"...our minds were first studied not for its betterment, but for its enslavement.."
I am using transcipts to go through the film which are emboldened with the non-bold text being my own commentary. I may go off on tangents by comparing what in Islam I know of the 'mind & soul' and how one should live.
Democracy is supposed to be where the masses are able to choose how their country or state is run. The politicians are supposed to serve the people above all else. However, democracy is compromised, as propagandists and PR personnel use the media and other such mechanisms to manipulate the electorate to vote certain ways.
Democracy is meant to have the people influence politics. Yet with PR and propaganda, the politicians influence the people. Thus in this sense, the politicians are able to have the same perks of an authoritarian state that does not have to pretend to answer to the people, but the people must answer to the state. With PR/propaganda, the state is able to fool the people into believe that they are making their own free choices without manipulation, yet however they are manipulated into giving the State whatever it desires.
Secondly, through clever marketing, people's desires are controlled to purchase certain things and not other things. They are influenced so heavily by corporations whose only interest is profit, not people. Thus anything that is against the profit-motives of big business, is done away with. For instance, socialism, communism and trade unionism. Yet also things that stop people having to pay for things or buy things, instead to be more frugal and spend less. People can not be encouraged to save more, be more economical, independent and self-sufficient. They have to be made dependent on a capitalist commercial system, where they must earn money to buy or pay for things that they are not to produce for themselves, by themselves. Hence people are not allowed to share products, due to copyright laws.
These are very very powerful forces. Big Business and the State were the first to use the Freud family for PR and Propaganda. So something thought to be about curing and helping mental illness, was in fact first employed en-mass to decieve the masses to vote certain ways, live certain ways and become commercial consumers. This was the early 1900's that such things occured with Edward Bernays, but also Walter Lippman and Ivy Lee. So our minds were first studied not for its betterment, but for its enslavement.
Now when you have the masses of the people, influenced by the State and Market forces, the masses of people are then powerlessly controlled without even knowing it. Any who break out from this or fight it, are the minority and will find themselves having to fight with their fellow citizens that form the majority.
"A hundred years ago a new theory about human nature was put forth by Sigmund Freud. He had discovered he said, primitive and sexual and aggressive forces hidden deep inside the minds of all human beings. Forces which if not controlled led individuals and societies to chaos and destruction.
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.
But the heart of the series is not just Sigmund Freud but other members of the Freud family.
This episode is about Freud's American nephew Edward Bernays.
Bernays is almost completely unknown today but his influence on the 20th century was nearly as great as his uncles. Because Bernays was the first person to take Freud's ideas about human beings and use them to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations for the first time how to they could make people want things they didn't need by linking mass produced goods to their unconscious desires.
Out of this would come a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying people's inner selfish desires one made them happy and thus docile. It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate our world today."
The brain is in three parts, the base is the Reptilian brain, which is to do with sensuality and reflex reactions.
Then there is the mid-brain, which is to do with emotions.
Then there is the neo-cortex, which is where our reasoning comes from.
The bottom part processes much more immediately and with more direct effect than the other two, and the mid-brain is also more so over the neo-cortex.
So really, our sense frames our emotions, which frames our neo-cortex. Sensuality first, then emotion, then reason.
So yes, in reality, Freud is right that hidden deep within us are our instinctual base desires and drives. All animals have the reptilian brain for reflex, for fight & flight situations, for sexual desire, for basic desire to eat, drink, sleep, keep warm, etc, etc.
Then you have the emotional part, which builds upon this. Most of our emotions are dominated by relationships and concerns for ourselves. Relationships always have the hidden context of sexuality, of fear or aggressive domination. Our reasonings, usually focus on issues around identity and relationships, including with relating to the 'World Out There', as well as 'beings other than ourselves'.
Yet this seems to suggest that our basis is the irrational, the desires and our senses. This is based, as is Freud's theories, on an assumption of evolution. The theory of the brain is based on evolution, the basic creatures only being reptilian, then having ability for emotion, then the superiority of Man for having the most developed neo-cortex, hence Aristotle's term for humans as "rational animal", for no other animal is rational, for they don't have this neo-cortex as such.
