Must Be Destroyed
Episode Four: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
The Trap and The power of Nightmares are also great documentary's by Adam Curtis
ReplyDeleteI see some of the people here where I am, come to look at this promotion of the consumer participation in advantages and responsibilities, to mean that they, the consumer, be in control.
ReplyDeleteYes, their come the time when the this view of satisfy the "inner desires of the people to make them docile and happy", will come to end. Soon, as I see more of the consumer not participate in advantages and responsibilities, the consumer become more of the human beings, that will see that they really have become slaves of their own desires. This is what the big business and govenment bureaucracy fear, that the consumer turned to human beings, will know the other sides to their human nature.
I think that the human beings will not participate, with the public relations, with the propaganda, with the public survey, with the demonstration, because then the human beings will 'see'.
The big business and government bureaucracy do not want the consumer/human beings to 'see'. The big business and govenment bureaucracy do not want the human beings to just sit back, and think, and imagine, and then take action on what they imagine, without the worry and fear.
Yes, I see much more impression to be made upon the consumer, to keep them as a government consumer. Big business being the government through the bureacracy, and special study groups is now linking to *some* of the intelligence groups. Because now they use more strength to keep the human beings who 'see' from taking action on what they imagine, without doing the outward expression or the public display. This be another side of the nature of the human being that be kept suppressed.