"The Century of the Self" Part 1: Notes & Commentary

These are my own notes on Adam Curtis' "The Century of the Self" Part 1, which can be viewed on YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTarrgvkjo

"...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.

Alamiyah Institute : Tawheed Course 7/8 April 2012

iframe width 480 height 270 src http://www.youtube.com/embed/d9xDwkN7pNY?fs 1 frameborder 0 allowfullscreen> /iframe>

Habib Umar @ Friends House, Euston, 13th April 2011

To point with full fingers is Sunnah of Rasul(saw). This is the way that Habib Umar has always pointed, never with one finger.

The greatest gift, honour, pleasure, is to know you are doing what is Sunnah. To do other than following in the example of the Beloved of God(saw), is to be outside the shade of Divine Mercy and Love. It is the perfected example, so to follow other than the perfected example can not bring any real pleasure.

Gibril (as) did not come to teach Rasul(saw) the religion, but came to teach Umar(RA) and all those in witness, their religion. From this, it seems the only way that the Shahaba knew of the Baatin, is through Rasullullah(saw). Just like in our Tawheed, we know of the Uloohiya, Nabuwiyah and the Samiyaat; this third meaning things we can not know of except through what was transmitted to us through Prophecy. So if you are cut off from Prophecy you are cut off from the knowledge of the Baatin.

So how do we make sure we are not cut off from this?

We exist only out of God’s generousity and we only experience out of this too. Nothing exists or is created, or sustained, but by God. That is infinitely generous.

Four terms to describe he same meaning found within the human
AQL
QALB
NUFS
RUH

As one is making themselves more pure, their footing in the deen is made more firm and established. The beginning of this is their realisation/feeling of God knowing or being aware of their thoughts and actions. This continues until it becomes a state of the heart; a constant awareness. Then it becomes a state of presence of God being felt. This is Ihsan, worshipping God as if you see Him, knowing if you can not see Him that He sees you. So see, how we began with the first part of making oneself aware and remembering that God sees us always; till finally you are in the state of witnessing God’s Divinity everywhere.

There is no Tazkiyah if attempted alone, cut off from transmission of light. The Shahaba did not practice alone, they only knew of the baatin and only could be purified through the company of Rasul(saw), through obedience to him and exemplifying him as best as possible. Key to this light is True Love for God and Rasul(saw). The light is contained in the heart and only passed from heart to heart.
Knowledge you can find anywhere, its easy. But this light is a rare jewel.

Habib Umar gave the example of a noble companion of Imam Malik. He said he spent 20 years with him. 2 years learning knowledge, and 18years learning adab. After he lost Imam Malik, he regretted that he did not spend all 20 years learning adab, for he did not find that light again, but could find any other knowledge any time and any where.

Haddith of where Rasul(saw) is asked out of those who pray, who is the more rewarded. Rasul(saw) replied that the one who does more Dhikr has more reward.
Then Rasul(saw) was asked the same of those who fast, of those who fight in Jihad, etc. All of them, Rasul(saw) responded those who do more Dhikr.

So you can have two people doing exactly the same outward actions, but they can be receiving different rewards, depending on who does more dhikr, they will receive more reward.

Purification is not possible if the FARDs of Shariah are not observed. Beyond these basics is communal obligation. Reason being, that everyone should focus on perfecting their character. You attain the fards, then you purify and perfect them.

Through the Sheikh one gets to know his vices so then he can work to remove those vices. The Sheikh is also who you learn to remove these vices from; usually the Sheikh is one who has completed the purification process at all stages.

Vain glory
Ostentation
Hassad (Envy)

Mother of these vices is love for that which distracts one from God.

1. to work on these main vices
2. Sincere advice of bretheren
3. Being in the company of bretheren
4. See what you are displeased in others so that you can purify yourself of these vices you see in others

A sign of weak faith, is that you hate others who show you your faults.

What appears in the heart of a person in the face of receiving abuse? This is a test to show us the reality in our hearts.