Evolution
The neocortex is the newest part of the cerebral cortex to evolve (hence the prefix "neo"); the other parts of the cerebral cortex are the paleocortex and archicortex, collectively known as the allocortex. The cellular organization of the allocortex is different from the six-layer structure mentioned above. In humans, 90% of the cerebral cortex is neocortex.
The six-layer cortex appears to be a distinguishing feature of mammals; it has been found in the brains of all mammals, but not in any other animals. There is some debate,[1][2] however, as to the cross-species nomenclature for neocortex. In avians, for instance, there are clear examples of cognitive processes that are thought to be neocortical in nature, despite the lack of the distinctive six-layer neocortical structure.[3] In a similar manner, reptiles, such as turtles, have primary sensory cortices. A consistent, alternative name has yet to be agreed upon.
The above is from wikipedia.
So... this is very different from the Islamic perspective, which is that we are made from Angelic as well as Satanic. We have the 7 levels of the Nafs, yet
Freud here seems to be only interested in that which we in Islam would call the Nafsil-Amara, the 'Evil-Commanding Soul', or the lowest internal state a person can be. It seems that this is what Freud discovered and is the basis of his view of what humans are. As humans are defined as such, humans then have to be treated as such, so they can not be trusted with real mass-democracy. They have to be herded like all other animals; as they are still all animals, just a bit more evolved, so retaining all the basic desires and impulses of animals.
So just as Pavlov was able to manipulate animals like his dog through 'conditioning', thus so humans on mass can be 'conditioned' through propaganda or PR. Thus bypassing our rational neo-cortex, not appealing to it through reason and not allowing it to activate its reasoning ability, instead to more directly appeal to our emotions and sensual desires. Hence why SEX is such a focus for Freud, and hence such a focus in all advertising and a lot of propaganda. Same way, that fear is immensley used in propaganda. Fear is how you wage wars. Fear is such a basic emotion and instinct that when manipulated makes people forget reason. This is in stark contrast to many religious views on human nature, especially in Islam and Christianity where 'Man is made in God's Image'.
Now this knowledge, is shown to be firstly employed with disastrous consequences by the elites, the powerful rulers of the world. Goebells in Nazi Germany. Bernays in Capitalist Imperialist America. This filtered down to all governments. Even our own here in the UK. Our education system was devised by such people, who sought not to inform us to free us so that we can be independent free-thinkers and participants in a democracy, ... rather we are manipulated to play our parts in society defined by the elitist state agenda. Hence why we had the Tripartite System of schooling in UK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartite_System
Here the next generations of citizens were to be educated into certains roles they would play in society. The elites were protected, as to have any success of going to University or having a well payed job or a job where you were a manager, a teacher, doctor, etc.. in other words part of the political & economic class, you had to have gone to a Grammar School. Grammar Schools were very few in number, in comparison to the Secondary Modern & Secondary Technical Schools. So the majority would become part of the working class by education. The rich could afford to pay for their children to go to Grammar Schools and also pay for extra specialised tuition to pass the Eleven Plus. Even if they did not pass this exam, very wealthy and powerful families would not be denied Grammar School placements. Everyone else had to work very hard to pass these exams, and even then, if there were not enough spaces for them, they would not get into a Grammar School.
Now we have the Comprehensive System since the abolition of the Tripartite System 1976, yet Modern Compulsory Schooling will always be there as the first line of defence against the masses to protect the elite interests served by the State.
This is why in Psychology, you will not learn about how your education is created to make you ready for manipulation through propaganda and PR; to be easily herded into set roles in society.
The Freud family were so intertwined with the elite of the world. Bernays accompanied Woodrow Wilson to the Peace Conference in Paris after the end of WW1.
