The Century of the Self
2002 · TV series · documentary · 58 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Adam Curtis
The legacy of famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud informs the lives of people throughout the world even to this day, though it's a phenomenon to which most are unaware. The film is an exhaustive examination of his theories on human desire, and how they're applied to platforms such as advertising, consumerism and politics.
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194 comments on Hacker News
There's No Reason to Fear an Invasion of Chinese Electric Vehicles
Fear is an emotion. People need not make purchasing decisions based on emotions. See documentary Century of the Self... [1]
I consider logic such as who is going to repair my vehicle and where am I going to get parts, how long will parts be available and how safe is this thing. Perhaps these are answered questions for the cheaper EV imports but I have not seen this articulated anywhere in a confidence inspiring level of detail especially given the current tension between China and the US. The common answer I hear is "but EV's are simpler" which tells me these people have not actually tried to work on one. They are not simple at all and the parts are quite unique and have to be ordered from China.
Build out factories in the US and stock up on all the parts first. Show me the USA tested crash safety data, remove all the drive-by-wire nonsense, make the battery packs user serviceable, remove all dial-home telemetry and maybe we can talk otherwise I see this as future throw-away toys that will flood the landfills.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s [video][4 hours][b&w documentary]
HyperNormalisation is one of many great documentaries by Adam Curtis, many of which are available on archive.org [1]. Specifically, I can recommend The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares. No need for YouTube :) FWIW, these used to be able on Google Video back when that still existed. And via torrents.
[1] https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Adam+Curtis%22
I think he was inspired by Valium and other benzos. They put people into a docile, low-anxiety state, and they were popular around the time the book was written.
That's also more-or-less consistent with the implied literary reference to the Lotus Eaters, who I think are usually imagined as opium users. Opioids are different but are also downers that reduce anxiety.
Benzos later featured significantly in one of Adam Curtis' film-essays -- maybe Century of the Self, maybe another one. I'd view those films as being in a similar spirit to Brave New World.
There is a great documentary called “The Century of the Self”, which is about the rise of consumerism in lockstep with politics in the United States.
The initial primary focus is Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, who is known as the father of public relations. He was incredibly influential during his time, having been a key advisor on most federal administrations from the 20s to the 70s. On the corporate side, early big wins were getting women to smoke at the dawn of the Great Depression, and changing the 'American breakfast' to bacon and eggs.
A core thesis of his is freedom in a large democratic state is a bit of an illusion… it needs to be controlled by consumerist impulses, or in other words, indirectly by corporations. Otherwise the all-encompassing hand of totalitarianism is needed. Without one of these mediating factors, the masses become unruly and descend into anarchy and chaos.
His late 20s book "Propaganda" is an interesting insight into his early, free from public scorn, view on the matter. It seems overwhelmingly cynical and puppet-masterish, if you will, and he somewhat stepped back from it after finding out how much it had influenced Goebbels. Still, I think it holds strongly as a guidebook for how the US evolved to present day.
Advertising and public relations has always been applied psychology. The contemporary interation was originally developed by Freuds nephew (Edward Bernays). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
I highly recommend The Century of the Self for a great documentary on the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
Correct. The car industry intentionally socially engineered the US to associate the giant individual and social burden of car ownership with freedom. A great documentary called Century of the Self covers this and other related things ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s )
The term's context belongs to the USSR right before it broke apart.
If you look at Adam Curtis' wealth of documentaries, one of which helped popularize the term hypernormalization:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis
you will find Curtis oeuvre relies on mashing up content extracted from BBC's massive news archive arranged according to themes chosen by Curtis.
Once of Curtis' central themes is the observation of an intellectual gap between rationalist comprehension of the world through the news, and the wobbliness of how the world actually manifests, especially in the context of politics and leadership. The implicit, recurring question being what are the limits of our science to account for ourselves.
Curtis offers many views into the Soviets, especially in a series devoted to riffing on the mood of Soviet society during the 80s and 90s titled Traumazone.
Curtis' picks from the archives may help you gain a sense for distinctions between the political preconditions of the end of the USSR and ongoing mess of U.S. politics.
One take is that since the 20th century, the orientation of political leadership has profoundly changed: politicians no longer seek to offer coherent solutions in a mechanical nation, they seek the necessity of their own power in an electoral marketplace of influence within an organism of society.
Under such view, the question can be formed: Did the USSR may come undone because its bureaucrats couldn't account for everything well enough to coherently operate an economically coherent centralized state?
Curtis tries to form the same question for Thatchers' & Blair's UK when observing how the British Empire fell apart.
The intro to his film Hypernormalization sets forth the essential observation leading to such questions:
//"How we got to this strange time of great uncertainty and confusion where those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed and have no idea what to do".//
If this observation is true-- which question is begged through the survey of news-- then should it be expected that more centralized societies, however well controlled, might be more vulnerable to limits of understanding of their leadership, and by corollary as no society's leadership has a complete understanding of itself, churn and crisis are inevitable.
All of Curtis' docs deal with variations on the question of the limits of rationalism. His work now amounts large trove on the topic (see filmography):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis
A excellent aspect of Curtis' work is that he is careful to always veer away from simple proscriptive judgements. He does not pursue belief that there's any specific way that societies are supposed to work, but rather continuously questions how and why they work as they do, embracing the possibility that minds can change and adapt in the face of uncertainty and crisis.
—
PICKS
For this thread, the obvious place to start is:
1 Hypernormalisation.
After this consider the following, in order:
2 All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
3 Oceans Apart
4 Can't Get You Out of My Head
5 Century of the Self
6 Bitter Lake
and then on in any order that suits your interests.
As these docs produce an effect much like good music as well as offering high-quality narrative insights, they can be revisited and appreciated in changing ways with experience.
Advertising is so integrated into the American way of life, I don't know if that will ever happen. The powers-that-be won't give up their toys. This one guy single-handedly did more by running ads than anyone else until probably Google, then Facebook.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
> His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954. Critics argue that his involvement in Guatemala facilitated US imperialism and contributed to decades of civil unrest and repression, raising ethical concerns about his role in undermining democratic governance.
> He worked for dozens of major American corporations, including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and nonprofit organizations. His uncle was psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
> The Century of the Self is a 2002 British television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, and PR consultant Edward Bernays. In episode one, Curtis says, "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04&list=PLktPdpPFKHfoXRfTPOwyR8SG8EHLWOSj6
Yes! The century of the self documentary I mentioned is all about Bernays.
> check out the documentary “Century of the Self”.
The editing is not for everyone but I thoroughly enjoyed it. You come out of it not really knowing what it did to you, but something changed.
This is a fantastic recommendation, and Adam Curtis' documentaries are all on YouTube somehow.
I can’t stop thinking about this article. I spent a long time in ad tech before switching to broader systems engineering. The author captures something I've struggled to articulate to friends and family about why I left the industry.
The part that really struck me was framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same mechanism - just with different masters. Having built targeting systems myself, this rings painfully true. The mechanical difference between getting someone to buy sneakers versus vote for a candidate is surprisingly small.
What's frustrating is how the tech community keeps treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease. We debate content moderation policies and algorithmic transparency, but rarely question the underlying attention marketplace that makes manipulation profitable in the first place.
The uncomfortable truth: most of us in tech understand that today's advertising systems are fundamentally parasitic. We've built something that converts human attention into money with increasingly terrifying efficiency, but we're all trapped in a prisoner's dilemma where nobody can unilaterally disarm.
Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce would still happen. Information would still flow. We'd just be freed from the increasingly sophisticated machinery designed to override our decision-making.
Is this proposal radical? Absolutely. But sometimes the Overton window needs a sledgehammer.
P.S. If you are curious about the relationship between Sigmund Freud, propaganda, and the origins of the ad industry, check out the documentary “Century of the Self”.
On this subject I highly recommend the documentary "the Century of the Self" (produced by Adam Curtis for the BBC). It explores how Sigmund Freud's theories about the unconscious mind were used by his nephew Edward Bernays to create modern public relations and consumer culture. The documentary shows how corporations and governments learned to manipulate mass desires using psychological techniques, transforming democracy from meeting people's needs to managing their wants through consumption and marketing.
The entire doc is on Youtube: https://youtu.be/GFwDc17WZ-A
This was essentially brought to us by neoliberalism. It's covered well in the documentary series 'The Century of The Self' (freely available on YouTube).
There are many different definitions of 'left' and 'right'. One perspective that can be useful is to think in terms of 'collective' and 'individualistic'. On this axis, neoliberalism is firmly to the right (not in the centre as is often portrayed). Communities are collective by definition and neoliberalism is inherently anti-community.
When I was younger I was always confused by the incessant political drive to 'privatise' everything despite the obvious bad outcomes. On the whole, the cost of services didn't go down, they didn't improve, and they didn't become more efficient. The opposite would happen, despite the promises to the contrary.
My eureka moment was when I realised that it really was simply about ideology. The essential aim was not to improve anything. It was to ensure all activity was turned into a 'market transaction' so as to provide those with capital more opportunities to invest. From that point of view, the push for privatisation makes perfect sense.
We have been fooled into selling our communities for profit (as if that's the only way to improve our lot).
The Century of the Self documentary by Adam Curtis does an incredible job of covering that and is well-worth the watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
I think you might be interested in Adam Curtis' "century of the self" if long documentaries are your thing.
More interesting is the Adam Curtis documentary about Bernays, The Century of the Self.
If you haven’t watched the series “Century of the Self” (BBC) yet, please check it out. You can usually find it on YouTube. The documentary tells a story of Bernays’ and his uncle Sigmund’s impact on the 20th century.
There's even an old BBC documentary on this called Century of the Self [1] created by Adam Curtis that covers how businesses and governments were taught to make people desire things they don't need.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s [video][4 hours][996 MB]
One key piece of this that I think it overlooked is how our socio-economy has sold most of us on our difference, we've been very actively individuating and seeking signs of distinction that happen to be items and services we can buy.
Adam Curtis made a great documentary that explores this: Century of the Self https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
All that may make it harder to just "bond with the neighbors", as some in these comments suggest.
First, I just don't get how after knowing about freud and his views anyone can trust freudian therapy. Second, I also don't get how people trust strangers with intimate details of their thought life.
I suppose if being happy and functional is your goal, it makes sense to do whatever you can to improve your chances. Personally, I prefer to experience reality and find truth even if it isn't happy or beneficial. I never hear them give advice that makes people unhappy or ask people to sacrifice for others. Furthermore, fundamental views and values I hold are likely very different from any therapist, so they can't qualify to advice me (and many others). Based on what I know about human nature, it's pretty damn scary how much people trust therapists.
Check out century of the self, a documentary I found on HN actually that documens how freudian psychology and modern marketing and capitalism aligned and worked together in the 20th century to create the world we are in today:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
I do recommend documentary Ceuntury of Self (2001) about this topic. Apparently more consumer citizens are less confrontational. Idea comes from S. Freud and was implemented by propaganda, later renamed to public relations, of individualism by Edward Bernays in US in 30's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
I love this article, but I’d like to add that it is in fact possible to reach the “keep” as the author has called it through emotion.
Emotion is very important to memory and steering thoughts as many studies have shown. [0]
For example: Advertisers, sales people, politicians, coaches, military leaders, charismatic leaders, etc. all use emotion to change minds, create memories and influence behavior.
For an interesting look at the power of this approach, see the documentary “Century of the Self” by the BBC. It’s very interesting and perhaps even eye opening.
Watch everything by Adam Curtis. Century of the Self, The Trap and The Power of Nightmares specifically.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0193231/
I wholly distrust anything freudian. Every major claim he made I keep finding serious flaws in it.
Freud did not popularize the unconscious or thinking about how you think. Basic children's sunday school at a Church even talks about how you think. Major religions from Christianity to Buddhism talk about how the thought life of a person affects everything and the split and conflicted nature of humans. They just don't use post-freudian terms like conscious and unconscious.
What freud popularized was a secular way of coping with how humans think, analyzing it in a purely secular context and considering thousands of years of knowledge on the subject as childish fairytales and defining a framework by which a modern secular world can explain the actions of people and respond to them.
Socially, I have seen horrific impacts of his work from criminal punishment to people attempting to understand and help people who have chosen to be evil (worst examples being child rapists, school shooters,etc... not sick, evil! But evil has no place in a freudian context).
This documentary shared on HN a while back was eye opening for me, how almost every aspect of modern capitalist life was influenced by freud:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s&feature=youtu.be (Century of the self). Worth watching the whole thing.
