Don't forget those archeologists volcanologists and anthropologists. Democracy is in trouble.

It's a ruse to call a society governed by mass manipulation a democracy. — ZzzoneiroCosm

But the average person wants to be told what to eat and wear, how to trim their useless lawns and how to make up for their sins.

They want norms. They want the security of the sheep.

But the average person wants to be told what to eat and wear, how to trim their useless lawns and how to make up for their sins.

They want norms. They want the security of the sheep. — Tate

The fascism within us all.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2020.1727403

Possibly, this fascist mindset, this desire to be led, has been exacerbated by ingenius mass-manipulators seeking the pleasure of command. Or it may be at the heart of human nature. In which case, democracy is eternally imperiled.

The fascism within us all. — ZzzoneiroCosm

That's heavy. The light side is that most of us just want to belong.

I get that.

But that light side - when its hazards are swept under the rug - can create a ton of darkness.

But that light side - when its hazards are swept under the rug - can create a ton of darkness. — ZzzoneiroCosm

True. Using psychology to manipulate is a betrayal. It exploits something intimate and innocent.

Well said.

intimate and innocent. — Tate

The masses are essentially innocent in the hands of expert psychologists and mass-manipulators.

The masses are essentially innocent in the hands of expert psychologists and mass-manipulators. — ZzzoneiroCosm

This is not a very jolly thread is it? I'll try and inject a sliver of optimism.

The treachery of psychology is abhorrent and inexcusable, and has multiplied the level of deception in society. However, the internet is undermining the universality of the lie. We become aware of the lie and we become angry. But becoming aware is the first step. We do not know who on this site is a propagandist, and it is a common accusation, and potentially a divisive tool of the propagandists themselves. But this state of global paranoia is an improvement on - for example - the situation during WW1, when the masses were willing turkeys lining up for Christmas for King and Cuntry or Kaiser, or Freedum and Demoncracy, or whatever the flavour was in your grandparents innocent ears. Yes folks, this is the age of gold.

It's a ruse to call a society governed by mass manipulation a democracy. — ZzzoneiroCosm

:fire:

And people ridicule, poke fun/laugh at, conspiracy theorists!

How deep does the rabbit hole go?

Edward Bernays

Nephew of Freud; propagandist who assisted the United States government in the overthrow of Guatemala; got women to smoke; persuaded the entire population of the United States to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast - among other schemes and deviltries. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Indeed. He also fraudulently claimed to be the creator of Bearnaise sauce, explaining the difference in spelling as part of an an effort to get women to smoke tobacco from Guatemala after consuming bacon and eggs smothered with the sauce. His effort came to naught, though.

:yum:

A clown for every hamlet. :scream:

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The problem with democracy is it's built on, not trust, but mistrust. Being so, it immediately undermines itself. Nevertheless, it's orders of magnitude better to be candid about our own flaws than to conceal them under a pile of romantic, highfalutin, drivel. The truth will out.

The role of psychologists is to edify the electorate of how their judgment is impaired due to the ever-expanding list of cognitive biases and other pyschological shortcomings we all suffer from; in that sense I disagree with the OP that psychology is anti-democratic.

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Good OP and thread.

The red brick school house use to be in charge of shaping citizen / worker behavior and thinking. In that role, schools did a fairly decent job of producing literate, numerate workers who fulfilled the social expectations. A Marxist Classics prof at the U of Minnesota thought that the reason public education has been degraded is because capitalists had found better tools to shape consumer/worker behavior: Mass Media and the PR manipulators.

Advertising got underway in the 1920s, actively encouraging consumers to acquire stuff, (Your average householder back then, and later, lived in a small house with minimal closet and storage space. Ordinary people used to own a lot less 'stuff' so they didn't need lots of storage.

Democracy has always been a some-time thing: Here, there, now, then, this issue, that issue. But the public has mostly NOT been left to make policy without pretty heavy guidance from the elite, in one form or another.

Sauce Béarnaise über alles.

Ideally, philosophical systems are intended to provide maps to show the way out. In all organizations there are people seeking the way and some find it, even in psychiatry. — ArielAssante

Sure, there are lots of good psychologists out there doing good work.

The masses are essentially innocent in the hands of expert psychologists and mass-manipulators. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Well, do you want democracy or not?

If the innocent masses should get to have a say, why shouldn't the expert psychologists and mass-manipulators have a say as well?

Well, do you want democracy or not?

If the innocent masses should get to have a say, why shouldn't the expert psychologists and mass-manipulators have a say as well? — baker

If a nation has laws to protect the easily manipulated from a cahoots of the self-serving and devious, is that nation thereby not democratic?

You seem to be confusing democracy with laissez-faire.

Who exactly are the "innocent masses" and the "self-serving and devious"?

Different political options have different ideas about who those are.

For the sake of argument:

The innocent masses = folks who are easily manipulated

The self-serving and devious = marketeers working in cahoots with psychologists with the objective of making a buck via mass-manipulation


Protecting the latter from the former is just fine in a democracy. Not so in a society informed by laissez-faire.

The right-wingers say that the "self-serving and devious" are the leftists.
The leftists say that the "self-serving and devious" are the right-wingers.

They also differ in who exactly those "innocent masses" are.

So who is who exactly?

So who is who exactly? — baker

For the sake of argument: — ZzzoneiroCosm

If you want to discuss this:

The right-wingers say that the "self-serving and devious" are the leftists.
The leftists say that the "self-serving and devious" are the right-wingers.

They also differ in who exactly those "innocent masses" are.

So who is who exactly? — baker

...you might start a thread in the politics section.

Why do people seek their own repression under authoritarian regimes when it is clearly against their own self and class interests?

It must be clear to anyone with eyes that Reich's psychology of fascism applies to left and right equally.