"Peter Strauss - Employee of Bernays 1948-1952: Eddie Bernays saw a way to sell product was not to sell it to your intellect, that you ought to buy an automobile, but that you will feel better about it if you have this automobile. I think he originated that idea that they weren't just purchasing something that they were engaging themselves emotionally or personally in a product or service. It's not that you think you need a piece of clothing but that you will feel better if you have a piece of clothing. That was his contribution in a very real sense. We see it all over the place today but I think he originated the idea, the emotional connect to a product or service."
This totally transformed all advertising and commercialism, indeed it transfomed industry globally in its entirety. This global Mass Consumer society is thanks in a large part to Bernays. So now, know this, whenever you want any product or service, know that it is most likely your irrational emotions and senses at play, not your rational. Your basic needs are more than fulfilled and you are part of the 10% of the World consuming over 80% of the Worlds Resources, creating poverty for 90% of the World. So snap out of it. Keep check on it. Don't watch commercials or adverts. Know that they are masterfully designed by experts, to infiltrate and manipulate your mind without you even knowing it; infact, they fool you into believing you are making your own free independent rational reasoning, when in fact you are doing exactly what they want you to do.
So before Bernays, you can see how richer intellectually, socially and spiritually ordinary people all around the world were, whether or not they were in poverty or not. As being a consumer was not the major part of the majority working class people. They could focus on community, on family, on bringing up good children, on religion, etc, etc. Now with consumerism, people are generally very selfish and self-centered; causing the breakdown of communities and the family en-mass globally. Even in the village in Bangladesh, with access to Sky TV and the internet, with Bollywood movies and music pounding their minds all the day, the old traditional family and communal values are dissappearing. Replaced by commercial consumer values of the modern day.
"What the corporations realized they had to do was transform the way the majority of Americans thought about products. One leading Wall Street banker, Paul Mazer of Leahman Brothers was clear about what was necessary. We must shift America, he wrote, from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man's desires must overshadow his needs."
So needs such as family, love, community, tradition, so forth, are all put aside. Unless they can become a marketable product to sell or part of a product or service to sell. Thus, without money and without acquiring goods, we are not happy or content. When previously, perhaps we would be content with happiness from family love, community and the reliability of tradition; which does not cost money, or need to be bought from a shop or require us to work/serve someone else to be paid so that we can acquire what we want. Instead, a man with his own farm can acquire all he needs and be content. This was the original American Dream in the Wild West. To have your own farm or ranch to live off of, so that you can happily then house and provide for your own family.
"Beginning in the early 20's the New York banks funded the creation of chains of department stores across America. They were to be the outlets for the mass produced goods. And Bernays' job was to produce the new type of customer. Bernays began to create many of the techniques of mass consumer persuasion that we now live with. He was employed by William Randolph Hurst to promote his new women's magazines, and Bernays glamorized them by placing articles and advertisements that linked products made by others of his clients to famous film stars like Clara Bow, who was also his client. Bernays also began the practice of product placement in movies, and he dressed the stars at the films premieres with clothes and jewelry from other firms he represented."
Here you can see how the banks, those who have all power over money, which defines wealth; funded the new department store chains. Also, you can see how inter-related it is all; advertising in magazines and newspapers, with product placements in movies, whilst at the same time using movie stars in advertising. You can see how this system is so comprehensive to control the masses and thus you as an individual. Modern sucessful newspapers can only survive now through finance created through advertising. Companies pay newspapers to place adverts. Most newspapers now get 70% or more of their profit from advertisement contracts. So then don't you think that the news that appears in the newspapers is also thus shaped by the companies through these advertisements? You can't have Barclays paying you to have adverts in your newspaper, whilst you having a journalist who is continually criticising Barclays for its immoral banking practices around the world. Many sports stars and film stars get a huge amount of their continuous income from appearing in commercials and adverts. If a star is trying to boycott Isreali-products, how much will this effect their income? So how openly do such stars criticise Israel in public? This is one example of how control works. Blockbuster movies like Transformers got the bulk of their financing from product placements and from the government or military. Hence why you have so many product placements and why the US Military is always shown as the heroes, why the Transformers are working with the US Military; etc, etc.