I don't discount psychoanalysis as quackery but I am very hostile to it. I would need to filter any attempts of psychoanalytical thinking with a ton if critical analysis, taking it with buckets of salt!
What you're referring to is society's attempt to re-build itself based on rationality and individualism as a replacement to political and religious institutions. A canonical response to your point would be that we're seeking to build a society where the rational action would be for the head of NASA further the aims of NASA. This follows from an ideology set out by Ayn Rand. There are a collection of documentaries by Adam Curtis covering the arc of this philosophy: "All watched over by machines of loving grace." is probably the main one here, but "Century of the Self", and "Can't get you out of my head" are also very good.
Naturally, the problem with society's attempt to do this is that rationality is not sufficient for the head of NASA to not go against her duty as NASA's head. A utopia of radical individuals free from any ideology or institution hasn't (yet?) been realized. It's probably not a good idea, but it's the central dogma of silicon valley, the blockchain movement, the AGI movement (especially the sentience-heavy ones), much of the modern scientific community, and (as it happens) hacker news. So here we are.
Also, your logic holds that swearing on a Bible is — in the limit — more likely to lead to moral behavior than swearing on Carl Sagan's work. Nobody believes that Carl will punish wrongdoers (he might even reward them for being rational, or face questions on why he's pushing morality on others). However, people do believe that God punishes. So regardless of whether a deity exists, swearing on religious texts is more likely to alter behavior than on Sagan's.
What you got out of it was an unfair characterization of something that only serves to advance your argument.
> It seems like both op and you are saying the truth is not important because it could lead to "excessively racialized and polarized reactions".
The truth... you act like there's a wholesale ban on truth. I think you are again mischaracterizing what is actually the media trying to not whip people up into a frenzy. People get whipped up into frenzies, you should probably check out some history. Maybe something on WWII. I'd recommend, Century of The Self, a great documentary that shows what kind of frenzies people get whipped up into when you have politicians using demagoguery to advance their agendas. You don't see how the entire past 3 years isn't completely different if every news paper is running with the headline "CHINESE VIRUS LEAK"? You are going to pretend, the same populace which was incapable of handling any actual discourse on the pandemic response, vaccination, etc, is going to just have a rational response? Regardless of where the virus came from, of which there is plenty literature available for the curious and literate, your perspective here seems childish at best.
>Which is exactly what I said op was saying in the first place and you and he reacted like I physically attacked you. From my perspective you are being needlessly obtuse not understanding what I am saying. The thought of not telling the truth and willingly advocate for the government to just ignore or not share the root cause of a pandemic that killed millions is anathema to me. I literally cannot wrap my head around it. How can you take the position that it's best not to know because some rogue elements could take it badly?
This is childishly naive. It's not rogue elements. The US president at the time was an actual demagogue.
See also the BBC documentary series, "Century of the Self".
The article starts out by basically admitting that there is some informational role that is needed: "In the early 20th century, advertisements served a clear purpose: they informed customers about the useful qualities of a product and how that product solved a specific problem or need."
And then came Freud and Bernays. The article doesn't get into it but I thought it interesting that Freud's theories found more fertile ground in the USA than Europe, in retrospect easy to see because the theory of the subconscious was so marketable.
I agree that some sort of advertising ban would be nice, but unlike the article, I don't think it will be an argument that advertising is necessary, but rather a free speech argument that advertising can't be distinguished from opinionated speech. And: "A quick and easy internet search can provide us with all the information we might require about a particular product." Really now?
We're already entering a third phase, where advertising is moving beyond explicitly labeled published ads, into infiltration of social networks and 'hidden advertising' in the form of faked product reviews, fake word of mouth, etc. It's easy to look back on what went wrong with advertising in the 20th c., but I'd rather figure out what to do about what seems to be coming in the 21st.
I strongly recommend The Century of the Self, an incredible documentary about the rise of advertising. It has its flaws, but it gives a really powerful lens for understanding how we got here.
I reviewed it briefly here: https://superbowl.substack.com/p/links-for-september
You might find some of Adam Curtis's films help you feel less baffled. Not that they have 'answers' but good contextual analysis that will give better understanding. Century of the Self, and Can't Get You Out of My Head are the most relevant here. Power of Nightmares, Bitter Lake and Hypernormalization are great too.
Here is a list of 20 documentaries I have come to love and return to when I come across them. There is no specific order to them. Enjoy! The * next to the number indicates the last 4 years. If you have seen one listed that you'd like to share what you think about please leave a comment with this structure [# in the list ] Comment... . i.e. [1] Loved learning about Noyce. What a guy.
1. Silicon Valley: Where the Future | PBS: American Experience [1:23:19] [2013] History of the how Silicon Valley came to be. William Shockley. Robert Noyce. Fairchild Semiconductor, The Traitorous Eight. Homepage: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/ Kanopy: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/122744 Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/silicon-valley
2. Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware | Wired UK: Future Cities [1:07:50] [2016] the evolution of “Shanzhai” – or copycat manufacturing – has transformed traditional models of business, distribution and innovation, and asks what the rest of the world can learn from this so-called “Silicon Valley of hardware". Youtube: https://youtu.be/SGJ5cZnoodY
*2.1. The People's Republic of The Future | Bloomberg: Hello World [30:10] [2019] Shenzhen, tech-fueled entrepreneurs try to navigate an authoritarian regime. Youtube: https://youtu.be/taZJblMAuko
3. The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard | TPB AFK [1:22:07] [2013] The history of the Pirate Bay. Torrenting. Legal. Privacy. Homepage: https://tpbafk.tv Youtube: https://youtu.be/eTOKXCEwo_8 Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-pirate-bay-away-from-keyboard
4. Can’t Get You Out of My Head | BBC [6 Part] [2021] Adam Curtis takes you on "An Emotional history of how we got to this place." Economics. History. Power. Psychology. World. China. Russia. UK. USA. Part 1: Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain [1:14:15] Part 2: Shooting and F*king are the Same Thing [1:14:01] Part 3: Money Changes Everything [1:10:36] Part 4: But What If the People Are Stupid? [1:13:29] Part 5: The Lordly Ones [1:05:43] Part 6: Are We Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer? [1:59:50] Homepage: https://www.bbc.com/bbcfilm/films/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/ BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p093wp6h/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head Thought Maybe: https://thoughtmaybe.com/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/
5. Three Identical Strangers | NEON [1:37:00] [2018] Its in the name, but The less you know about this story the better. Homepage: https://www.threeidenticalstrangers.com Kanopy: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/11374410 Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/three-identical-strangers
6. The Pharmacist | Netflix [4 Part] [2020] A small-town pharmacist investigates the death of his son in a drug deal, but his investigation skills only expands when OxyContin becomes available. Part 1: Justice for Danny [1:00:38] Part 2: A Mission from God [58:47] Part 3: Dope Dealers with White Lab Coats [47:30] Part 4: Tunnel of Hope [48:31] Homepage: https://thecinemart.com/the-pharmacist.html Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81002576 Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/the-pharmacist
7. AlphaGo | Netflix [1:30:27] [2017] Deepmind, Alphabets's AI company, creates an AI to play the game Go and faces off to beat the best, Lee Sedol. Homepage: https://www.alphagomovie.com Youtube: https://youtu.be/WXuK6gekU1Y Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/alphago
8. Page One: Inside the New York Times | Magnolia Pictures [1:31:38] [2011] As print media begins to be challenged by the internet, you get an inside look into NY Times. Homepage: http://www.magpictures.com/pageone/ Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/page-one-inside-the-new-york-times
9. The Secret of Tuxedo Park | PBS: American Experience [53:00] [2018] Alfred Lee Loomis isn't just a Wall Street tycoon, but a scientist with a checkbook to pay for it. Opening his home to the best, he follows his interest and a call from the government about WWII. Homepage: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/secret-tuxedo-park/
10. The Century of the Self | BBC [4 Part] [2002] Adam Curtis investigates how Freudian theory influenced twentieth century society. Part 1: Happiness Machines [58:32] Part 2: The Engineering of Consent [58:40] Part 3: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed [58:39] Part 4: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering [59:32] Homepage: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00ghx6g BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p00ghx6g/the-century-of-the-self Thought Maybe: https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self/
11. How Ants Can Make The Internet a Safer Place | Tom Mishra [00:04:08] [2015] Five researchers, scientists and mathematicians studied the behavior of Ants and Game Theory to create a safer Internet. Video: https://vimeo.com/147548221
12. Chasing Einstein | Ignite [1:22:00] [2019] Follows leading scientists around the world, from the largest particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland to the LIGO gravitational wave detector in the US to find out whether Einstein's theory of gravity can stand the test of time. Homepage: https://chasingeinsteinfilm.com Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/chasing-einstein
13. Language of Love (Ur kärlekens språk) | [1:43:00] [1969] * Rated X, and in Swedish A panel of real-life doctors discuss sexual hangups, misconceptions, personal prejudices and the ignorance of individuals when it comes to matters sexual. Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/language-of-love
14. Citizenfour | TWC [1:54:00] [2014] A documentarian and a reporter travel to Hong Kong to meet Edward Snowden where they release classified information. Homepage: https://citizenfourfilm.com Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/citizen-four
15. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail | PBS: Frontline [1:30:00] [2016] The Chinese immigrant Sung family, owners of Abacus Federal Savings of Chinatown, New York is targeted by the DA in the mess after the 2008 financial crisis. Homepage: https://www.abacusmovie.com Kanopy: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/2141966 Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/abacus-small-enough-to-jail
16. Zero Days | Magnolia Pictures [1:56:00] [2016] Stuxnet, a self-replicating computer virus discovered in 2010 by international IT experts points to be created by the NSA and used by Unit 8200, Israel, on Iran nuclear enrichment facility. Homepage: http://www.zerodaysfilm.com Kanopy: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/10846994 Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/zero-days
17. Tell Me Who I Am | Netflix [1:25:32] [2019] The less you know about this story the better. Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80214706 Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/tell-me-who-i-am
18. McMillions | HBO [6 Part] [2020] A detailed account of the McDonald's Monopoly game scam during the 1990s. Part 1: Episode 1 [55:50] Part 2: Episode 2 [53:57] Part 3: Episode 3 [56:54] Part 4: Episode 4 [57:08] Part 5: Episode 5 [56:41] Part 6: Episode 6 [56:59] HBO: https://www.hbo.com/mc-millions Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/mcmillion
19. Jesus Camp | Magnolia Pictures [1:24:00] [2006] Children at a christian summer camp as they hone their "prophetic gifts" and are schooled in how to "take back America for christ." The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again christian children to become an active part of America's political future. Kanopy: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/10803148 Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/jesus-camp
*20. The Edge of All We Know | Netflix [1:39:00] [2020] Follow the quest to understand the most mysterious objects in the universe, black holes. Homepage: https://www.blackholefilm.com Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81343342 Where to Watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/black-holes-the-edge-of-all-we-know
“The Century of the Self” by Adam Curtis.
https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s
It goes through each decade of the 1900s and explains how Freud’s psychology and the new field of marketing completely reshaped society. For the first time in my life I feel like I understood the “why” of how things work in American society. This film is probably best if you’re age 40+ and actually remember some of the events.
The Century of the Self is a great introduction to this. Modern advertising literally uses techniques originally developed for wartime (WWII) propaganda. Commercial advertising is literally brainwashing applied for economic purposes rather than political (though often both, too).
p.s. if you like the Century of the Self, watch Hypernormalization as well. Amazing documentaries.
I think I first heard about this form Adam Curtis’s 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s&feature=youtu.b
> Another way to consider this is that people find it easier to divert themselves than to exert themselves only to be dissappointed.
This is an exceptionally succinct description of the problem, thank you. A societal shift from exertion to diversion. Creation to consumption. Scary stuff.
> the illusions of Bernaysian manipulation [2] certainly can
What do you mean here, in reference to Bernays? For context, I’m familiar with his work and legacy — the documentary ‘The Century of the Self’[1] is still perhaps the most important piece of media I’ve ever consumed.
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
Yeah 100%. This article reads like the reddit.com/r/im14andthisisdeep/ version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy
> Traditional advertising could never get your attention.
Are you serious?
> Before social media advertising would have to hitch a ride with some content produced for something else.
This is exactly what social media advertising does.
>Billboards, newspapers, television shows, and magazines all tried to provide a use value to their customers and audiences
What does that even mean?
Advertising was effectively getting attention and subverting behavior long before the internet. Watch the Century of the Self for some prime examples.