Using psychology to manipulate is a betrayal. It exploits something intimate and innocent. — Tate

It is a betrayal of the whole of civilisation, and the whole of community, because it destroys communication, which is the foundation of every social enterprise. Money, at least paper money and digital money consists of promissory notes, and has the value of the trust that is invested in it. Trust is the primary value.


It is not just psychology, but even more so, philosophy, that has betrayed ordinary people by allowing moral nihilism and subjectivism to become dominant in society. The myth of the free independent individual, who does not need society because he has a bulging wallet; it's a joke really, because the bulging wallet is made of mutual trust in what without it would not even make good toilet paper. And with that paper the independent individual buys all the thousands of goods and services of society on which his whole life depends, from farmers, cooks, mechanics, plumbers, tailors, security staff, etc etc.

If it is clear, that even the very special people are totally dependent on the whole fabric of a complex industrial society, that has a medium of exchange founded on trust, then the betrayal of truth by manipulation can be seen as an attack on the very foundation of society.

And this perhaps answers the question as clearly as any psychological theory of sexual energy. Communication breaks down because the prevalence of lies means that no word of anyone can be trusted. One is taught to buy stuff not because the stuff is worth it, but because "You are worth it", whatever that means. One cannot trust the pension fund, the health insurance, the job stability, that the bank will not repossess the house, that the writ of law will run; the people that run all these things are unreliable and have no honour. The loss of communication and the loss of trust is the collapse of society into chaos. And in that chaos, one looks for a saviour who seems to speak the truth. Maybe it is all those Mexicans after all, there's certainly more of them than there were in the good old days. Or maybe it's the Jews. Or the nazis, or the communists, or... There is no condition more vulnerable to manipulation than that of radical loss of trust and the resulting paranoia. He who believes nothing will believe anything.

complex industrial society, that has a medium of exchange founded on trust, then the betrayal of truth by manipulation can be seen as an attack on the very foundation of society. — unenlightened

I don't understand how you're connecting trust and truth here at all. I might trust implicitly someone who is not telling the truth. The two seem unrelated. I wouldn't trust someone who lied, but lying is not the only, or even the most common, reason for not telling the truth. Simply being mistaken is by far the more likely.

I agree with you that trust is foundational, but its erosion is directly the result of a loss in trustworthiness. Someone who is untrustworthy might well be telling the truth (by accident, or because it serves their purpose). Someone trustworthy might well be not telling the truth (an honest mistake). I cannot see any way in which trustworthiness somehow gives one access to the truth.

....

It was difficult for hunter-gatherer tribes to join together - to form civilisations, because tribal society is ruled by alpha males who eat first and monopolize sexual opportunity. — karl stone

Literally every scrap of evidence I've ever read has shown the opposite to be the case. What ethnographies are you basing this on?

...

I don't understand how you're connecting trust and truth here at all. I might trust implicitly someone who is not telling the truth. The two seem unrelated. — Isaac

Yes. Trust is the default because we are born helpless and have to trust. And this continues to be the case even when we are betrayed. You can trust me that I have made the connection even if you cannot quite see it:- until you find out that I have made it up in order to deceive you, at which point you stop attending to what I say if you have any sense. Because the betrayal of truth has become so commonplace amongst advertisers, politicians, and the media, we no longer trust them and their messages lose their meaning. The language itself starts to lose its meaning. Paper money is a written promise that the bank will pay the amount specified, and if the promise becomes a lie, the money has no value. Economists call it "confidence". Folks have to tell the truth to maintain our confidence; the government governs be being believed when, for example it makes laws and specifies penalties.

I am saying, not that truth and trust are the same, but that truth is required to maintain trust. The foundation of society is in flows of information and mutual support that is founded on trust, and when there is no trust, there is no society and no government, but only mafia gangs and paranoid individuals.

Philosophers have thrown away thousands of years of laborious effort in building societies through the development of moral systems that include formal and informal controls to inhibit dishonesty and to foster trust. We cannot communicate without the trust that folks mean what they say, but we have to painfully relearn that sometimes they don't. And relearn also that the best response to this is neither to resort to torture in the vain attempt to force the truth from a liar, nor to elect liars to high office.

I cannot see any way in which trustworthiness somehow gives one access to the truth. — Isaac

Trust give access to another. Trust me, because otherwise nothing I say has any meaning; tell the truth, because otherwise nothing you say has any meaning.

The myth of the free independent individual, who does not need society because he has a bulging wallet; it's a joke really, because the bulging wallet is made of mutual trust in what without it would not even make good toilet paper. — unenlightened

:up:

Communication breaks down because the prevalence of lies means that no word of anyone can be trusted. One is taught to buy stuff not because the stuff is worth it, but because "You are worth it", whatever that means. One cannot trust the pension fund, the health insurance, the job stability, that the bank will not repossess the house, that the writ of law will run; the people that run all these things are unreliable and have no honour. The loss of communication and the loss of trust is the collapse of society into chaos. And in that chaos, one looks for a saviour who seems to speak the truth. Maybe it is all those Mexicans after all, there's certainly more of them than there were in the good old days. Or maybe it's the Jews. Or the nazis, or the communists, or... There is no condition more vulnerable to manipulation than that of radical loss of trust and the resulting paranoia. He who believes nothing will believe anything. — unenlightened

Well put. Reminds me a bit of Hobbes. The worst thing that can happen is a breakdown of trust that makes all labor unsafe. Why sow what I may not reap ? Why save and plan when soldiers may steal and rape and kill tomorrow? One thinks also of the plague in Athens.

In the US there's a strange terrible background of hate and yet for the most part the usual scene at the grocery store. So I like to think that it's still just a morbid minority that's completely lost that basic trust and therefore trustworthiness, since the paranoid can 'justify' extreme measures in the light of the misperceived extreme threat.