Hasan al-Basri(ra), he was given knews of a company of people speaking ill of him. He went and took gifts to them. He said to them, “I heard you have given to me your deeds, all I have are these insignificant gifts to give in return. These things are temporal and will perish, yet deeds will last forever”. He did this to teach them and to turn them away from back-biting, as a reminder.

Another time he was asked regarding back-biting. He said if he had to back-bite anyone, he would back-bite his own mother. They asked shocked, how could you back bite your own mother? He replied that only she is deserving of all his deeds.

5 Meanings in showing Khushu
1. Present of Qalb
2. Pondering upon meanings
3. Magnification/Exaltation
4. Being in Awe, fearing rejection and hoping acceptance.
5. Shyness
Prostration of the heart from where it never rises. How can it rise, if it knows that to do so will be its doom!
Those whose hearts prostrate, the sign is on their faces. Various haddith quoted where Rasul(saw) says you can see the mark of prostration upon their faces.

Person of God invites to God, not to themselves, their opinions, their knowledge, etc.
We invite on behalf or Rasul(saw).
Dawah is not useless debate and polemics. One should also not be upset from people reminding us, even when we are reminding others.

3 things that make acts truly accepted.
1. Making ones intention sincerely for seeking God’s Pleasure
2. Giving the work/act what it deserves, in himaa, time and effort.
3. Consign and trust the outcome to God, so you don’t depend upon your own efforts, works or sincerity.

Say much Tahleel, is Rasul(saw) answer to the question of how do we renew our faiths. Then Haddiths explicitly showing Rasul(saw) commanding loud dhikr of Tahleel in group gatherings.

Sunday 21st November 2010 - Why Mudhakara should be consider FARD!

Asalaamu wa Alikum dear brothers and sisters.

I know in the past two months, I have wrong many of you.
Some of you overlooked this, some of your forgave even though I did not seek it even.
I have been in a wretched way for the past two months and it has only got worse and worse, until I submitted to going to Mudhakara last Sunday. Yes me, I who would hurry to be the first at lesson for the past two years without fail almost and then scourge others for not following suit. Such was I. Such was I, that I have not been but perhaps twice to Mudhakara in the last two months.

I have been in such a vile state, and no matter how much I study or do. Yes I have been doing much practices, lots of fasting, lots of extra prayers, lots of salawat, dhikrs, etc, etc. I have been studying two Aqeedah Texts, Classical Logic and Hanafi Fiqh. I have been doing more than most of you, have learnt more than most of you. Yet have become more vile than most of you. Why is this? I came to learn why and wish to share this with you all.
How is it, that I can know so much Tawheed and be further from Allah? How is it that after doing soo much worship, that my heart has become so hardened?


I shall now convey somethings I noted when at Mudhakara, yesterday, Sunday 21st November 2010.

Your knowledge and actions do not get you into Heaven, they don't get you anywhere, if your heart is not directed to where it should be directed. Yes knowledge and actions are the means, but they must be on the basis of a heart that submits correctly. What has your heart submitted to? With all the knowledge you have and actions you do, has your heart moved closer to Allah or further from Allah? Do you seek a change in your heart?

Satan has more knowledge than all of us put together, he has been in Existence before Adam(as) and he had done worship to Allah in every bit of space that existed before Adam(as). Outwardly he looked like the closest to Allah. Then Adam(as) comes along and the truth comes out. Every time he worshipped Allah, in his heart he proved to himself that he is the Best of Creation, better than all else. Then Adam(as) came and God commanded him to bow to Adam. How many of us seem like we are worshipping Allah and following Sheikh. Yet when Sheikh tells us to do something, we doubt Sheikh, or we doubt Allah when it seems like we won't get what we want for ourselves in life? Does our knowledge and actions feed the self that submits to itself or to other than itself? Yes we outwardly submit to Sheikh, but what is the real basis of this submission? Is it anything like the submission of Satan? Any trace of the ten blameworthy attributes is a trace of Satan in us.