> This “reality” had seemed so crudely constructed that it was impossible to imagine anyone in charge (especially those who created it) to believe it seriously. As it turns out, however, somebody does believe it. His name is Vladimir Putin.
I may be incorrect but I feel that’s what Adam Curtis is trying to describe with his documentaries. I’m thinking of “HyperNormalization”, “Century of the self”, and “Can’t get you out of my head”. For the past few month as I tried to follow Russia-Ukraine developments I found myself thinking about Curtis work a lot.
This is taken almost verbatim from Century of the Self.
The full documentary is free on YouTube and worth the time.
The Century of the Self was a great 4 part British documentary about this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
I changed the URL from https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4612464, which is mostly a radio episode, to a readable article with background. Other suggestions are welcome.
There's also this about Bernays: https://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393
and this: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3128
and Adam Curtis's famous documentary about this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
obligatory ref to "Century of the Self" four-part documentary
The "Century of the Self" documentary series about Bernays and the rise of propaganda/marketing is really great. Recommend it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.
Take the classical big American cars vs. small European cars, I think it's pretty much a fact that the love of big cars was manufactured by the auto industry in the 1950-60s and is likely supported to this day by, again, some marketing money.
There's an interesting documentary about these things by Adam Curtis called "The Century of the Self", and esp. part I "Happiness Machines".
I remember the documentary 'The Century of the Self' where Adam Curtis talked about the origins of personal development and self-help.
To this day Adam Curtis' "The Century of the Self" is my favorite documentary of all time
I used to be quite an Adam Curtis fan until I realized his work is basically the narrative fallacy gone wild.
I still recommend Century Of The Self as a great piece of documentary filmmaking.
Century of the Self is my favorite documentary of all time. Great callout.
I suggest contrasting Century Of The Self (the documentary) with Propaganda (Edward Bernays' book). Century makes him out to be somewhat of a villain whereas after reading Propaganda I got more of a sense that Bernays was tapping into something powerful and hadn't thought of all the shitty second-order and third-order effects of his methods. Still shady no doubt but less of a villain IMO. It also helps to "empty the cup" and remember that they lived through this stuff in realtime whereas we bring all of the baggage of subsequent history. For example in Century they talk about how Bernays associated cigarettes with female empowerment. For me I bring all these judgments of how terrible that was precisely because I know how terrible cigarettes are for health. But they had much less of an idea that "cigarettes = bad" back then. Of course the general technique of associating identity with consumer products is still problematic and that's probably the core idea that Century wanted to get across.
The concept predates black mirror by decades. ELIZA was an "AI" used for therapy in the 60s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
Learned about it in the documentary Century of the Self, an outstanding work.
The Century of The Self [1] Apologies, it is in black and white and 4 hours long, but at least the first hour is very much worth watching. The documentary helps understand the psychology behind corporate and government influence and control.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
Thanks for the reminder, I've read about Bernays before (maybe in the Century of the Self documentary?) and forgot that I've been meaning to study him more. I think behavioral modifiers is a great example. That's the exact kind of thing I was hoping for; something that reveals vulnerabilities we have but feel like we shouldn't.
I also love the adversarial inputs and McCollough effect. Another example of what I mean: it shows how we're fundamentally just machines that have exploits like any other, and in a very dangerous way.
Thanks for sharing; I find stories and topics that try to elevate and glorify mankind tired and repetitive. In contrast I find things that reveal the dark sides and weaknesses of humankind endlessly fascinating. Unfortunately those topics don't seem to be as popular to create content about.
Nearly all his documentaries appear to be available to watch here https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/
They are truly excellent. It's really worth going back to some of the early and mid career films. E.g. The Mayfair Set and the ever relevant The Century of the Self.
Adam Curtis's century of the self is a good (but long) documentary on the advances in psychology and it's merger with advertising/politics. Worth a watch IMO.
I would not be surprised if that were a thing. One real world example I know of was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays. Edward received all of his uncle's writings, studied them and had some serious take-away's that led him to becoming a consultant for the U.S. Government and many private companies. He influenced the minds of millions of people and even after passing, his work is still influencing billions of people today. There is a great documentary that covers this called The Century of the Self. [1] Apologies, it is in black-and-white, but it is very much worth the watch in your spare time. This isn't about ESP or hoaxes, but rather controlling the masses during peace time through psychological means.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
>but just try to explain in plain English what you learned afterwards.
Okay I'll give it a go for the films of his I've seen.
Century of the Self - Cohesive social structures in the West that once helped produce progressive movements have been hollowed out and decayed due to post-WW2 consumerism and an endless emphasis on the "individual" over the community to the benefit of financial elites. Curtis frames this development by following the rise of psychoanalysis and personalized advertising.
Hypernormalization - Media and governmental forces have become so intertwined with the rise of social media and big tech that there is a crisis of faith in Western democratic societies in which suspicion and cynicism have filled the gap. This leads to sham democracies and consolidation of power by technocrats who play people's fears and anxieties against one another, much like Vladislav Surkov did in Russia in the late 2000s to help secure Putin's position.
I think his work is a great jumping off point. After watching Century of the Self, I started reading pretty heavily into Walter Lippman, Edward Bernays, and the general development of neoliberal thought. Most all of what I read backed up his thesis with much more concrete details.
I think it would be great if he released a reading list alongside each of his documentaries - let the films serve as a compelling aesthetic work and the reading as essentially a citation. Alternatively, maybe I should try to compile some for each of his films.
Propaganda never stops when a war does. If you would like a great documentary on this, look for Century of the Self [1]. It explains how Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, taught governments and companies how to control people in peace time. Apologies in advance, it is a black-and-white film.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
Century of the Self is worth watching but is not perfect. The last segment loses clarity and becomes mired in UK politics.
With that proviso, I recommend the first two segments for anyone who strives not to be a modern idiot.
Nice read. The easily-youtubeable documentary (4x 1hr eps) Century of the Self also goes into the psychology of how America (and by extension 'Western' culture) became obsessed with materialism.
Though I was a smoker myself I’m greatful we mostly made away with this habit and banned any indoor smoking, it stank soo soo bad, it’s surprising smoking caught up in the first place. Learned from Adam Curtis documentary Century of the Self how Edward Bernays started the whole thing up. It’s a great documentary btw
The documentary Century of Self (re: Sigmund Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays) gets into this type of thing, and many, many others.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
Full:
https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s
10 minute trailer/summary:
https://youtu.be/D_0g1RUQMVQ
If someone wants to check out the above political aspect, fast forward to the 3 hour mark or so.
Fair warning, this would be typically filed under conspiracy theories / propaganda by most people, but even so, it is by far one of the most compelling ones I've seen. It very much advocates for the common man, and I believe makes a decent case. It certainly has had a major effect on the way I view how the world works, but YMMV.
The first sentence is also the thesis of Adam Curtis' documentary The Century of the Self.
This goes way back than Facebook and YouTube though, I recommend watching Adam Curtis' "The Century of the Self" [0] if you haven't yet and are interested in how we ended up with modern consumerism.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
the documentary about this https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/
There’s a Mad Men episode where someone asks Don Draper if “all this stuff actually works” and Draper says, “who knows?” (paraphrasing).
Like many, I learned of Bernays through Adam Curtis’ documentary, “The Century of the Self.” But many years later, I wonder — where’s the evidence that Bernays ideas were actually effective? I love Curtis films, and I think there’s a lot of great ideas in them — but it’s also easy to be hypnotized by them and forget to be critical.
Anyway, would be interested if anyone’s found any research that makes a compelling case that Bernays’ ideas actually work, and that he wasn’t just a really good salesman for his own services.
"The Century Of The Self" by Adam Curtis is a great documentary series on Bernays and the PR industry he invented. Gets scary towards the end when you realize that mainstream political discourse is now managed using the same PR methods that took over the business world a generation before.
This documentary is on that exact topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
---------------------------------------------
The Century of the Self is a 2002 British television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, and PR consultant Edward Bernays.[1] In episode one, Curtis says, "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy."
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed our perception of the mind and its workings. The documentary explores the various ways that governments and corporations have used Freud's theories. Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations, are discussed in part one. His daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in part two. Wilhelm Reich, an opponent of Freud's theories, is discussed in part three.
Along these lines, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of consumerism and commodification and their implications. It also questions the modern way people see themselves, the attitudes to fashion, and superficiality.
The business and political worlds use psychological techniques to read, create and fulfill the desires of the public, and to make their products and speeches as pleasing as possible to consumers and voters. Curtis questions the intentions and origins of this relatively new approach to engaging the public.
Where once the political process was about engaging people's rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a group, Stuart Ewen, a historian of public relations, argues that politicians now appeal to primitive impulses that have little bearing on issues outside the narrow self-interests of a consumer society.
The words of Paul Mazur, a leading Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers in 1927, are cited: "We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man's desires must overshadow his needs."[7]
In part four the main subjects are Philip Gould, a political strategist, and Matthew Freud, a PR consultant and the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud. In the 1990s, they were instrumental to bringing the Democratic Party in the US and New Labour in the United Kingdom back into power through use of the focus group, originally invented by psychoanalysts employed by US corporations to allow consumers to express their feelings and needs, just as patients do in psychotherapy.
Curtis ends by saying that, "Although we feel we are free, in reality, we—like the politicians—have become the slaves of our own desires," and compares Britain and America to 'Democracity', an exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair created by Edward Bernays.
---------------------------------------------
It "seems" like an outlandish thought, but if the claims Curtis makes in this documentary are even partially truthful, might it be that this psychological manipulation of the public is actually still going on, and might it then also explain some of the inexplicable human behavior we see all around us?
I mean...how the hell would a person even guess at what the long term (decades) effects might be of simultaneous, multi-vector psychological manipulation of people at massive scale? Just look through history at the atrocities that people have been persuaded to commit, motivated by a fundamental belief system that is inconsistent with actual reality? We know these things have happened in the past, is there a logical reason why something similar cannot be happening now? There is no shortage of people (some even here) who believe with absolute sincerity that a significant percentage of Trump supporters are hold beliefs extremely consistent with literal Nazis. Ok, fair enough. But if significant numbers of people can and do believe such obviously outlandish things as this, does it seem all that outlandish that something is causing large numbers of people to believe other things that are literally not true?
In a sense, the specific belief is largely irrelevant - to me, the fundamental question seems like something along that lines of:
> Is it technically possible (or at least plausible) to modify the beliefs of the general public via psychological means, using various communication vectors (distorted / ambiguous/ misleading news broadcasting, TV, talk shows, statistics, internet, radio, podcasts, forum "trolls" (not sure the word) or state of the art bots in internet forums, etc) - and if so, is this happening today, and if so, to what degree.
All things considered, this is one of the more logical explanations I can come up with. "People are just idiots" stopped being believable to me over a year ago. The magnitude of obvious mass delusion (in the literal sense of the word) is just too large. If "people are idiots" is the explanation, one then has to explain why so many people have simultaneously become so increasingly idiotic, and we're right back where we started.
But then, as depressing as that sounds, if this theory actually holds some legitimate truth, therein also lies the solution (partial, at least) to what currently ails society in this regard.
I find it interesting too and really don't understand it.
I really feel like they learned everything from Bob and the family. He sold junk mail and was able to pay for their great lifestyle. So the kids learned that they can sell junk, but were able to take that to the next level with strong marketing and design.
GOOP is junk with great marketing and design. WeWork is similar, they market it as something that its not.
The marketing idea made me think of the documentary: The Century of the self (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s)
I agree that not all ads are "abuse", but some either are or are borderlining it, depending on your definition.
If you're genuinely interested in the advertising industry's development the last 100 years or have a few hours to spare, check out the 4-part documentary "The Century of the Self" by the BBC made in the early-2000s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
a very good bbc documentary based on Bernays work is "The Century of the Self":
The Century of the Self - Part 1: "Happiness Machines" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
TL;DR: The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. 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. Bernays 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 eroticising the motorcar. His 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.
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The Century of the Self - Part 2: "The Engineering of Consent" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEsPOt8MG7E
TL;DR: This episode explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind 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. The US government, big business, and the CIA used their ideas 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.
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The Century of the Self - Part 3: "There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads; He Must Be Destroyed." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2LB2MaGoM
TL;DR: In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of, 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 that had been implanted in people's minds by business and politics. This programme shows how this rapidly developed in America through self-help movements like Werber Erhard's Erhard Seminar Training - 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.