Transformers was able to become a huge trilogy very quickly.
Look at another example of a movie blockbuster. Avatar is also meant to be a Trilogy. However, it features very little in product placements and is highly critical of the US Military and Corporations. In the film, the bad guys are the Military and the Corporation wanting the precious Ores in Pandora. Avatar did not win many awards and is going to take a long time to have the funding necessary to create a sequel. See how the movie industry is this controlled.
"He employed psychologists to issue reports that said products were good for you and then pretended they were independent studies"
Even National Health is compromised, so as to control the masses for the interests of the elites. Indeed, pharmaceutical companies make and sell drugs the same way companies make and sell unnecessary things to the masses. Is this not a major conflict of interests? Well here Bernays employed Psychologists to essentially lie to patients and falsely create independent studies to back up lies, which obviously were not independent. How many other 'independent studies' are actually not so independent? Look and see how many health & beauty products always quote or refer to 'independent studies', or quote doctors, or dentists, etc, etc.
"There's a psychology of dress, have you ever thought about it? How it can express your character? You all have interesting characters but some of them are all hidden. I wonder why you all want to dress always the same, with the same hats and the same coats. I'm sure all of you are interesting and have wonderful things about you, but looking at you in the street you all look so much the same. And that's why I'm talking to you about the psychology of dress. Try and express yourselves better in your dress. Bring out certain things that you think are hidden. I wonder if you've thought about this angle of your personality."
Now look at your warddrobe. Look at your clothes. Look at the logos, the brand names. Look at how you feel and think about how you look in those clothes. Look at how you try to give out certain messages yourself to others by the way you dress. You want to look attractive to attract girls, not to disgust girls (remember sexual desire and how its in everywhere in the media, and its part of the lowest part of your brain and your nafsil-amara). You want to look cool in front of friends, not sad, boring, or poor. Everyone is doing this, without actually being conscious and aware of this. Look at people around you. When you meet a girl, look at what shes dressing. Does she value herself just by her body being something that men should desire to sleep with? Is that all she is good for? Or does she have pride and dignity, seeking to find a man that doesn't solely judge her and desire her just because of her superficial looks, but by how smart or funny, or interesting she is. There is a range of clothes for every person. From the superficial to the intellectual. Everyone has been made into a consumer.
"In 1927 an American journalist wrote: A change has come over our democracy, it is called consumptionism. The American citizens first importance to his country is now no longer that of citizen, but that of consumer."
This is very significant. There is a great difference between what is a citizen and what is a consumer. A consumer is powerless in comparison to a citizen. A consumer participates in society through studying to get a job, to get money, to be able to buy products, so that those products will make them look good in society, win over women and friends, etc, etc. A citizen is someone who is able to interact directly with the state, with whoever is in rule. In school you are not educated in democracy. There was a drive to make GCSE and A-Level Citizenship compulsory. However, many places are moving to remove this course. It teaches students what it means to be a citizen and how to act as one. How to do things like influence our governments locally and nationally. Yet remember, the elites don't want to be influenced by you, they want to be influencing you and everyone else. So education can not teach you about influencing power. You must spend your waking life having your thinking and your actions dominated by the thinking and actions of a consumer, not of a citizen. Do you know how you can influence Parliament? Do you know how you can write a petition to Parliament or write to your own MP or councillors? You probably know more about what's in fashion and the new phone, or game, or sports equipment etc, etc.