You can't use your head to change your heart, other than using your head to decide to submit yourself whole-heartedly to a teacher! Knowledge and actions raise our status in the eyes of others, so is that what we seek? Otherwise you will go to knowledge and with such a heart, to gain pride and arrogance; because you go to it not for your heart to change. Knowledge and actions makes us feel we have some status, is that what we seek, to just be happy with our own selves? What about our status and station with Allah?

Anyone can study Fiqh and know it, but to implement it precisely constantly is a very high state that not only do many not achieve, but if honest, many do not want to achieve. Many want to pick and choose, they do not want to submit. I myself find myself in such a vile category of people. Anyone can study Tawheed, yet to be a person who is in such a state that all they witness and experience is Tawheed, and never forget Allah, this is Taqwa, this is the field of Ihsan. What good is Tawheed without Taqwa, without Ihsan; these are the real goals and fruits we should be striving for. But what stops us? Not ignorance or lack of intelligence; Satan has immense knowledge and intelligence.

This path, this Tareeqah hence is not simply a path that has some knowledge to teach you and some actions to show you how to preform. Seeking knowledge is deep, just look at the 7 Meems in seeking knowledge. These 7 Meems are about changing the heart. Action is a deep thing, look at the 7 Meems of Journeying to Allah, it is all about actions to change our hearts. The goal is to have this burning desire for Allah and to have a Pure Heart worthy of acceptance into Heaven. We know tawheed and we believe of course we have submitted to belief in Allah. We know Fiqh and do the actions, so we believe of course we have submitted, just look at our knowledge and actions. Yet what about what is in the heart?


What kind of a person believes that their knowledge and actions will get them to God? Unless you are broken and you give up your broken self to Sheikh, where will you go? If we can't submit to a teacher, how can we ever achieve our hearts submission to Allah? The goal is submission, not knowledge and actions. Once in submission, knowledge and actions become a true expression and embellishment of that submission. Who are we to direct ourselves as if we are not created in a state of absolute need and dependance. The Best of Creation and Beloved of Allah (saw), he replied three times that he did not know and could not do what is asked when Revelation struck. He then took Angel Gabriel(as) as his teacher and guide for his knowledge and actions. Even though he is above Gabriel. Yet one can see, that Gabriel did not do this because he is above Rasul(saw), he did this because he was submitting to Allah. Rasul(saw) did this in submission to Allah, not because he was submitting to an Angel beneath him. It was also to teach his followers humbleness and that the Sunnah is to take a Teacher, that even the Best of Creation took a teacher and did not teach himself. Tareeqah outwardly looks like submission to some man, yet in reality it is submission to Allah, as it is following the Sunnah of Rasul(saw). Allah says to follow Rasul(saw) and Rasul(saw) said that his Ulema are his inheritors, so follow the Ulema, these Ulema are those with an unbroken chain back to him, just like our own Sheikh. So we submit to Sheikh, because we submit to Rasul, to submit to Allah. If we do not submit to Sheikh, then we express rejection of Allah and Rasul(saw).


I have now studied more than perhaps all the bits of paper that make up all the lessons with Sheikh, I have even written more than that amount in notes from my studies. Yet it is not the literal pages, letters, meanings and lessons themselves. The real lesson happens in our hearts! This is what makes Sheikhs teachings now more vastly superior and important to me, than any other Sheikhs! It is due to that fact, that this little knowledge has a VAST effect upon the heart. These small usually disorganised, barely attended mudhakaras in Barking Community Centre, does enough to transform our hearts for the entire week till next Sunday. Sheikh always says, that Mercy comes down upon those in Mudhakara, yet we see not. We just seek the literal knowledge and the notes that we take. We see some of our brothers or sisters, who just sit there in absolute stillness and silence, taking no NOTES! Are they even listening we may think. If their hearts are listening, it is worth more than a ton of notes we take. Are our hearts listening attentively?