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The Century of the Self - Part 4: "Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VouaAz5mQAs
TL;DR: This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the inner desires of the self. Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people's inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products. Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s. The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn't realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them.
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edit: copy/pasta from youtube description
The whole industry of advertising as we understand it today was created by those who had done propaganda during the first and second world war, and realised they could apply their skills in the field of business.
To learn the history of propaganda, advertising and how it is embedded deeply in our current political machine, watch The Century of the Self, a 2002 documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
I also recommend Adam Curtis’s four part documentary “The Century of the Self”, the first episode of which is here: https://youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04
The first episode deals exclusively with Bernays, and the following three episodes follow a political narrative of impact.
I believe Curtis’s “Hypernormalisation” would be more salient to the narrative here, which discusses the funding of misinformation as an alternative to traditional authoritarian power structures like censorship: https://youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU
This is pretty brilliant. I hadn't accounted for this, despite doing a lot of thinking in this area, but this sort of issue, where the business focuses upon forming itself around the mentality of the employee rather than the other way around, makes total sense. As we move away from repetitive physical labor to mental work (I prefer that to the term 'knowledge work' because very often the work has very little to do with actual knowledge which can be explicitly codified but instead relies upon workers mental faculties), it's obvious that we will need to change a lot of the structures and practices of business. Many of the things that businesses have focused on are derived from things that were very important in factory work. The ability to reduce your work to a checklist of verifiable, quantifiable, and (very importantly) transferrable tasks, the ability to 'sell' (not always actual sales, but extroversion, self-promotion, etc), and things like that are all very possible and beneficial when a business consists of a factory floor, a front office, a sales force, and a back room with accountants and the like. When the factory floor disappears and instead the business is tackling intellectual challenges that require different strategies for every one, problems that are poorly defined, etc... the difference is so substantial that any adequate changes will have to be similarly substantial.
It's a big change. It impacts far more than the company office. It affects what society views as valuable. It changes what society sees as success. It basically shoots off in an orthogonal direction from everything society has been structured around for the entire 20th century. I am reminded of things like the recent book 'Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking' and the documentary 'The Century of the Self.' It really is a sea change and social changes of that magnitude are messy, slow, and usually come with a good amount of strife. Substantial changes like these being tried by this company are stressful and induce anxiety most especially in anyone who has invested in or succeeded in the older model, so the psychological hurdles are high. But, substantial changes are necessary and since this is a novel situation, our best chance of finding the successful solutions are trying and evaluating substantial changes.
You might find the BBC documentary “The Century of the Self” interesting. It’s a four part series and the first episode is a little slow but I found it really interesting to see how quickly businesses and politicians learned to influence the masses.
If you're into documentaries, "The Century of the Self" covers this subject excellently: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=century+of+self
The same Edward Bernays also did a PR stunt to market cigarettes to women, calling them "torches of freedom", associating women's smoking (which was considered taboo at the time) with feminism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom
It is covered in the Adam Curtis documentary, 'The Century of the Self'.
its not exactly what you are asking, but I think anyone who is asking a question like that, should watch this Adam Curtis documentary all the way through ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
If you havent already, watch the two following Documentaries:
"Century of Self"
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/
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"Human Resources"
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/human-resources/
---
The view is being overhauled, slowly. I scantly believed myself the school presentation I did on Menwith Hill in 1999. My classmates' blank stares were removed by degrees from any understanding of the subject. Today children in school here are being taught to be suspicious of what they read on the internet, and not bully each other through the medium, yet said institution is not willing to relinquish their illusion of authority and demand that the kids think for themselves even though what remains is such a small step.
The TV series Max Headroom explored the subject over 30 years ago in quite some detail. It too was way ahead of its time. It's idea of TV viewership democracy is almost benign, compared to the reality of manufactured public opinion that we are waking up to.
Another easily accessible but rage-teasing production is a three-part documentary called The Century of The Self. I recommend it warmly.
I highly recommend the documentary, Century of the Self, which details how Bernays' theories about advertising were put to use by Nazis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
An alternative theory, and I think much larger reason for the destruction of the family unit is that individualism was heavily marketed by mainstream media through the 20th century. People shifted their wants and desires in marriage from one of creating a family unit to that of finding personal enlightenment.
The excellent documentary The Century of the Self covers the evolution of marketing, the baby boomers and the psychology behind individualism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
Advertisement is literally as old as civilization.
Modern advertising is as old as Edward Bernays and the 1920s - https://intercontinentalcry.org/the-century-of-the-self-happiness-machines/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 [The Century of the Self - Part 1: "Happiness Machines" documentary]
Sure, the best place to start is The Century of The Self:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
It’s a great look at the rise of marketing, individualism and hedonism in the 20th century.
Democracy In America is another great source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America
It’s an extremely prescient, outsider’s look at the tyranny of the masses.
I would also suggest studying the context of the 20th century, especially the lead up with the industrial revolution and both world wars. It’s often lost on people that Western life as defined by American sitcoms was an anomaly powered in large part by the rest of the first world being nearly obliterated. This leads ultimately into global recovery and globalism which I see as a normalization of life after WWI and WWII.
Post-modernism is good to learn about as well. I feel like a lot of people mistake modernism and post-modernism. Post-modernism can actually include a lot of things modernism rejects, such as traditional family structures. It just does it piecemeal framed in a totally different (non-religious) context.
Our entire idea of "agency", "individuality" and even "freedom" needs to be re-thinked. Basically all of what we have built resides in one way or another on the idea that individuals bar exceptions such as with physical drugs have some sort of inalienable agency to them. That entire rockbed is simply not really true, and more like highly idealized thoughts from thinkers of the 1800's
Policy makers and politicians have been struggling with these problems for the last +150 years, and increasingly so in the last 30 ever since the creation of political microtargetting and the perfection of advertising, cambridge analytica and digital microtargetting+psychographics is just the cherry on top
Planet Money released an episode touching on all of these subjects "Ep 915 How to meddle in an election"
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/24/726536757/episode-915-how-to-meddle-in-an-election
Also, anybody that hasn't should absolutely watch "Century of the self" by Adam Curtis
There's a great four-part documentary by Adam Curtis about Edward Bernays, his career and the rise of marketing in the 20th century called "The Century Of The Self".
It's available on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
The Frankfurt school tackled the negative societal side effects of mass media and celebrity directly. Unfortunately, their work is rigorous, complex continental philosophy and so is relatively unknown in the states and does not have the popular appeal of a critique packaged as something more accessible like dystopian fiction.
They're worth checking out though if this sort of "pleasure"/entertainment/late capitalist dystopia theme interests you. Marcuses's One Dimensional Man is probably the work that relates most directly to this sort of thing. Horkheimer and Adorno's work also relates, but less directly, and it's less accessible. A sufficient background in the history of philosophy is prerequisite.
The Faint is also a great synth pop-punk band that quite frequently explores these issues in their music. Coincidentally, they just released an album this past Friday aptly titled Egowerk. Their older album Fascination is also great.
Century of the Self is another resource you can check out. It's a documentary by Adam Curtis about Edward Bernays and the radical shifts in advertising that he helped instate.
Last year I had the privilege of watching two really great documentaries:
Connections - James Burke
Century of the Self
It's hard to judge the lasting impact both these docs will have on me, but boy, I can't even remember how I used to think before watching them. Watching Century of the Self and the AMC show Mad Men right after was also a very interesting contrast.
For more on human irrationality in product choice you can try the documentary 'Century of the self' by Adam Curtis. You can find it on youtube.
The richest people I know are definitely also some of the most miserable.
We've been sold a story that careers are a path to fulfillment, self actualization and empowerment. When in reality they are a soul sucking, near pointless burden that enriches investors, founders, execs and few others.
I love what I do for a living and I make a very healthy amount doing it. That being said, I see stay at home parents and think they are the people actually living life to the fullest. It's extremely difficult being a parent but the rewards trump all the accolades and money in the world (imo).
I think the 20th century screwed up our value system via marketing and mass media. People lost sight of where true fulfillment comes from and lost the ability to think in the long term and work hard to get there. Focusing on your career so you can travel internationally and buy mid-century modern furniture for your Brooklyn 1bd is pure hedonism and I think people are starting to wake up to that fact.
It's worth watching the documentary The Century of the Self to see how some of this played out and was orchestrated by the media and marketers. It's very interesting and really shows you how developments in psychology and technology lead to corporations triggering hedonistic instincts to sell more product. It's a great watch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
If you want to understand better than 99% of the population where the world is heading, you could do a lot worse than reading a few of the titles in the Economist's books of the year list.
Even better, read Machiavelli, human nature hasn't changed and it will help you interpret the news.
Also watch the documentary "The Century of The Self"; most news is propaganda, and this will help you spot it.
And, if you must read the news, aim for a bit of diversity (i.e. both media from the right and the left, and events in your country as seen from abroad, and triangulate), otherwise you will easily get brainwashed, censorship in dictatorships tries to block media it can't control for this very reason.
Headlines are clickbait more often than not, don't believe them, and "breaking news" is abused so often that it's become a meaningless tag.
Don't use social media as a news source, it's abysmal, even worse than tabloids.
Interesting thing is that antidepressant use rised despite antidepressant being mostly ineffective and their underlying principle of action being flawed.
This raises the question of why antidepressant use rised this way. Could it be that heavily medicated people are easier to manage and keep under control to prevent them from rebelling against the lives they're forced into by the societal system ? Could it be related to huge profits from pharmaceutical corporations ?
Then again Facebook and the computer as a machine middleman in human interaction is destroying social interaction and society fabric by replacing actual meaningful interaction that builds human ability to be human. Not the single cause but a recent and efficient accelerator of a trend that push us further apart from each other.
I recommend watching the following BBC documentaries by Adam Curtis:
The Century of the Self[1] The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom[2] All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace[3]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(TV_series) [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series)
Having recently discovered Adam Curtis (from other HN posts), I'd highly recommend watching his documentaries. All of them. Absolutely riveting stuff.
HyperNormalization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU
Bitter Lake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRbq63r7rys
The Trap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y97Ywl7RtUw&list=PLsGiHTmHVDNlAc15kb23Q9Oz386MNXYIn
The Power of Nightmares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTg4qnyUGxg&list=PLtPP_-rkrT3CmuUxjezhbewL5C8fcI1Fv
The Mayfair Set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuqYbohCLFM&list=PLtPP_-rkrT3D-9HZkN0BAgMS1F1ODLQES
The Century of the Self: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
I've only seen "The Century Of The Self" and "The Power Of Nightmares". Both were great documentaries, of historic value IMO.
One can find them here [1]. Not only there, they're also available on Archive.org.
Dutch public broadcasting TV (NPO) has broadcasted various of his documentaries in the past, including with subtitles.
[1] https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/
>Research has shown time and again that there are exploits to trick human minds, and you cant really just update your brain to shut those down. You can try to be mindful of them and avoid them, but if they are plastered literally everywhere when you go out into public, that becomes a much harder task
There's a BBC documentary series called "The Century of the Self" about the invention of modern PR/propaganda by an Austrian gentleman named Edward Bernays.[1] He basically perfected the art of propagating fake news. (If you've read "The Fish That Ate The Whale" you'll recognize the name - he's the one who helped the CIA overthrow the Guatemalan government.)
The series is three or four parts and the first episode is a bit heavy on how Freud's pop-psychology was the catalyst that started it all (Bernays is related to him, though I don't recall exactly how) but oh man was my mind blown when I got to the part about "manufacturing consent." It's incredible the master manipulation machine this guy was running in the 1950's. It's even more incredible when you realize that our brains still work the exact same way. We still fall for these tricks time and again but now, thanks to the internet, they're harder to resist and we can fall for them faster and more efficiently.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
> targeting their weaknesses, showing them images that associate the product with happy families, etc.
This part is explored really well in The Century of Self documentary. It describes how Madison Avenue used new psychology concepts and Baby Boomer individualism to invent modern advertising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
I think in every generation there are those who turn their back on it all. This has been going on since at least the 60's with the Hippie movement. Counterculture has been a thing since (psychological[1]) advertising has been a thing.
There will be no point at which society as a whole flips against it - the sad truth is that advertising works, really well, and most people happily sign up to this lifestyle. The war for your headspace is a hell of a lot better than the wars that came before it.
The 'woke' (or whatever term you'd prefer) generation is never coming - but there will be people within every generation that turn their back on advertising and the promises it makes.