"Bernays soon became famous as the man who understood the mind of the crowd, and in 1924 the President contacted him. President Coolidge was a quiet taciturn man and had become a national joke. The press portrayed him as a dull humorless figure. Bernays' solution was to do exactly the same as he had done with products. He persuaded 34 famous film stars to visit the White House, and for the first time politics became involved with public relations"
I don't entirely agree with this, as I believe that the elites throughout history, have always sought ways to control the masses. Either through Tyranny or through entertainment such as in the Roman Empire, with such spectacles as Gladiator Arenas, theatrical play, music, poetry, circus maximus and Olympics. However, this is still an important point. Public Relations is about manipulating the public masses. Now in a democracy you are meant to make power accountable to the people. So you should have governments that listen to the people and serve the people. Thus the people directly influence power. Public Relations meant that governments influenced people. People were still fooled into thinking that they are in a democracy and so that they are free and that they influence power and hold power to account. Noam Chomsky has done extensive research into this, in his works 'Manufacturing Consent' and 'Necessary Illusions'. When you have time, you should watch "Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AnB8MuQ6DU
"But while Bernays became rich and powerful in America, in Vienna his uncle was facing disaster. Like much of Europe Vienna was suffering an economic crisis and massive inflation which wiped out all of Freud's' savings. Facing bankruptcy he wrote to his nephew for help. Bernays responded by arranging for Freud's works to be published for the first time in America, and began to send his uncle precious dollars which Freud kept secretly in a foreign bank account.
Pat Jackson - Public Relations Adviser and Colleague of Bernays: He was Freud's "agent" if you will, to get his books published. Well of course once the books were being published Eddie couldn't help himself but to promote these books; see that everybody read them, make them controversial; emphasize the fact that 'do you know what Freud says about sex and what he thinks cigarettes are a symbol of' and so on and so forth.
How do you suppose all those stories got out? Certainly the academics weren't spreading these around the country Eddie Bernays was.
Then when Freud became accepted, well then of course to go to a client and go 'well Uncle Siggy' see then that had some cache. But notice there, first Eddie created Uncle Siggy in the US, made him acceptable secondly, and thirdly then capitalized on Uncle Siggy. Typical Bernays performance."
So here you can see, that Sigmund Freud would not have become world famous without his newphew Edward Bernays in America. Freudism became a marketable product. Bernays changed the study of Psychology, through PR. This shows how education and even science, for Psychology is a Science, can all be influenced and manipulated by elite interests. This is why you would be studying Freud in Psychology. Now consider how much else in Science and Education is influenced by powerful elite interests. Is there an atheist agenda globally in science and academia? If you look at Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawkins, you would be suspicious. Who is funding and promoting Muslim scientists and academics? Science and academia was once central to the Islamic World. Whilst Europe was in its Dark Ages, or Middle Ages, the Islamic World was in a Scientific Golden Age. It was due to the science in the Islamic Empires that allowed for the Renaissance period to come into Europe, ending its Dark Ages. All the Greek philosophers were absent from Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, but not in the Islamic Empires where they flourished.
There is a great denial of the history of Islam and how it shaped the modern world. There are many documentaries and books in English about what the Greeks and Romans did for us, but only recently is there anything about the Muslim contribution to the Modern world. It is completely absent the very fact that we would not know anything about the Greeks, were it not for Islam.
"...Freud was becoming increasingly pessimistic about human beings...Freud began to write about group behavior; about how easily the unconscious aggressive forces of human beings could be triggered when they were in crowds. Freud believed he had underestimated the aggressive instincts within human beings; they were far more dangerous than he had originally thought.
Dr. Ernst Federn - Viennese Psychoanalyst: After World War I Freud was basically a pessimist. He felt that man is an impossible creature and a very sadistic and bad species and did not believe that man can be improved. Man is a ferocious animal, the most ferocious animal that exists. They enjoy torture and killing and he didn't like man..."
This is a very negative and pessimistic view of human beings. In Islam, we see Human Potential as Angelic, as Saintly. In the Quran we are told:
Qur’an Surat At-Tin: 4-6
“Indeed We have created man in the best of moulds, then do We abase him to the lowest of the low, except such as believe and do righteous deeds.”
Our beginning is praiseworthy, full of deep immmense value and meaning. We are also unique in each of us individually being made in the best of moulds.