Sheikh says to read these lessons like a Love Letter. Anyone can do this, imagine your lover, be it Bradd Pitt or Angelina Jolie, whatever, etc, or the girl/guy next door, etc.
Just imagine they wrote you a love letter. How do you read it? This love letter changes your heart and the more you read it, the more the love intensifies in you. You get a burning desire for your beloved.
You want a burning desire for Allah? Then read these Love Letters from our Sheikh, and read it more and more, don't stop! Give every word, every sentence a long contemplation. Seek out every possible meanings for the sentences, what the author means and what they mean to you. Just like your love letter, oh what does he or she mean, and feel inside. Do they feel the same? Experience that! Then go to the Lover, go to your Sheikh! Ask your beloved Sheikh what these Love Letters mean!

So in summary. This tareeqah, and the goal in life itself, is Submission. If you do not submit, you are a loser in life. I am in loss dearly, pray for me for my submission and I shall pray for you and us all, for our submission, that it be true and sincere and accepted by Allah.
Ameen!

Century of the Self Part 4 - Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering Transcript

23 May

Century of the Self Part 4 - Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering Transcript

Century of the Self Part 4 - Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering - Transcript

Produced and Written by Adam Curtis

This is the story of the rise of an idea that has come to dominate our society. It is the belief that satisfaction of individual feelings and desires is our highest priority. Previous episodes have shown that this rise of the self was fostered and promoted by business. They had used the ideas of Sigmund Freud to develop techniques to read the inner desires of individuals and then fulfill them with products. This final episode is about how that idea took over politics. It tells the story of how politicians on the left in both America and Britain turned to these techniques to regain power. They believed that they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individuals. But what the politicians didn't realize 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 in a new age of mass democracy.

Century of the Self

Part Four

Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

The roots of the story lie way back in the America of the 1920s with one man. He was called Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud. Bernays had been one of the inventors of the profession of public relations and he was fascinated by his uncle's theory that human behavior was driven by unconscious sexual and aggressive drives. Many of Bernays' clients were large American corporations and he was the first person to show them how they could sell many more products if they link them through images and symbols to those unconscious desires that Freud had identified.

Stuart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations - The strategy he offered them was that people could now look at goods that emerging within the society and not merely view those goods as things that they needed in order to deal with some specific material want but also as goods which will stroke and respond to deep emotional yearnings. You know, how this bar of soap or this bag of flour will make me a happier more successful more sexually appealing less fearful person. Somebody to be admired rather than reviled. The powerful people in that world are those people who are capable of reading the public mind and giving the public what it wants in those terms. Bernays was the guy who was the foremost articulator of the theories which were driving this new system.

By the 1980s Bernays' ideas had come of age. A vast industry had grown up in America devoted to reading the inner desires of consumers. At it's heart was the technique of the focus group. Previous episodes have shown how the focus group was invented by psychoanalysts employed by US corporations. The aim was to allow consumers to express their inner feelings and needs just as patients did in psychoanalysis. The information was then used to promote and design new products which would fulfill those desires. And Edward Bernays who was now nearly a hundred years old was celebrated as the founding father of this marketing world.

And Bernays' ideas and techniques were also about to conquer Britain in the 1980s. Unlike America the ruling elites in Britain had always distrusted the idea of pandering to the masses. It was epitomized by the patrician elite who ran the BBC. Even as late as the 60s the popular programs were referred to as 'ground bait'. Their real job was to lure the viewers into watching more serious programs the elite knew was good for them. And market research reflected this attitude. Individuals were observed and classified by market researchers according to their social class from A through C2, D and E. When people were asked their opinion about both products and politics they were selected by social class and asked only strictly factual questions about what they thought. The idea that one might ask people what they themselves felt and desired and then give it to them was seen as alien to the ruling elites and to challenge their belief that they knew was best for the public.