1: As in advertising that targets our desire to be happy/powerful etc. rather than merely describing the product. Watch Century of the Self documentary for more information on how this form of advertising came to be.
"the century of the self". It's a 4 part documentary by Adam Curtis about the development of Public Relations and persuasion in advertising.
If you haven't seen Century of the Self[1] I recommend it. It is a documentary about the history, and rise of PR. We are now, perhaps, at the end of the century of the self - as the trustworthiness (and hence value) of broadcast information drops to zero (not that it has yet, but it will). How our current news/media copes, and what replaces it are still unknown.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
Great question!
Patricio Guzman: La batalla de chile, Nostalgia de la luz, El boton de nacar (i.e. everything I've seen so far)
Bob Connolly & Robin Anderson - First Contact, Joe Leahy's Neighbours, Black Harvest (Trilogy about a half-white, half-native New Guinean farmer)
Werner Herzog - (apart from those already mentioned) Lessons of Darkness, Les Blank's Burden of Dreams
Everything by Scott Noble - watch on metanoia-films.org/
Bus 174, Harlan Country USA, How To Start A Revolution, Silenced (2014), War on Whistleblowers, The Century of the Self
Man with a Movie Camera, Man on Wire, Dark Days, Kumaré, Dear Zachary, Children Full of Life (2003)
Well, I'm not trying to make the case that recommendation algorithms are strictly unhelpful. It would be absurd to imply that there aren't many cases where they have provided a benefit to the end user. I just think that in many cases in my experience they have a bad signal to noise ratio to the point where it annoys me, because of the limitations of surreptitious data collection. Also, Youtube and Amazon don't allow you to turn recommendations off, which to me implies that in a choice between user preference and their business interests, it is clear which one is more important to them.
> That's exactly what these algorithms do. They try to find what YOU would find meaningful and fulfilling and they really do try to give it to you. When that means money will be exchanged they prefer one vendor (that has paid them) over another (which hasn't, or paid less), but does that really change anything ?
To me, this question is asking, "Is there a difference between a data collection algorithm whose primary goal is to help me, and a data collection algorithm whose primary goal is to profit off of me?" While there does exist a subset of transactions where the results would be the same, this whole article upon which we are commenting provides ten case studies of unintended harms or instances where the interests of the data collector and the interests of data collectee are not aligned. If you are looking for a more in-depth discussion illustrating some of the potential harms, I found Robert McChesney's Digital Disconnect to be a convincing first look at the problem, and there are some good documentaries on Thoughtmaybe that may be relevant as well, including Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse, Weapons of Mass Surveillance, and Adam Curtis's The Century of the Self.
I was thinking about this with Edward Bernays recently. He is considered the 'father of Public Relations', and comes up in a lot of pseudo-sciency conversations, like Adam Curtis's documentary, "The Century of the Self." *
Bernays comes up a lot in counter-cultural circles, but it's always bugged me that I've never seen any validating evidence that his techniques were actually effective, beyond "he came up with the idea of 'freedom torches' and smoking went up among women."
His techniques sound interesting, and they feel like they'd be effective, but I had trouble finding any solid research that validated the idea that his techniques were effective at anything other than making himself famous.
(* Don't get me wrong – I love Curtis's films, as art. But it bugs me how they usually present a flood of information presented as fact, with little to know citation or corroboration. If they were just art, it wouldn't bug me, but a lot of people seem to swallow the films' conclusions wholesale.)
If you like Hypernormalisation you should definitely look into his other documentaries, especially Century of the Self.
It explores the rise of advertising in the 20th century, revealing how it emerged from propaganda during the wars and deeply wove itself into social norms. It might be the most powerful documentary that I've seen, because I watched it as an advertising undergrad and it unnerved me enough to move away from the field.
For example, it wasn't socially acceptable for women to smoke until the 20's, when the American Tobacco Company paid a group of suffragettes to prominently light up cigarettes whilst on public display during the Easter Day Parade. They positioned smoking as a display of independence for women, piggybacking the feminist movement and calling cigarettes "Torches of Freedom". There are several examples like this in the documentary, along with interviews from their creators.
It's shocking how easily public opinion can be swayed, and the techniques are far more powerful now through the Internet and social media. If I could ask every human to watch a documentary, it would be this one followed by Hypernormalisation.
You can watch most of Curtis' work for free at https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/
>The Century of the Self: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
I think all of Adam Curtis' documentaries are worth a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL617BE1DB723DB1D6
Some others favourites off the top of my head:
808 (about the drum machine): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2268622/
Scratch: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0143861/
Hoop Dreams: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110057/
Startup.com (a classic!) : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/
The Fog of War: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/
I would recommend the documentary [The Century of the Self](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04) about advertising as propoganda, in which Edwards Bernays plays a central role.
Not the OP, but there's a long history of evidence that powerful corporations get away with a whole lot of things-- including murder. There is a great documentary by the BBC called The Century of the Self[0]. It isn't explicitly about this-- it's much broader-- but it does tangentially serve as sources for this kind of claim. Well worth a watch regardless of your views.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
The BBC documentary “Century of The Self” available on YouTube also highlights the ways in which everything happening at Esalen were leveraged to manufacture more consumerism. Great watch.
There is a great BBC documentary that talks about this war on the brain called "Century of the Self" [0]. It's four hours long, but the first hour covers the gist of it. It goes into the want vs need and how businesses have been taught to utilize this part of our mind.
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
This study is suspect because it does not reference propaganda history or research. It does not even use the word. Also the mechanism of defining truth is suspect: it is always possible to find several sources that agree on something and several others that disagree. There seems not much emphasis on primary sources.
Please research the history of propaganda in the United States for yourself. See articles on Edward Bernays and documentaries like The Century of the Self. Research terms like "the fourth estate".
You can watch Adam Curtis’ Century of the Self documentary. It’s about the rise of modern “Public Relations” and the systemization and proffessionalization of propoganda by corporations and governments.
Teenagers are quite capable of doing what you said and organizing their outrage when they really feel like it. That doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t also vast political and social machines working to aid, defeat, or co-opt the students’ cause. And I say this as someone who agrees with the students.
Certainly does.
Here is where I overlap with you. I've watched the documentary version of manufacturing consent but not read the book. (Don't tell anyone.) I watched The Century of the Self and Hypernormalisation plus a couple of others by Curtis. McLuhan is on my radar but I've never done a deep dive though of course I'm aware of him. I've read The Master Switch by Wu but not Attention Merchants, this man obviously is someone to keep an eye on.
So that leaves McChesney and Toffler. They are now on my radar, thank you. Under general media scholars you mention: H.L. Mencken, I.F. Stone, and perhaps Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. I thought Mencken a critic, Dewey a pragmatist–Rorty rates Dewey very highly, Lippmann I seem to recall to coming across…, Stone, don't think so. Interesting list.
And if I may be so bold. Have you considered The Revolt of the Masses by Ortega y Gasset? A prescient work. Somewhat more obscure is The Reality of the Mass Media by Niklas Luhmann, Curtis mentions nearly every cyberneticist and cybernetic theorist bar Luhmann, probably for good reason come to think of it. New media theorists: Walter Benjamin obviously for his The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (but maybe others?), The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich, and finally anything by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Wendy Chun).
I gather that media-philosophie is an actual research programme in German-land whereas here we'd call it media studies or communication studies or new media studies and it's looked down upon to the same extent as cultural studies programmes are or courses on semiotics. I'd like to see media-philosophy (what you use to communicate your message) become an actual branch of philosophy like aesthetics/rhetoric (how you communicate your message).
It's been stimulating, ciao!
I'm saying if you were to do some sort of bayesian analysis, I think you'd find the probabilities of each to be approximately equal. (E.g. within 5%.)
I'm talking specifically though about HRC believing all of HRC's stated positions, not about a random person changing their opinions over the course of time. The probability calculus there is very different. E.g. the Clintons literally hire people to survey the public to tell them what policies to campaign on, that's how they came up with the idea of adding v-chips to TVs or whatever. The Adam Curtis documentary Century of the Self goes into this in depth.
If you like this there are many other great documentaries by him - Century of the Self, Every day is Sunday, Bitter Lake, The Power of Nightmares (?) - watch them with a grain of salt, all of them, but definitely rewatch them, too..
(I know this is going to be a bit of a controversial statement for HN bc of politics and junk, but, to butcher and reconstitute a particuarly memorable Slavoj Zizek quote about Peter Sloterdijk, "Adam Curtis may be a conservative, but he's not an idiot!")
edit: if you dont have the 3 hrs to watch this documentary, you can get a great taste by watching this podcast clip set to some particularly moving imagery and music.. (hat tip to adam curtis editing style, perhaps? ;) )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW_R98EBO7s
edit2: transcript, because its worth it:
> WILL MENAKER: What would it look like to imagine a different world? Do you have a vision of it How would we know if we were beginning to imagine a different world? Even within this hyper-real one?
> ADAM CURTIS: You ask what real change might look like, and I think that’s a really interesting question for liberals and radicals, because there is a hunger for change, out there - millions of people who feel sort of insecure, uncertain about the future who DO want something to change. I think that change only comes though a big imaginative idea. A sort of picture of another kind of future which gives people - which connects with that fearfulness in the back of people’s minds. And offers them a release from it. That's the key thing. But I think the question for liberals and radicals is - they are always suspicious of big ideas. That's what lurks underneath the liberal mindset. And the reason is - and they are quite right in a way - is look what happened last time when millions of people got swept up in a big idea! Look up the last hundred years - what happened in Russia, and then in Germany. The point is , Is that Political change is frightening. It's scary — it's thrilling because it is dynamic and is doing something to change the world but it is scary because it can change things in ways where nothing to secure. Its like being in an earthquake. Even the solid ground beneath you begins to move. And things dissolve that you think are solid and real. And I think the question liberals are left have to face at the moment is a really sort of difficult question which is: “do you really want change? do you really want it?” Because if you do many of them might find themselves in a very uncertain world where they might lose all sorts of things. What we were talking about, in many cases, is people who are at the center of society at the moment, they are not out in the margins. They would have a lot to lose from real political change because it really would change things in the structure of power.
Or - and this is the brutal question: Do you just want things to change a little bit? Do you just want the banks to be a little bit nicer, or for people to be a little more respectful of each other's identities - All of which is good - but basically you carry on living in a nice world where you tinker with it.
That’s the key question. But you can't just sit there forever worrying about big ideas because there are millions of people out there who do you want Change. And the key thing is: they feel they’ve got nothing to lose. You might have lots to lose, but they feel they’ve got absolute nothing to lose. But at the moment they're being led by the Right. So things won't remain the same. But society may go off in ways you really don’t want.
SO in answer to your question, what you need is a powerful vision of the future. With all its dangers. But it is also quite thrilling. It will be an escape from the staticness of the world we have today. And to do that, you’ve got to engage with the giant forces of power that now run the world, at the moment. And the key thing is that in confronting those powers, and trying to transform the world you might lose a lot. This is a sort of forgotten idea. Is that actually you surrender yourself up to a big idea and in the the process you might lose something but you’d actually gain a bigger sense, because you change the world for the better. I know it sounds soppy, But this is the forgotten thing about politics. Is that you give up some of your individualism to something bigger than yourself. You surrender yourself - and it’s a lost idea. And I think really in answer to your question: You can spot real change happening when you see people from the liberal middle classes, beginning to give themselves up to something. Surrender themselves for something bigger. And at the moment, there is nothing like that in the liberal imagination.
That's a documentary by Adam Curtis [0]. Various of his documentaries are generally available on Archive.org, including this one. Its 4 parts [1] [2] [3] [4]. I've seen The Power Of Nightmares and The Century Of The Self. Both highly recommended though I didn't remember Clipper chip was mentioned.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis
[1] https://archive.org/details/TheCenturyOfTheSelfPart1
[2] https://archive.org/details/TheCenturyOfTheSelfPart2
[3] https://archive.org/details/TheCenturyOfTheSelfPart3
[4] https://archive.org/details/TheCenturyOfTheSelfPart4
The documentary “The Century of the Self” has a section on the Clipper chip. It showed video of a Clinton campaign manager explaining to volunteers that “Yeah, we know this is stupid, but it’s an important part of our message that we are here to protect your children.”
The documentary is excellent all around. Highly recommended. Possibly available on YouTube.
I love building IKEA furniture. For me, there is a certain controlled fear that comes with opening the boxes. I know it'll go together, because.. well, its not difficult, but there's always that lingering fear that it won't.