We find ourselves in ever changing states or moods, and being immersed in an ever-changing environment. If value is only a self-centered, self-orientated measurement, then there is no stability. If perception of value is connected to other than yourself, the Giver of yourself, then real value can be appreciated. For things can only recieve the highest and most real value if connected to Allah, who is the Most absolute High and absolute Truth.
When this ultimate truth is disregarded, we ultimately forget ourselves and lose ourselves, as the primary perception is incorrect. Once primary perception, of seeing yourself created by Allah in the best of moulds, is correctly in place, then all other correct perceptions can be opened up. Otherwise all that you perciece, experience, embrace, understand, is all based upon incorrect primary perception.
It becomes like a bottle of pure natural mineral water, but with label of "I don't beleive in water".
The lowest of the low is the arena of trials, our role/purpose is belief and righteous deeds based on belief.
Cut off from Allah, we are restricted to being based on our needs and desires, but we do not have the means, the power, or knowledge within ourselves to satisfy these needs and desires entirely. Cut off from Allah, where can we find permance and eternity? Cut off from Allah, there is no peace, no satisfaction, no contentment, we are doomed in this world, never being able to be fully satisfied, as this world alone can not meet all our needs and desire.
Gratefulness for you being a great divine gift and 'best of moulds' will have a very powerful and positive effect upon your state. Say to yourself so you can hear yourself, that you are the best of moulds created by Allah as a Divine Gift to Creation. How does that make you feel?
We can have satisfaction in doing good deeds/action as show of gratitude and as show of living to the 'best of moulds' with a bit of pride in being a servant and slave of Allah; recognising it as fulfilment of being the 'best of moulds'.
You from Best of Moulds
You are Souvenir from Heaven and Allah
You are Gift from Allah.
Focus on you, and high status of you and Allah wanted this for us all.
Foundation of this knowledge is directly linked and derived from Quranic Ayat (verse). So know this throughout this; it is directly from Quran, meaning directly from Allah.
Now you can see, as an atheist leaving Judaism far behind. Freud was a very troubled and dissatisfied man.
Now more worryingly so, look at what has happened to democracy and freedom. It was completely subverted again by elite interests, who always wanted to dominate power, thus dominate democracy. See how this very negative view of human beings, born out of an atheistic belief in evolution, created disastrous consequences globally for years to come. We now live in a world that is a product of this, were the rich and powerful have only got more rich and powerful. Where so called democratically elected governments around the world, were able to do appalling things at home and abroad, yet get away with it, or even be seen as heroic and good, rather than sinister or tyranical. The slogan, "giving up freedoms for security" and the idea of invading countries through war to spread democracy and peace. It is such a contradiction, yet everyone buys it and even celebrates it. Israel is able to be seen as defending itself from Palestine. Imagine Apartheid South Africa being able to say it needs to defend itself from Black Africans? Or Hitler saying he needs to defend Germany from Jews.
"The publication of Freud's work in America had an extraordinary effect on journalists and intellectuals in the 1920s. What fascinated and frightened them was the picture Freud painted of submerged dangerous forces lurking just under the surface of modern society. Forces that could erupt easily to produce the frenzied mob which had the power to destroy even governments. It was this they believed had happened in Russia. To many this meant that one of the guiding principles of mass democracy was wrong; the belief that human beings could be trusted to make decisions on a rational basis.
The leading political writer, Walter Lippmann argued that if human beings were in reality driven by unconscious irrational forces then it was necessary to re-think democracy. What was needed was a new elite that could manage what he called the bewildered herd. This would be done through psychological techniques that would control the unconscious feelings of the masses.
Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations: And so here you have Walter Lippmann, probably the most influential political thinker in the United States, who is essentially saying the basic mechanism of the mass mind is unreason, is irrationality, is animality. He believes that the mob in the street which is how he sees ordinary people, are people driven not by their minds but by their spinal chords. The notion of animal drives, unconscious and instinctual drives, lurking beneath the surface of civilization; and so they started looking towards psychological science as a way of understanding the mechanisms by which the popular mind works specifically with the goal of figuring out how to understand how to apply those mechanisms to strategy for social control.