But then in the economic crisis of the mid-70s British industries were forced to begin to pay attention to the inner feelings of consumers. As the recession deepened consumer spending fell dramatically and the advertisers insisted that the only way for companies to survive was to make their advertising more effective. And to do this they would have to delve into people's underlying psychological motives for purchasing. The advertising industry started to bring in Americans to run focus groups with British housewives.

The consumers were encouraged to play at being products from household cleaners to car seatbelts. The aim was not to talk rational, but to act out and reveal the inner emotional relationship to products. And then a politician emerged who also believed that people should be allowed to express themselves. Instead of being controlled by the state the individual should become the central focus of society.

Margaret Thatcher - Conservative Party Conference 1975 - Some socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a state computer. We believe they should be individuals. We're all unequal. No one thank heavens is quite like anyone else however much the socialists may pretend otherwise and we believe that everyone has the right to be unequal. But to us every human being is equally important. A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master, they are the essence of a free economy. On that freedom all our other freedoms depend.

Mrs. Thatcher's vision was of a society in which the wants and desires of millions of individuals would be satisfied through the free market. This, she believed, would be the engine to regenerate Britain. And with her ascent to power the advertising and marketing industries flourished. Their task was to find out what the British people really wanted and then sell it to them. In this new climate, the focus group flourished, and those who ran them borrowed from the techniques of psychotherapy to delve ever deeper into people's feelings about products.

Out of this research the marketeers began to detect a new individualism. In particular among those who had voted conservative for the first time in 1979. They no longer wanted to be seen as part of social classes but to express themselves. And crucial to this were the products they chose to buy.

Stephen Wells - Co-founder, Consumer Connection - We found that there was this trend towards what we called individualism where people still wanted to be part of a crowd but to express themselves as individuals within it. To have their own personalities, to be, I suppose, their own man.

Business responded eagerly to this new individualism and it soon became one of the main forces driving the consumer boom growing in Britain. Using the data from the focus groups, manufacturers created new ranges of products that allow people to express their individuality. Business also recategorized people. They were no longer divided by social class but by their inner psychological needs.

John Banks - Chairman, Young and Rubicam - If the primary need is security and belonging we call the groups Mainstreamers, if it's status and the esteem of others then it's Aspirers, if it's control it's Succeeders, and if it's self-esteem it's Reformers.

And this new marketing culture began to take over the institutions previously dominated by attrition elite, particularly the world of journalism. The assault was led by the profession of public relations. In the past PR had been seen as seedy and corrupt, but now it became a glamorous business promoting products and celebrities. And one of the rising stars was another member of the Freud family, Matthew Freud, the son of the liberal MP (Member of Parliament) Clement. What Freud and other PRs realized was that they could use their celebrities as levers to infiltrate their advertising into the editorial content of newspapers. The newspapers were offered exclusive interviews with celebrities but only if they also agreed to mention products made by Freud's corporate clients in terms dictated by the company.

Matthew Wright - Tabloid Journalist 1993-2000 - What happened with Freuds was you effectively got some kind of product placement or even product-- the manufacturers of products got some degree of control over how their products would appear in print. So if for example you wanted to write about Caprice's passion for stuffed crust pizza you would sign a contract which guaranteed that you would mention the firm Pizza Hut at least twice in certain positions in the introductory portion of the article and you would agree to run the Pizza Hut logo at such and such a size and such and such a place and of course that you would agree to run the enclosed pictures of Caprice eating her stuffed crust pizza. There was no choice about you would run this article as you were effectively told how to run the article in the press by Freuds. It's a rise of the corporate culture and the rise of business.

To traditional journalists this infiltration of advertising into the editorial pages was a corruption of their profession. But to Mrs. Thatcher's allies like Rupert Murdoch who owned The Sun and The Times, it was part of a democratic revolution against an arrogant elite who had for too long ignored the feelings of the masses.