In regards to the egg in the instant mix (pancakes, cakes, etc), this is mentioned in Adam Curtis' 'The Century of the Self'[1], which is a fantastic documentary, and definitely worth a watch.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
I'd recommend the BBC documentary The Century of The Self. It's a multi-part film by Adam Curtis.
If you haven't seen it, watch The Century of the Self [1]. It's largely a documentary about the emergence of PR as an application of propaganda to control the population in times of peace, revolving around Edward Bernays. [2]
Viewing the modern situation through a lens informed by the history put forth in the documentary, there's nothing surprising in the least going on - it's the logical progression, and exactly what Bernays would aspire to do had the technology been available.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
the smartphone is just a tool, how you use it is up to you! nobody is making you use it, but companies spend millions to figure out better ways to psychologically mindfuck you since you have been conceived. to get you to buy things or behave a certain away which leads to them capitalizing on your behavior. this is not new, one movie which describes this is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self the smartphone is simply the delivery mechanism because it is with you at all times, just like social pressure and environment, they all carry messages, but it is up to you to choose to respond and how to respond, one could argue that if you are conditioned like this since birth because of media, by the time you are an "adult" <-- whatever the fuck that means... and high on the legal stimulants and running on the hamster wheel which turns into profit, i doubt you will even notice. but the irony of all this is that it is all optional if you understand it so...
All his documentary series are worth watching. These are
Hypernormalisation
Bitter Lake
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Every Day is like Sunday
The Power of Nightmares
The Century of the Self
The Trap
Pandora's Box
The Mayfair Set
Inside Story
Inquiry. The Great British Housing Disaster
The last one is particularly relevant after the Grenfell Tower Fire.
> Probably the most interesting of his documentaries that I've seen is on the rise of propaganda and the public relations industry in his documentary "Century of the Self".
Yeah, I liked that too, the fact that PR is war-time propaganda repackaged for the corporate world.
Really interesting documentary. I've heard good things about Adam Curtis's documentaries.
He works, or at the very least use to, at the BBC and I remember reading a post if his on his blog where he saved something like 50 terabytes of rare unedited video of Afghanistan that was decades old, before and during it's Marxist revolution starting in the late 70's.
Probably the most interesting of his documentaries that I've seen is on the rise of propaganda and the public relations industry in his documentary "Century of the Self".
Link here: https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s
Adam Curtis's The Century of the Self: https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self/
(Most of) the rest of his films: http://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/
I suspect that it was the clothing industry that figured they could sell more by hooking different product to genders earlier on, and marketing basically facilitated that push.
Particularly after WW1 various industries that had massively scaled up to feed the war needed an outlet for their excess production capacity.
This lead to a marketing push to get people to think in terms of desires rather than needs.
Adam Curtis goes over this during his documentary series, The Century of the Self.
Adam Curtis is, by far, the best documentary maker I know. His origin-of-terrorism doc "Bitter Lake" gives an insight no one else will.
Hypernormalisation is, also because it is simply the most recent, his best docu imho. If you liked this, take a look at The Century of the Self as well.
... The Century of the Self is a 2002 British television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, and PR consultant Edward Bernays. In episode one, Curtis says, "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." ...
I really enjoyed this documentary when I saw it, and also ended up watching Bitter Lake and (half of) Century of the Self. The concepts were quite bold and the seemed nearly-self-evident. But then I asked myself, "so why am I just only now hearing about all this?" as a heuristic of the measure of the sufficient strength of supporting evidence.
It dawned upon me that some of the techniques of desire-manufacturing/advertising that used psychological techniques, as mentioned in Century of the Self, were also used to compel the viewer about the curated historical web of causality. And I really think that Hanlon's razor supplants to much of the powers that be mentioned movie.
I almost feel like this movie really displays the enouement of neoliberalism: nothing ever changes in this world any more (thus we're near "the end of history"), we're stuck in a massive deadlocked monetary system that has only "unrealistic" alternatives, "humanitarian interventions" in conflicts are necessary crusades and we cede that they may have the same power dynamics of imperial invasions but since they are done in the name of freedom and democracy they are to be absolved for their ambitions, and so on. I think that in that regard, the documentary falls short of exploring things that are subversive to hegemony.
I was unsatisfied with the idea of watching a powerful documentary about hypernormalisation without searching for a critical explanation of the hypernormalisation of the documentary maker, too. Here's one such: That said, I did genuinely enjoy the movie and appreciate that it inspired me to reflect on modern history.
To counterbalance Curtis' fairly conservative view of modernity, this talk by the late Mark Fisher is really good: the slow cancellation of the future [1]
[0] http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/adam-curtiss-essential-counterhistories
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgkLICTskQ
Adam Curtis has a history of making these films. Worth also checking out his 2002 film 'the century of the self'.
Wikipedia on Adam Curtis: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis
The century of the self on youtube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
Other films of his are also on archive.org
Here is the list of my favorite documentaries: - The Cove - Food, Inc. - The Century Of The Self - Inside Job - Earthlings - Samsara - Earth - A Map For Saturday - The Story Of India
We aren't going to "get" a new left wing anytime soon. The neoliberal turn that most left-wing parties took was a direct result of the collapse of social democracy and citizen involvement in he 1970s, which resulted in the neoliberal market politics commonly attributed to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
If you want a new left wing, make it happen. Join a local board. Run for local office. Take part in your community. Be a part of something. But don't expect reading news or commenting on forums to change anything. After all, the shift from active citizen to passive consumer is what got us in this mess in the first place.
Adam Curtis has several phenominal documentaries regarding this shift over time. Particularly, "Century of the Self", "The Trap", and most recently, "HyperNormalization."
They cover this transition in the documentary "The Century of the Self". I highly recommend it.
I've hated ads since I was a kid. I never realized it until back around 2010 when I overheard my friends say, "he really hates advertising. Have you noticed that?" and I was like, "Wait, it's .. noticeable?"
Modern advertising is specifically engineered to evoke an emotional response in order to buy a product. The mother/fathers of modern advertising are none other than Edward Bernays and Anna Freud. (Sigmund Freud's nephew and daughter). There's a lot of evidence that Freud resented both of these family members for using his psychoanalyst tools to help industry and government gain profit and power. At the same time, Edward was instrumental in promoting the English version of Freud's book, keeping Sigmund out of the poor house.
I highly recommend watching The Century of the Self. It's a multi-part BBC documentary that goes into the history of advertising and consumerism as we see it in our current age.
There would not be a hundred billion dollar ad industry if propaganda didn't work. We wouldn't run multi-million dollar presidential campaigns if propaganda didn't work. The whole field of social psychology and public relations would be a useless exercise if propaganda didn't work. This is the fundamental problem with democracy: people are easily influenced.
The antecedents of the current Chinese communist party, the Bolsheviks knew this and they decided that the inner party must be the vanguard of the proletariat in order to prevent the proletariat from being easily led astray by the faith of the masses in the monarchs. Of course, they were wrong, for different reasons, but objective truth is a hard thing and often a weak voice amid the bullhorns blasting propaganda.
Anyone interested in this topic should watch the great documentary "The Century Of The Self"[1] that goes into the history of the public relations industry and mass persuasion in general.
[1] http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2d29tf_the-century-of-the-self-part-1-of-4-happiness-machines_school
>> P.S. I feel the same way about propaganda. Why should government agencies be the only ones with the power to propagandize their message? Everyone should have access to top-of-the-line shilling software!
The US government after WWII was wondering how to avoid a situation in their own country that lead up to the holocaust. They studied Sigmund Freud to learn how to "manipulate" the crowds into "being happy" or create the illusion of happiness with distraction or consumerism. Freud's uncle, (Hugo Bernaise[1]) enjoyed massive influence among political circles and and gave them and corporations advise[2] on manipulating and controlling the masses.
There is an excellent BBC mini series (also available on youtube) called "The century of the self" ... The episode that talks specifically about Freud and Bernaise is called "Engineering Consent".
The documentary may seem slightly dated but in light of recent geopolitical developments and our discussion about government and corporate surveillance it's worth every minute!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engineering_of_Consent
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
In addition to century of the self - watch "human resources documentary"
This subject has received significant attention because as hard as it is to accept, it is all true. There has been a deliberate "Brave New World" effort to control the masses of democracies, under the assumption that leaving people to their own devices will ultimately result in chaos and destruction by someone else manipulating them (case in point: the Republican Party fiasco regarding Donald Trump)
If you are willing to see how your life and role as a passive consumer has been designed, watch the BBC documentary "Century of the Self," read Edward Bernays' "Crystallizing Public Opinion," and "Propaganda," and for an extra dose of depression, Noam Chomsky's "Profit Over People."
Sorry.
As a adjunct to this great read, you find out more about this field through the historical documentary, "The century of the Self" by Adam Curtis and the BBC. It is the 'red pill' for understanding consumerism. https://vimeo.com/10245146
Did you watch "The Century of the Self", by chance? Great movie, either way.
The century-old foundation for modern consumerism is that people are irrational actors who are primarily motivated by base instincts like fear, lust, hunger, and so on.
If you haven't seen the BBC documentary "Century of the Self," I highly recommend it.
The BBC made a great documentary on this subject: "Century of the Self."
The best source is to just read Bernays' own book: Propaganda (1929).
The roots of cultural control go further back than the Cold War. Arguably it was Edward Bernays, father of public relations, who used his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories about humans being irrational economic actors motivated by primal instincts of fear, sex, and so on, to sell them products they didn't need.
The U.S. Government (and many around the world, including nazi Germany, whose head of propaganda admired Bernays) adapted these techniques as means to control people, or at least keep them from going out of control (Bolshevik Revolution, Naziism, etc). The popular image of the happy-go-lucky 1950s wasn't just how things "turned out to be," it was a concerted government effort to create the ideal and stable society that wouldn't overthrow the government.
You can see the same influence today in ideological news networks using compelling and vapid distractions instead of keeping focus on the "real" issues.
The BBC made a great documentary on this subject: "Century of the Self."
It is so easy to forget how did the term Public Relations come into wide use.
> Due to negative implications surrounding the word propaganda because of its use by the Germans in World War I, he promoted the term "Public Relations".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays#Life_and_influences
For more I recommend the BBC documentary "The Century of the Self".
"till I subscribed to Wall Street Journal. I was shocked that it's considered to be a "good" newspaper by some"
What shocks me is that people don't see propaganda in ANY newspaper.
I have studied propaganda and psychology, because it interest me and frankly, because it is very useful for making money with your company. I would recommend watching "The century of the self" for a great overview of the subject before going deeper on what interest you.
Now I find propaganda everywhere. Have you heard the phrase "the land of the free" or "opportunities". It is propaganda. People that have never traveled around the world will hear the phrase and believe it without doubt.
In fact, those phrases are used for the contrary. Every time "land of the free" is used it is for removing yet another freedom, leaving the people with the empty phrase that was true 100 years ago, while removing the freedoms that sustain it one by one.
For example, Obama will talk loud about freedoms, while making it smaller the amount of money you could extract of your own bank account without reporting. He will let police confiscate your wealth if he thinks so(to buy army grade weapons), it will spy on all your communications, harass you on airports, and bail too big to fail institutions with your money.
It was an illustrative description of the effect of money. That it's not speech so much as drowning out all else in the room.
If you prefer quantitative rather than qualitative results, this article on a recent Princeton University study on the influence of money in political policy:
"Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think" https://represent.us/action/theproblem-4/
Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question: Does the government represent the people?
Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.
...
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
One thing that does have an influence? Money. While the opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America have a “statistically non-significant impact,” Economic elites, business interests, and people who can afford lobbyists still carry major influence.
Similarly, money bought decades of protection for the tobacco industry -- the medical link between smoking and cancer was established in the 1940s.
By, as it happens, Nazi Germany... http://www.jpands.org/hacienda/edcor5.html
(So, yes, there's a literal truth to the complaints of some smokers about anti-smoking Nazis...).
Or, in the case of lead added to paint and gasoline, an understanding dating to the late eighteenth century, at least (though earlier understanding of harms dates back to 2000 BC), of the negative health consequences of lead, the harms from paint (up to 50% lead by weight) by the early 20th century. The "Dutch Boy" paint brand was adopted by National Lead Company (now NL Industries, Dutch Boy was sold to Sherwin-Williams in 1980). Or asbestos. Or CFCs. Or CO₂ and global warming. Or sugar, corn syrup, and diabetes.