Edward Bernays was fascinated by Lippmann's arguments and also saw a way to promote himself by using them. In the 1920s he started to write a series of books which argued that he had developed the very techniques that Lippmann was calling for. By stimulating people's inner desires and then sating them with consumer products he was creating a new way to manage the irrational force of the masses. He called it the engineering of consent. (Walter Lipman called it 'Manufacturing Consent')
Ann Bernays, Daughter of Edward Bernays: Democracy to my father was a wonderful concept, but I don't think he felt that all those publics out there had reliable judgment, and that they very easily might vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing; so that they had to be guided from above. It's enlightened despotism in a sense. You appeal to their desires and unrecognized longings, that sort of thing. That you can tap into their deepest desires or their deepest fears and use that to your own purposes.
And then in 1928 a President came to power who agreed with Bernays. President Hoover was the first politician to articulate the idea that consumerism would become the central motor of American life. After his election he told a group of advertisers and public relations men "You Have taken over the job of creating desire and have transformed people into constantly moving happiness machines. Machines which have become the key to economic progress."
What was beginning to emerge in the 1920s was a new idea of how to run mass democracy. At it's heart was the consuming self which not only made the economy work but was also happy and docile and so created a stable society.
Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations: Both Bernays and Lippmann's concept of managing the masses takes the idea of democracy and turns it a palliative, turns it into giving people some kind of feel good medication that will respond to an immediate pain or immediate yearning but will not alter the objective circumstances one iota. The idea of democracy at it's heart was about changing the relations of power that had governed the world for so long; and Bernays' concept of democracy was one of maintaining the relations of power, even if it meant one needed to stimulate the psychological lives of the public. And in fact in his mind that is what was necessary. That if you can keep stimulating the irrational self then leadership can go on doing what it wants to do."
"...Freud who was suffering from cancer of the jaw retreated yet again to the alps. He wrote a book called Civilization and it's Discontents. It was a powerful attack on the idea that civilization was an expression of human progress. Instead Freud argued civilization had been constructed to control the dangerous animal forces inside human beings. What was implicit in Freud's argument was that the ideal of individual freedom which was at the heart of democracy was impossible. Human beings could never be allowed to truly express themselves because it was too dangerous. They must always be controlled and thus always be discontent.
Dr. Ernst Federn - Viennese Psychoanalyst: Man doesn't want to be civilized and civilization brings discontent but is necessarily to survival so he must be discontent because this would be the only way to keep you within your limits. What did Freud think about the idea of the equality of man? He didn't believe in it."
Now what one has to remember, is that during the Islamic Golden Age, the Islamic Empires did not have this idea of democracy we have in the modern West and there was not any such consumerism or consumptionism; though there was prosperity in the Empires. There was relative peace, progress and harmony. I would argue that this was due to the religion of Islam being implemented well and the Caliphate's general good governance, which was able to perform greater good than any democracy or consumer society. They were societies and empires built on the foundation of Islam, on the foundation of believe in Allah and that humans are to be responsible vicegerents of Allah on Earth. There was no discontent like there is today in our modern consumerist democracies.
"One of his (Joseph Goebbels - Nazi Minister of Propaganda) inspirations he told an American journalist was the writings of Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays. In his work on crowd psychology Freud had described how the frightening irrationality inside human beings could emerge in such groups. The deep what he called 'libidinal' forces of desire were given up to the leader while the aggressive instincts are unleashed on those outside the group. Freud wrote this as a warning but the Nazis were deliberately encouraging these forces because they believed they could master and control them."
Now here Nazism is seen as the fear of Freud come true in the worst of ways. Freud feared the frightening irrationality inside humans that could cause havoc and he saw this happening in his home country of Germany with the rise of Nazism. What I have issue with, is that Goebells knew this and was controlling the irrational masses for the greater good. Freud and the rest of the world would perhaps say, that Nazism is itself irrational. So here we have the elite power of Germany at the time, recognising how Freud and Bernays are correct, seeing how democracy does not work and how we need to control the masses. Yet these Nazis are themselves irrational? How are those who Bernays was working for any different? How is any modern democratic Western Government any different? Nazis in Germany would see it quite differently, they would see that America was being run irrationally by irrational people, as they had proven how democracy and free markets failed thanks to the Wall Street Crash of 1929; yet America still defended and valued democracy and free market economics.