Rupert Murdoch - Owner, Times Newspapers (interview from that period) - They hate to see someone communicating with the masses. They feel that newspapers, the written word is not for the masses. That should be left to television or perhaps to nobody. I'm very proud of The Sun and The Sun was not represented tonight in your film you just took page three which everyone seems so fascinated with, what about page one, or page two, every other page of the paper. That was typical piece of slanting and elitism by the BBC who after all in order to get viewers for this program put on a very sexy episode of Star Trek which I was just watching out in the room there. Interviewer: I don't think they put it on to get us viewers I think we are just lucky to follow them. Murdoch: They try to carry viewers into these programs, I know how it's done.

By the late 80s Mrs. Thatcher and her allies in advertising and the media had brought the desires of the individual to the center of society. As last week's episode showed it was the same transformation that President Reagan had brought about in America. Both politicians had encouraged business to take over from government the role of fulfilling the needs of the people. In the process consumers were encouraged to see the satisfaction of their desires as the overriding priority. To Thatcher and Reagan this was a new and better form of democracy. But to their opponents in the parties of the left they had summoned up the most selfish and greedy aspects of human nature.

Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher both embraced an economic philosophy that says the unit of judgment was not only the individual but it was the individual's personal satisfaction, the individual's own unique happiness and well being. It was in a sense the triumph of regarding individuals as purely emotional beings who have needs and wants and desires that need to be satisfied and can be satisfied unconsciously. It goes way back to the early part of the 20th century to Freud, to notions of the unconscious, the assumptions that in terms of our rational minds we are little corks bobbing around on this great sea of hopes and fears and desires of which we are only thinly aware and that the world of a marketer, the role of somebody selling something, including a politician is to appeal to this great swamp of desire, of unconscious desire.

The left believed the opposite. That the way to create a better society was not to treat people as emotional isolated individuals, but to persuade them to realize that they had common interests with others. To help them rise above their individual feelings and fears.

President Roosevelt - 1933 - Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

This idea had flourished in America in the depression of the 1930s. President Roosevelt faced with the chaos caused by the Wall Street crash encouraged Americans to join together in trade unions, to set up consumer groups, and to pay for a welfare system for those trapped in poverty. His aim was to create a collective awareness which would become a powerful weapon against the unfettered power of capitalism which had caused the crisis. That idea had driven the democratic party for fifty years. But now, Roosevelt's inheritors railed vainly against the effects of the self-interest encouraged by President Reagan.

Mario Cuomo - Democratic Party Convention 1984 - (speech) There is despair Mr. President in the faces that you don't see. Maybe Mr. President if you stop in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there, Maybe Mr. President if you asked the woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use.

Mario Cuomo - Governor, New York 1982-95 - The worst thing Ronald Reagan did was to make the denial of compassion respectable. He said you've worked hard, you've made your money, you shouldn't have to feel guilty about refusing to throw it away on people who choose to be homeless and who choose not to work. That's what he said. He said it with an elegance and kind of a benign aspect that disguised it's harshness.

That same idea - marshalling the collective force of the masses to challenge the entrenched power of wealth and business had also led the labor party to power in Britain after the war. But in the 80s labor like the democrats in America lost election after election as millions who had once voted for them switched their allegiance to the conservatives. In the face of this a growing number in the labor party became convinced that if they were ever going to regain power labor would have to come to terms with the new individualism. One of them was an advertising executive called Phillip Gould who had been a life long labor supporter. Gould believed that labor's leadership had become corrupted by the same patrician arrogance that dominated all of Britain's institutions. They denigrated and disapproved the new aspirations of working class voters.

Philip Gould - Strategy Advisor to the Labor Party 1985-present day - Labor stopped listening to these people. And I remember the best example of this was after the election of 1983 which was the election above all where the people's voices were just not heard. And I had dinner with a leading labor party figure who had been heavily involved in the defeat and his wife said 'God these working class people we give them an education and give them chances in life and what do they do they read The Sun and they just don't vote for us.' And there was such a gap between these people just trying to make better lives for themselves and the kind of elitism of the labor party there was just this chasm that had to be filled.