Robert N. Proctor calls this "agnotology": culturally induced ignorance. It's only possible due to the scale of spending behind such disinformation. Millions to billions of dollars, over time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2363bo/agnotology_culturally_induced_ignorance/
While that's only a part of the problem with advertising, it's a large one.
I've mentioned Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, which deals heavily with advertising, and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. I recommend both, strongly.
Also Adam Curtis's Century of the Self documentary.
Thank you for these recommendations. I enjoyed reading Amusing Ourselves to Death very much. I'm watching the first episode of The Century of the Self right now and enjoying it very much. It seems quite informative and seems less biased than Manufacturing Consent, which makes it more watchable for me.
Very much this.
If you're not familiar with Adam Curtis's BBC documentary, The Century of the Self, on Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud (whom Bernays effectively made), and Anna Freud, as well as the influence of advertising, "public relations" (a term coined by Bernays), and propaganda (the term he coined PR to avoid) on the public, corporations, and govenrment.
Also Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, which is an ad-man's perspective on what is fatally flawed with his own industry. See also his later book, The Capitalism Papers.
And of course, Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly.
There've been a number of recent HN posts on how bloated websites are becoming, and how content is being watered down on the Web. Pretty much all of this can be traced to the current funding mechanism: advertising. Which is increasingly becoming the problem, not the solution. E.g., TJ VanToll's "The Web's Cruft Problem".
Thomas Wells hits on what I see as the two most likely alternative funding mechanisms: a content tax, and philanthropy or patronage. Combining these with some form of decentralised content syndication compensation system seems like a possible path forward. The total value of the US arts and entertainment industry is $528 billion, of which publishing is $152 billion. If 20% of that is online content, it amounts to roughly $100 per person per year.
Phil Hunt of Pirate Party UK's broadband tax proposal is an earlier and similar concept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimination_of_Television
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Mander
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Postman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly
"A Modest Proposal: Universal Online Media Payment Syndication" https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modest_proposal_universal_online_media_payment/
http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/a-broadband-tax-for-the-uk/
http://developer.telerik.com/featured/the-webs-cruft-problem/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9897306
Advertising is as old as business and writing.
The modern form of advertising however relies on a few specific developments:
1. The printing press. (1450)
2. Widespread literacy. (18th / 19th century)
3. Consumer products. (mid 19th century)
4. Consumerism, generally. (early 20th century)
5. Mass media. (early/mid 20th century)
Much of this converged in the 1920s as mass-market consumer culture really started to take hold, though it was interrupted by the Great Depression and WWII, re-emerging in the late 1940s and 1950s. The latter were the heyday of the large magazine publication (arguably the Web content of its day), with both nonfiction and fiction carried prominently. Both faded as TV replaced reading as a pastime.
Adam Curtis's 2002 BBC documentary, The Century of the Self details much more of the history of advertising and propaganda, particularly the role played by Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays (who arguably made Freud as well).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
Bernays' 1928 book "Propaganda" is an entertaining intro. He's considered the father of modern public relations. It reads like satire, except he was serious. (http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html)
Many like the BBC documentary "The Century Of The Self", on the origins of modern PR. (Easy to find online.) Nowadays of course, the field is way more advanced.
Noam Chomsky's done well-known work in this area. His books are dry, but he gives enjoyable talks, zillions of which are on youtube. For example: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RPKH6BVcoM)
See also: • Edward Bernays, "Public Relations" (1945) [1]
• "Century of the Self", BBC documentary by Adam Curtis [2].
[1] https://archive.org/details/publicrelationse00bernrich
[2] https://vimeo.com/85948693
Smoking rates in the US, Europe, and Australia have fallen tremendously. The peak rates were during the 1950s and 1960s, particularly after WWII. Cigarettes had been heavily promoted through films and popular culture, were included in soldier's rations and kits (paid for by tobacco companies), and pitched via advertising aimed directly at children and appealing to women's sense of independence and self-determination.
During which time the tobacco companies were actively concealing the negative health effects and campaigning against not only regulation but simply providing truthful information about tobacco's hazards.
Instrumental in much of this was Edward Bernays, the father of the modern Public Relations industry (he coined the term after the word "propaganda" lost its lustre after its use by Germany in WWI).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
The BBC series by excellent documentarian Adam Curtis (I've encountered a few of his other works and writings recently), The Century of the Self covers Bernays:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
Many of the same methods and techniques were applied to corporate disinformation campaigns against controls over leaded paint, asbestos, ozone, auto safety. Look up GM's attempts to smear Ralph Nader:
In early March 1966, several media outlets, including The New Republic and The New York Times, reported that GM had tried to discredit Nader, hiring private detectives to tap his phones and investigate his past, and hiring prostitutes to trap him in compromising situations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader
Naomi Oreskes has drawn the parallels -- in methods, organizations, and often the very individuals -- between corporate disinformation campaigns in the case of tobacco, smoking, acid rain, CFCs and the ozone layer, and global warming, in her book Merchants of Doubt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt
Brave New World is already here to some extent largely due to the work of Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays. The excellent documentary "The Century of the Self" explains this better than I ever could: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self.
Overview from Wikipedia: "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." —Adam Curtis'
Edward Bernays also wrote a book titled Propaganda and he invented the term Public Relations.
From wikipedia:
Edward Louis Bernays was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud. He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the "herd instinct" that Trotter had described.
In Propaganda he wrote:
"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 moulded, 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."
You don't need to look far to see how hedonism, particularly through television programs like American Idol and ESPN*, have supplanted the laymans need for government involvement. I see no better example of hedonism than the fact that the word 'Selfie' was awarded 'Word of the Year' by the Oxford dictionary last year: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-24992393. I work at Disney and when I look to the television monitors I see ‘inspirational’ quotes that tell me that selfishness is desirable. In particular, I have learned that ’mephobia’ is defined as the 'Fear of becoming so awesome that the human race can't handle it and everyone dies.' Disgusting…
Agreed that the Century of the Self is very much worth watching.
This parody is spot on, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg
"The Century of the Self" (BBC documentary by Adam Curtis) is a good start. It discusses the Self(image), nationalism, (mass)psychology and much, much more. http://vimeo.com/87419450
I was also just reminded of the documentary The Century of the Self which I think I originally saw at Aaron Swartz's recommendation. The documentary took me by surprise in some ways because it seemed to start off with a familiar narrative about the benefits of individualism and economic growth in giving people more choices. But at a certain point it turned darker and described how marketers had understood that giving people certain kinds of experiences of choice and personal attention could be deployed as a means of manipulation. It's something like the advice I just read the other day that you can get little kids to put on their shoes by asking them which pair of shoes they want to put on. The question puts the focus on their choice while directing their attention away from the question of whether they wanted to put on shoes in the first place.
The darker later parts of the documentary make me think that we have a lot of practice celebrating people's power of choice and freedom from constraint (which I fully agree with). We have a lot of recent experience saying yes when there's no reason not to. What we perhaps haven't been practicing as much is saying no at those times when there is a reason to.
They don't. That was only one of dozens of such deals with various organizations. The Adam Curtis documentary Century of the Self goes into some of the others.
The Century of the Self is one of my five favorite documentaries, I would recommend it to anyone regardless of profession.
Well, TLP has a number of posts on the subject. Beware that he drinks a lot of rum though, and some of his posts are more lucid than others. These are good:
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/11/luxury_branding_the_future_lea.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/05/dove.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/real_men_want_to_drink_guinnes.html
Otherwise there's this documentary, with a more historical (and less rum-soaked) take on the subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
If you found this article interesting I highly recommend the documentaries "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" and "The Century of the Self" both by Adam Curtis.
A number of points in the article were covered in the documentaries such as 40's & 50's era mass media concerns and early valley cultural experiment failures.
If you are interested in a rather in-depth examination of this line of thinking, I highly recommend Adam Curtis's 2002 documentary "The Century of the Self"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
Since nobody has yet posted it, for those unfamiliar with Curtis, he made the outstanding BBC documentary the Century of the Self. Link here to google, because you will probably want to choose your own website for watching it (or actually buy it as a DVD present for somebody, to encourage more excellent documentary making!) https://www.google.com/search?q=century+of+the+self
On the subject of capitalism, politics, power and liberty I recommend watching the documentary series "The Trap" by Adam Curtis:
[1/3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZt2HhFXB3M
[2/3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbRApO3k_Jo
[3/3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFjCJFsbS0U
Another series by Curtis, "The Century of the Self", explores similar themes in the context of psychology (Freud and Reich), propaganda (Bernays), and the rise of market-based democracy:
[*/4] http://vimeo.com/61857758
For those inclined to investigate the affects of psychology [theory] on modern society, and how it has been adapted both commercially and by government, I suggest checking out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
Edward Louis Bernays was related to Sigmund Freud. This relationship and more is expounded upon in the above documentary, which is definitely worth watching (imho).
"The Century of the Self is an award-winning British television documentary series by Adam Curtis. It focuses on how the work of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Edward Bernays influenced the way corporations and governments have analyzed, dealt with, and controlled people.[1]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
I'm curious. What do you dislike about Adam Curtis' work?
He has a considerable gift for digging up and presenting historical material. For example, the stuff about Bernays and Freud at the beginning of Century of the Self is riveting. But some of the narratives into which he frames that material seem questionable.
The one time I knew something independently about what he was presenting, I was surprised at how distorted it was. That was in his documentary about the Rand Corporation and game theory, when he included the radical Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing as an example of psychologists who worked to expand state control. To anyone who knows anything about Laing—a fascinating figure in his own right—that doesn't pass the laugh test.
Great post, I highly recommend the documentary "The Century of the Self" which covers this in frightening detail.
I'm not a religious person, but in my view religious communities are some of the few that have been able to see and understand the deleterious effects of this "field of study".
This guy was brilliant. And something of a twat. I blame him for all of the jerks in advertising nowadays. Check out 'The Century of the Self' for a thought provoking documentary.
It's interesting that the author uses the word "lifestyle," because the popular etymology of the word actually comes from marketing research.
The word itself was popularized relatively recently (only a generation ago): http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lifestyle&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3
It was driven largely by VALS, research done by Stanford Research Institute on new marketing techniques, which has been partially credited for transforming advertising into what we know today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VALS
The Adam Curtis film "Century Of The Self" has an excellent exploration of the term "lifestyle" and the context it came from.
I think it's interesting that we commonly use the word "lifestyle" to talk about breaking out of a consumer-driven mindset, when the language itself was developed precisely for marketing to that mindset.
If anyone else wants to find out more about Edward Bernays, and how he created the field of public relations, I highly recommend the bbc documentary The Century of the Self. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
It is very much in line with the quote that pteredactyl posted. He also did a lot of early work in consumerism and marketing.
'Century of the Self' is indeed amazing (as is everything else by Adam Curtis) and can be found for free here: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/
It's not specifically about American conditioning though... it starts with Freud (Austria, then UK), wanders off to Edward Bernays (Austria, the US), talks about the US PR/Advertising industry for a while (totally fascinating to bear in mind while watching 'Mad Men' IMHO) and then ends up with Tony Blair (UK) via Bill Clinton.
Thanks for the Showtime documentary pointer - will look that up.
I'm currently watching that series... interesting stuff. Another must, for any who haven't seen it, is the British documentary series "Century of the Self", about American conditioning specifically.
Great read, but it's odd the article didn't mention Edward Bernays, the originator of public relations (and nephew of Freud). Bernays preferred the term 'propaganda', but after he discovered Goebbels had used his book "Crystalizing Public Opinion" to steer German public opinion towards consent of the holocaust, he stopped using the name.
He also invented advertising as we now know it. Before Bernays it was "Brand X doesn't wear out", after it was "Brand X: the man's choice". Among his works are "The Business of Propoganda" and "Engineering of Consent" (hmm... that sounds familiar).
Bernays is only on my intellectual radar because of this mesmerizing Adam Curtis documentary: http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self/
"Century of the Self" was my favorite of Curtis' films, and very relevant for anyone involved in marketing.
Describes how industry went from manufacturing necessities to constructing lifestyles by linking consumption to self-expression.
Part 1 of 4 (links to the others): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTarrgvkjo
As odd as this sounds, I tend to believe everything works itself out naturally over time. IOW, if you ran a simulation of the earth over and over again, the timelines might be skewed, but we would eventually end up in the same place. Every advancement, whether it be inventions or discoveries about the physical universe, push the human race forward. But it always has to happen in such a way that it's two steps forward, one step back. If there's a hole or weakness in a system there is an opportunity to exploit it and you better believe it will be done. That's a good thing as it makes the system stronger; the sooner the better.
