The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. — Edward Bernays - Propganda
Citing works of writers such as Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and Sigmund Freud (his own double uncle), he described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct—and outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways.[5][6] Bernays later synthesized many of these ideas in his postwar book, Public Relations (1945), which outlines the science of managing information released to the public by an organization, in a manner most advantageous to the organization. — wiki: Edward Bernays
Dichter pioneered the application of Freudian psychoanalytic concepts and techniques to business — in particular to the study of consumer behavior in the marketplace. Ideas he established were a significant influence on the practices of the advertising industry in the twentieth century. Dichter promised the "mobilisation and manipulation of human needs as they exist in the consumer". As America entered the 1950s, the decade of heightened commodity fetishism, Dichter offered consumers moral permission to embrace sex and consumption, and forged a philosophy of corporate hedonism, which he thought would make people immune to dangerous totalitarian ideas. — wiki:Ernest Dichter
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. — Tate
The fascism within us all. — ZzzoneiroCosm
But that light side - when its hazards are swept under the rug - can create a ton of darkness. — ZzzoneiroCosm
intimate and innocent. — Tate
The masses are essentially innocent in the hands of expert psychologists and mass-manipulators. — ZzzoneiroCosm
It's a ruse to call a society governed by mass manipulation a democracy. — ZzzoneiroCosm
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
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
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? — baker
So who is who exactly? — baker
For the sake of argument: — ZzzoneiroCosm
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
Why do people seek their own repression under authoritarian regimes when it is clearly against their own self and class interests?
Using psychology to manipulate is a betrayal. It exploits something intimate and innocent. — Tate
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
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
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
I cannot see any way in which trustworthiness somehow gives one access to the truth. — Isaac
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
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
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