The Doors Of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything

[BrklynLiberal]

We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever known. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased
<snip>
The Language Of Spin
As 1920s spin pioneers like Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays gained more experience, they began to formulate rules and guidelines for creating public opinion. They learned quickly that mob psychology must focus on emotion, not facts. Since the mob is incapable of rational thought, motivation must be based not on logic but on presentation. Here are some of the axioms of the new science of PR:
technology is a religion unto itself
if people are incapable of rational thought, real democracy is dangerous
important decisions should be left to experts
when reframing issues, stay away from substance; create images
never state a clearly demonstrable lie
Words are very carefully chosen for their emotional impact. Here's an example. A front group called the International Food Information Council handles the public's natural aversion to genetically modified foods.
<snip>
Characteristics Of Good Propaganda
As the science of mass control evolved, PR firms developed further guidelines for effective copy. Here are some of the gems:
dehumanize the attacked party by labeling and name calling
speak in glittering generalities using emotionally positive words
when covering something up, don't use plain English; stall for time; distract
get endorsements from celebrities, churches, sports figures, street people - anyone who has no expertise in the subject at hand
the 'plain folks' ruse: us billionaires are just like you
when minimizing outrage, don't say anything memorable, point out the benefits of what just happened, and avoid moral issues
<snip>
Do you really suppose the major stories that have dominated headlines and TV news have been "what is going on in the world?" Do you actually think there's been nothing going on besides the contrived tech slump, the contrived power shortages, the re-filtered accounts of foreign violence and disaster, and all the other non-stories that the puppeteers dangle before us every day?
What about when they get a big one, like with OJ or Monica Lewinsky or the Oklahoma city bombing? Do we really need to know all that detail, day after day? Do we have any way of verifying all that detail, even if we wanted to? What is the purpose of news?
To inform the public? Hardly. The sole purpose of news is to keep the public in a state of fear and uncertainty so that they'll watch again tomorrow and be subjected to the same advertising.
<snip>

more............
http://www.mercola.com/2001/aug/15/perception.htm

[b...]

1. am i supposed to believe that too?

[Zenlitened]

2. Excellent article. I particularly like the line...

It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day.

It IS exhausting. We're trying to sell people on solutions, when they aren't even convinced there's a problem. Oy! :)

[DBoon]

3. "when covering something up, don't use plain English", or as Orwell put it

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a "party line." Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html

[bobbobbins]

7. Sorry to say this, but i feel that way about both Bush and Kerry

That sums them both up

[euler]

4. That's great, but how do I know....

....you have not succumbed to the mind control yourself? If you did manage to fight off this programming, then how did you do it? It's an important question that could help others avoid the programming.

[Union Thug]

6. Start with the premise that all discourse is propaganda.

Assume that everything is motivated by an agenda.

Here in the states, the primary agenda is the profit motive that underscores almost everything. What really opened my eyes to how we are manipulated and programmed in every aspect of our daily lives is when I started looking at world events as all economically motivated. Everything is about profit (or, on a MUCH smaller scale, exposing that fundamental truth). The Entertainment industry is not about entertaining, it's about profit. The pharaceutical industry does not care about providing help to those who suffer from disease, it is about making money (which is why you see them fabricating disorders..social anxiety disorder, for example, to sell more and more drugs).

Of course, I've been told I'm too cynical. But so be it, I don't trust anything I hear anymore.

[oneold1-4u]

5. Control of propaganda

Since 1955 the greatest amount of all propaganda, from pablum to president has been over the TV and all of it's broadcasting companies and affiliates. (to soon old, too late smart) Haven't used TV for info for 10+years. It is too bad that people seem to have to see it in a commercial to believe it works. Because they see a president more than anyone of intelligence, they think he is really the president!

[necso]

8. "Propaganda" by Bernays has been re-released

and I recommend it to everyone.

It is critical to understand the importance of appeals to emotion, to the subconscious and to "seed" propaganda that has been previously pounded into the "mass mind". -- Appeals to rationality have limited effects when dealing with the irrational, and this is a lesson that we must learn.

The corruption of "conventional" wisdom into a set of propaganda (marketing) points also represents a tremendous hurdle for us to overcome. Without some independent basis on which to judge what one is being "fed", it becomes impossible to differentiate truth from lies, knowledge from ignorance, reason from fantasy, and wisdom from nonsense. In such an environment, making rational, informed decisions becomes practically impossible. (This also has implications for the operation of the "free market", since "demand" becomes an "unnatural" force.)

Of course, this is precisely the marketeers' desired end, since marketing (propaganda) is all about creating "demand" for whatever someone is "selling" -- be this an overpriced, unnecessary vehicle -- or new, overpriced drugs that work less well than the ones that they are intended to replace (for the sake of profits)... or a "leader of the free world".

And if we cannot use the existing foundation of mass propaganda to our ends, it might be wise to focus on areas where this propaganda has been largely silent.

[Ian David]

9. It's a great article, but uses the same techniques it decries

He uses the very same tools he decries to try to spin "alternative medicine" as somehow the victim of a smear campaign by the spinmeisters.

Alternative Medicine itself has huge lobbying, public relations, and billions of dollars behind it.

Remember this:

It is Orin Hatch who snuck Nutraseet past the FDA, much to the chagrin and outrage of the left.

It is Orin Hatch who snuck Alternative Medicine past the FDA (in the guise of Nutritional Supplements), much to the cheers and applause of the left.