As was mentioned before on HN the wonderful BBC documentary "The Century of The Self" delves into how the 20th century US democracy began controlling by pandering to consumerism/irrationalism (ie. the tie between big business/media and government), while our communist adversaries began governing by increasingly abject force. They're like two sides of the same coin. Is it bad/evil or did this need to happen? Think about what's happened in that timeframe... the automobile, airplane, radio, the depression, nuclear energy/weapons, two world wars, the computer, television, the personal computer, the internet, and everything the internet is beginning to mobilize. The change to the world in one century is absolutely mesmerizing.
I believe through globalisation these two sides are both merging and dissolving at the same time - that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's the world trying to work out inefficiencies in these respective systems; inefficiencies which could be seen as bugs in a system that invite corruption. When bugs are exposed and fixes begin to emerge, the pockets of corruption are going to fight back - as they should, because that's their livelihood at stake.
Information is more free than ever, and that is what truly sets us free. So they made this mistake. And it's been exposed, quickly. Think about all the nefarious things that happened in the cold war that took decades to come to light. Think about what happened in the Middle East last year; governments toppled, quickly. They tried to sneak SOPA under the public radar and look what happened.
If you haven't already - watch the documentaries "Century of the self" and "Human Resources" for more disturbing information on how this came to be.
This societal passiveness isn't accidental: it has been deliberately engineered in North America. The documentary "The Century of the Self" breaks this down better than anything else I've seen/read. There is also, within activist circles, the belief in a mythical version of history in which pacifism, isolated from militance, is what catalyzed change in the past.
Regarding the self-interest of the young, it's a rational thing. If young people today weren't saying "where's mine" then they'd be stupid. During the baby boom there were decent jobs because globalization hadn't happened yet and corporations still had to rely on domestic labor. Reliance on domestic labor also means the elite values having decent public institutions, which strengthen the labor force. Now not only do we have globalization but also systematic looting. Young people get to look forward to having it significantly worse economic prospects than their parents.
The Century of The Self, a 4 part documentary by Adam Curtis, covers exactly what you just mentioned. Fascinating stuff, and available in its entirety on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPzGUsYyKM
wow....thanks for that!...kinnof reignited my interest in Chomsky and his ideas of libertarian socialism!...If anyone wants to learn more about the role of propaganda in our society I highly recommend the documentary "The Century of the self".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPzGUsYyKM
Nice article, thanks for posting. Money quote:
The more we buy into consumerism as a lifestyle, the less we are able to see clearly and become independent, as our social stature begins to depend on our consumerist successes.
The slavemasters here are ourselves, or more accurately our subconscious desires (to be popular, sexy and powerful) as interpreted and channeled by the market.
On this subject, I would strongly recommend Adam Curtis' BBC documentary series 'The Century of the Self' which documents the rise of consumerism and the psychoanalytical theories underpinning it. It really opened my eyes to the many parts of our culture that I'd considered eternal that are in fact entirely C20th creations.
I don't think it's actually available legally, but your favourite torrent site can certainly find it. 'The Power of Nightmares' is another of his masterworks. There's a complete Curtis archive torrent out there, which is probably among the most informative single downloads in existence.
Based on one thing I saw, I think you may be right. One of Curtis' documentaries linked the Scottish (anti-)psychiatrist R.D. Laing to the cold war game theorists of RAND as if they were collaborators in social control. You don't have to know much about Laing to know this is spurious.
It's a pity, because I've learned things from watching Curtis. The Bernays-Freud material at the start of Century of the Self is riveting.
The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcYBSXgtmKQ - Episode 1 of 4, the rest are also on youtube
It's a bit tendentious but overall insightful and interesting IMO.
On a related note-Read about Edward Bernays (wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays) , nephew of Sigmund Freud, and his contributions/actions/in advertising..or check out this documentary- "Century of the Self" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_self.shtml ), that BBC produced.
"Century of the Self" is a great documentary on how the American population has been socially engineered by corporations.
If you enjoyed this, you might like Adam Curtis' documentaries, such as The Century of The Self - a documentary about the rise of mass consumerism[1], or The Power of Nightmares - an incredible 3 part documentary on how the neocons needed an enemy in the east as much as Osama needed an enemy in the west in order to strike terror into their own sides[2].
[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPzGUsYyKM
[2] - http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
link to The Century Of The Self - Adam Curtis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_self.shtml
You don't think there's a link between dictatorships and repressive regimes? You can see examples of this right now in the news with all these protests going on.
I also fail to see why news-based entertainment shows (as is my understanding of one of the programmes mentioned) are any less valid a target for propaganda analysis. Do you believe people cannot be influenced by an entertainment programme? If not, why would such an analysis hold little 'value for the reader'?
I feel you are taking his points far too literally to be relevant in any real-world situation, even if OP's assertions were overly-emotive hyperbole. Nor are you providing much (relevant) value here, IMO - it's not enough to counter criticism of the US with complaints of "America-bashing" unless you say why the criticism is invalid.
As for the propaganda definition you provided (which is a good one), it states the purpose of the disseminations is to change people's opinions. Now you can do that with just plain releasing facts and information (e.g. Wikileaks cables) but it's disingenuous to downplay the role of delivering information by whatever means necessary to produce a specific effect. Propaganda that is 100% factual and non-misleading is called 'facts'.
You would be far better off reading Chomsky's own take on it Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, or a documentary like Century Of The Self.
If anyone wants to see an incredible look into how Sigmund Freud's research was turned around to manipulate people into consuming more, then Adam Curtis' excellent The Century of The Self is available to watch here: http://thoughtmaybe.com/video/the-century-of-the-self
If you've never seen an Adam Curtis documentary before, this is a good one to start with. His style and delivery is unique among documentary filmmakers and is definitely worth a watch.
I've been told by people who've been sent on corporate junkets to Gartner shindigs/what-have-you, that they have lots of "high-status" (hot) women wandering around. It was the same with that french psychologist who had the Madison Avenue types eating out of his hand in "The Century of the Self" documentary. Having beautiful women around is a signal of dominance. People who want to project power use this, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. Film-makers use this whenever they want to portray someone with power.
The flip side: when you are hanging out with the other geeks, realizing you're at yet another sausage fest, does this make you feel powerful, or not so much?
To paraphrase the opera Carmen: if you want any enterprise to succeed, be sure you have women along!
To help develop your argument, try:
Edward Bernays: Propaganda or the movie "version": Century of the Self (both on archive.org, btw Adam Curtis is about as underrated as Robert Fisk -- no means by accident)
Manufacturing Consent (same spirit movie as in the thread)
Understanding Power (basically they simplify and reiterate stuff backed up in this book)
And and if you are still reading this, have fun reading Dictators, by Jacques Bainville.
The Century of the Self is an excellent documentary. I felt horrible when I first watched it, but it changed the way I see things. I was shocked to learn that Goebbels kept Bernays' book in his back pocket and based the nazi propaganda on its principles. What would be the effect on people if they watched it? Do you think they'd want to wake up and face reality?
Have you seen Adam Curtis' documentary "Century of the Self"? If not, I'm pretty sure you would like it. I'm only partway through, but it's already filled in a number of blanks for me as to how we got where we are. (Edit: to be specific, the stuff in part 1 about Edward Bernays and the psychoanalytic roots of modern PR is riveting.)
I mention it because your distinction between two types of marketing is fundamental to the series, which is the story of how the second type was discovered and triumphed over the first.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151&hl=en#
The Century of the Self is an amazing documentary. Everyone in this country, and the western world should see it. That and the Power of Nightmares also by Adam Curtis.
Thank you for making your point clearer in your last response.
First of all, I want to make clear I use more space than the proposals of Tumbleweed Tiny House, but I respect the concept and I think it makes us all think about our behaviors and the consequences of them.
I live in an old apartment in a pedestrian street, at the center of Barcelona. I'm occupying an apartment that has had people on it for centuries, and use resources in a pretty frugal way, just because my "pursuit of happiness" happened to evolve in a dense Mediterranean city, where public transportation are a matter of convenience, not class. The apartment is fairly big, yes, and it does have a terrasse. I also have 2 kids. The rest of the apartments of the building are being used by young students and similar. Several people in every apartment.
I wanted to make clear that I think dense cities are the response to some of the main issues of the world that affect all of us. Your attittude affects me, and mine has an impact in you.
I also believe, like Sterwart Brand, that slums are not necessarily bad for humanity (http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environmental_heresies.html). And we are late for a bucolic return to nature the Thoreau way.
Owning more stuff and being able to acquire it are both a consequence related to the industrial revolution (via the Illustration, blah blah) and we all agree "progress" permitted human societies to increase all conditions, including living expectancy.
I don't want to theorize about how the idea of "public opinion" (via Adam Smith and the like) was created, or how the School of Frankfurt related mass media and modern press to "opinion leaders" and how these models "influenced" in all of us.
I would disagree with your last point, when you relate owning stuff with success. It's the same point of view an emerging new world is having, by relating happiness with their will to imitate America and Europe after World War 2.
Sadly, there's not enough "stuff" (in terms of "World", and there's nothing else yet to live in as mortal human beings) for 2 more billion of "new rich" people, if they happen to follow the western way. These people are buying their cars and increasing their footprint (and "foodprint") just right now.
The thing is that relating "happiness" and "success", "American dream" and "Pursuit of Happiness" to modern consumption was greatly influenced by certain campaigns. There's no signs in anthropology that relate owning more "stuff" to being "better" or being "happier".
I recommend to dig in:
- GDP: on how the concept of GDP and GDP per person are flawed and do not equal to "wealth". A recent post in HN was saying that Mississipi is richer than Europe (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=811365). Relating wealth and happiness to GDP (gross consumption, in general terms) is a big mistake, explained by a lot of people. I just don't have the time to look for the referrals just now (I'd do it upon request).
- Documentaries "The century of the self" (You'll find them in the Internet). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
- The paragraphs on the relationship about the vision of America as a car country with houses and no public transportation, in the book "Fast Food Nation".
- I could go on and on, but It's not a matter of creating an opinion, but making my point.
And I also think frugality and small are the new "coolness" (which is also created-influenced artificially). You'll (we all) be soon influenced by that, and you won't know why, but it will happen, because the consumption push will bring other ways of more responsible consumption.
And there's no necessity to make bad products for the earth.
See, for instance:
- Cradle to Cradle concept.
- Embodied energy concept.
That should tell us something. I wish I had more time to elaborate. Having a big house, a personal trainer, 5 sports cars, etc., is becoming a sign of cheesiness.
Hear the drums?
Are you familiar with Edward Bernays? Have you watched Adam Curtis documentary 'The century of the self'?
From http://www.perceptric.com/blog/_archives/2008/8/14/3837144.html:
Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. His family emigrated to the US from Germany by way of England before World War 1. Bernays was the father of the modern public relations business. He used some of the ideas that were the brainchild of his uncle and was able to convince clients of the ways that people thought and how their thoughts could be turned to the benefit of the clients’ needs.
One of the clients that Bernays worked for was Sarah Lee. They had a problem. They had created a cake mix that just needed water added to it and then could be popped in the oven. The problem was that housewives were not buying it.
Bernays did some studies and came up with the conclusion that the housewives that the product was targeting felt that they had not personal involvement in the success of the baking of the cake. He proposed that the company change the formula for the product to require the user to have to break an egg and mix that with the water into the cake mix before baking the cake.
The rest is history. The new cake mix took off like wildfire and still today in every supermarket that you go to you will find cake mixes that require the user to break an egg into a bowl and then mix it with the powdered ingredients in the packet.
Try the BBC documentary 'The Century Of the Self' by Adam Curtis. You'll have to torrent it because no US TV station has dared show it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
It documents (with gripping style) the activities of Edward Bernays and others in their efforts to manipulate people's subconscious - to make them buy stuff.
Public schooling doesn't, to my knowledge, promote economic or mental health. American corporations have spent a lot of money promoting stupidity over the last century ("Century of the Self" is a great documentary on how they did it). When you come from a milieu that doesn't think about the future and live in a society where people are encouraged not to think about the future, it's easy to end up an economic casualty.
The BBC documentary "The Century of the Self" really delves into the role that Bernays played in changing the notion of selling on the basis of utility to one of selling on the basis of emotion, e.g. from "Buy this car because it offers superior reliability" to "Buy this car because you will attract women" etc.