"But although Roosevelt like the Nazis was trying to organize society in a different way, unlike the Nazis he believed that human beings were rational and could be trusted to take an active part in government. Roosevelt believed it was possible to explain his policies to ordinary Americans and to take into account their opinions. To do this he was helped by the new ideas of an American social scientist called George Gallup.
Gallup and Roper rejected Bernays' view that human beings were at the mercy of unconscious forces and so needed to be controlled. Their system of opinion polling was based on the idea that people could be trusted to know what they wanted. They argued that one could measure and predict the opinions and behavior of the public if one asked strictly factual questions and avoided manipulating their emotions."
Bernays represented the banks and corporations, who wanted their freedom and power back. They obviously didn't want to be controlled by government, which is what Roosevelt was doing with the help of Gallup. They believed in humans as 'rational beings' that did not need to be controlled.
"Big business leader speaking in an interview: "Roosevelt interferes with private enterprise and he's running the country into debt for generations to come. The way to get recovery is to let business alone."
But Roosevelt was triumphantly re-elected. Faced with this, business now decided to fight back, to regain power in America. At the heart of the battle would be Edward Bernays and the profession he had invented, public relations.
Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations: Following that lecture business people start to get together and start to carry on discussions, primarily in private and they start talking to each other about the need to sort of carry on ideological warfare against the New Deal. And to sort of reassert the sort of connectedness between the idea of democracy on the one hand and the idea of privately owned business on the other. And so under the umbrella of an organization that still exists which is called The National Association of Manufacturers and whose membership included all of the major corporations of the United States a campaign is launched explicitly designed to create emotional attachments between the public and big business; it's Bernays' techniques being used on a grand scale. I mean totally.
The campaign set out to show dramatically that it was business not politicians that created modern America. Bernays was an advisor to General Motors but he was no longer alone. The industry he had founded now flourished as hundreds of public relations advisors organized a vast campaign. They not only used advertisements and billboards but managed to insinuate their message into the editorial pages of the newspapers.
It became a bitter fight. In response to the campaign the government made films about the unscrupulous manipulation of the press by big business and the central villain was the new figure of the public relations man.
Voiceover from one such film: "They try to achieve their ends by working entirely behind the scenes corrupting and deceiving the public. The aims of such groups may be either good or bad so far as the public interest is concerned, but their methods are a grave danger to democratic institutions."
The films also showed how the responsible citizens could monitor the press themselves. They could create a chart that analyzed the press for signs of hidden bias. But such earnest instruction was to be no match for the powerful imagination of Edward Bernays. He was about to help create a vision of the utopia that free market capitalism would build in America if it was unleashed."
"Ann Bernays - Daughter of Edward Bernays: To my father the World's Fair wan an opportunity to keep the status quo. That is, capitalism in a democracy, democracy and capitalism and that marriage. He did that by manipulating people and getting them to think that you couldn't have real democracy in anything but a capitalist society which was capable of doing anything; of creating these wonderful highways, of making moving pictures inside everybody's house, of telephones that didn't need chords, of sleek roadsters. It was consumerist but at the same time you inferred that in a funny way that democracy and capitalism went together.
The World's Fair was an extraordinary success and captured America's imagination. The vision it portrayed was of a new form of democracy in which business responded to people's innermost desires in a way politicians could never do. But it was a form of democracy that depended on treating people not as active citizens like Roosevelt did but as passive consumers. Because this Bernays believed, was the key to control in a mass democracy."
History will show that Gallup and Roosevelt lost out, instead Bernays and his Big Business friends in the end shaped the future of America and the World.