The spinmeisters of alternative medicine play themselves as pseudo-victims the same way the christian right and the right wing play victim to the "godless liberals," as they claim to be struggling to save marriage from the homos and christmas from the ACLU.

Do not buy the "keep alternative medicine free" hype thrown at you by the anti-regulation Republicans like Orin Hatch.

The same people who lied to you about lead in the environment, mercury in the water, and Nutrasweet are the very same people lying to you about alternative medicine.

Do not replace one set of lies for another, just because the change "de-regulated" to "not oppressed by the FDA," and use words like "natural" and "traditional" and "holistic."

Using happy, friendly words does not make something better.

[necso]

10. Well,

as distasteful as the techniques of marketing are, I am not sure that we can avoid their use.

...And these techniques are certainly pervasive.

I know little about alternative medicine, but one can be fairly certain that many people are looking to make money from it (with as little regulation as is possible) -- and that these people are able to rent powerful friends.

Such is the world that we find ourselves in. Reality is hard, fantasy is comforting, humans are weak... and almost everything is for sale.

And we have already slid a long way down this slippery slope.

[Eloriel]

17. Well, *I* know something about it

and the poster you're responding to is either very badly informed and horridly biased, or is here with an agenda himself.

I have been a consumer of alternative medicine for most of my adult life (and I'll be 57 next month), and find virtually nothing of value or validity or accuracy in what he said.

What I find especially repugnant, and in fact quite telling in a sick and sorry way, is the implication made that the alternative healthcare industry is universally no better than and/or equally guilty of the same greedy profit motive as pharmaceuticals and the worst of those corporations which have NO interest at all in helping people or even providing a safe consumer products.

I'm sure there are shysters and simple incompetents in any profession, in any industry and this one is no different, but painting with such a broad brush (again, by implication) is unfair, illogical, unwarranted, and thoroughly unsupported in fact.

Orrin Hatch defends some of the alt. healthcare industry because a lot of Mormons are involved in that industry. But he and Repugs are by no means the bulk of the industry nor the primary spokespeople. If anything, they're a small part, sort of a subsection. Frankly, I think it's a cheap trick, trying to damn by association that way.

So if Orrin Hatch is able to help keep alternative medicine available, herbs and food supplements available, then good on him. I don't care what HIS motivation is, I only care about the result: that I and millions and millions of others continue to have access to healing modalities that work for us and keep us healthy.

[eg101]

11. we need video documentaries explaining the history of propaganda

And then once we create this documentaries, we need to distribute them to the populace.

[eric144]

14. BBC documentary

There was a really top class three part documentary by the BBC on Bernays and his uncle Sigmund Freud called "The Century of the Self" .


http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/02_february/28/centuryoftheself.shtml

"The second programme, The Engineering of Consent, explores how Freud’s ideas about the unconscious mind were used by those in power in post-war America to try and control the masses. Politicians and planners came to believe Freud’s underlying premise - that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again they set out to find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind.Sigmund Freud’s daughter, Anna, and his nephew, Edward Bernays, provided the centrepiece philosophy. Their ideas were used by the US government, big business, and the CIA to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the American people. But this was not a cynical exercise in manipulation. Those in power believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life.



There is a Policeman Inside All Our Head: He Must be Destroyed is the third programme in the series. In the 1960s, the influence of Freudian ideas in America was challenged by a radical group of psychotherapists. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud’s, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself.



Out of this came a political movement that sought to create new beings free of the psychological conformity which had been implanted in people’s minds by business and politics. This programme shows how this rapidly developed in America through movements like est (founded by Werber Erhard) - into the irresistible rise of the expressive self: the me generation.



But the American corporations soon realised that this new self was not a threat but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality. To do this they turned to techniques developed by Freudian psychoanalysts to read the inner desires of the new self.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. And the family business goes on

at number 17 in GQ's 2005 list of the most powerful people in Britain, Matthew Freud, great grandson of Sigmund, and chairman of Freud Communications.

http://u.tv/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=54913&pt=n

The maker of this series was Adam Curtis - who also made the recent series The Power of Nightmares, on the use of fear by the neo-cons, and the use of hatred by the Islamic fundamentalists.

[BrklynLiberal]

12. I posted this, not to argue one side or another. but merely to inform,

since forwarned may be forearmed. If we are aware that we are being persuaded by everything we see, particularly on TV, we may be better able to judge things more intelligently.
As parents, don't we have to explain to our children that all those commercials for toys and candy they see on TV are not always telling them the truth? I guess we have to keep in mind that the same is true for all those "adult" commercials as well.

[depakid]

13. He doesn't help his case by making crackpot statements

about vaccinations and pharmaceuticals.

Too bad, really, because the rest of the article is a fair intro into propaganda & marketing concepts.

[Ian David]

15. Yes, there are some crackpot-isms

He educates both by expository and by example.

(Did I use that word correctly)?

Vaccinations are GOOD.

They are especially good now that we have gotten the Mercury preservatives out of them.

The Anthrax vaccine... that MIGHT be bad. The chickenpox vaccine MIGHT be bad.

The other vaccines... all good.

[Babel_17]

18. You might be interested.

http://www.generalsemantics.org/

Addictive stuff, it becomes hard not to apply it to anything news related.

[Emillereid]

19. This is one my favorite essays --

In fact, Tim O'Shea's website is good too. I especially like his essay on cancer.