Gould became part of a small group of modernizers centered around Peter Mandelson. Their aim was to reconnect labor with the lost voters. To do this Gould turned to the technique that he knew well from his work in advertising - the focus group. Gould commissioned focus groups in suburban areas across the country with small groups of voters who had switched to Mrs. Thatcher. People were encouraged not to talk rationally about policies but to express their underlying feelings. And what Gould discovered was a fundamental shift in people's relationship to politics. They no longer saw themselves as part of any group but as individuals who could demand things from politicians in return for paying taxes. Just as business had taught them to do as consumers.

Philip Gould - Strategy Advisor to the Labor Party 1985-present day - And I found that people had become consumers, you know people wanted to have politics and life on their own terms. I mean not just in politics but in all aspects of life too. People see themselves as they are, as autonomous powerful individuals who are entitled to be respected, who are entitled to have the best not just in (goods) but the best in health and in education too. All this was about getting the labor party to understand that people really really really had changed and unless the labor party changed it would not win.

Philip Gould now set out to try and persuade the labor party they would have to make concessions to what he called the new aspirational classes. He was going to face implacable opposition. In the run up to the 1992 election Gould argued that the only way to win was for labor not to put up (raise) taxes. But the Shadow Chancellor John Smith angrily refused. Labor would stick to it's fundamental policies. They would fight the election with the promise of tax increases to create a fairer society. And as the campaign began it seemed as if Philip Gould was wrong. The traditional polls consistently showed labor ahead despite the conservative campaign message that labor government would put up (raise) taxes. Even the conservatives oldest allies in the press became convinced that by harping on about tax the conservatives were cutting their own throats. And labor party too was convinced it would win and finally return to power.

Those running labor's campaign believed that by modern presentation they would attract back the voters yet keep the old policies. But Philip Gould was convinced that labor was going to lose. Through his focus groups he knew that the very people that were telling the traditional pollsters they would vote labor were in reality preparing to vote conservative out of self-interest but they were too embarrassed to admit it. And John Major also knew this because his focus groups were telling him the same thing.

John Major's victory in 1992 was a disaster for the labor party. The small group of reformers centered around Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould were convinced that the only way for the party to survive was to change it's basic policies. But their ideas were rejected by John Smith who had now become leader. Philip Gould left Britain to go work for the campaign to elect Bill Clinton President in America.

Philip Gould - Strategy Advisor to the Labor Party 1985-present day - The 1992 election, during and afterward people felt under great strain and really did feel demoralized and dejected and to from this to the Clinton campaign was an extraordinary experience because here suddenly I found articulated many of the ideas I had but I myself had fully been able to encapsulate or articulate.

What Gould discovered was that like the labor party the democrats had also been doing focus groups with swing voters. The difference was that Bill Clinton had decided to tailor his policies to fit with these voters desires. Above all with their ferocious belief that they should only pay tax for things that benefitted them, not for the welfare of others. The Clinton team decided that to win they had to promise tax cuts for these suburban voters. And they also used the focus groups throughout the campaign to check every appearance, speech and policy with them for their approval. What Clinton called the forgotten middle class became central figures in a new type of reactive politics.

Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - Candidates for the presidency of the United States has been pre-packaged and designed for many many years. What was new was an attempt to use very sophisticated or pseudo-sophisticated techniques to plum the public psychology to find out precisely what the desires of the individuals were and then to come up with a candidate and a platform and images and words that exactly responded to those deep desires. This was packaging at a new level. This was polling at an extreme.

But Clinton's campaign team led by James Carvell and George Stephanopolus did not believe that they were capitulating to the selfish desires of the middle classes. Tax cuts were the price they had to pay to regain power. But once in power they would still fulfill traditional democratic policies and help the poor who had been neglected under Reagan, above all with the reform of health care. They would pay for the tax cuts by cutting defense spending and increasing taxes on the very rich. In this way they believed they were forging a coalition of the new and the old voters both of whom could be satisfied.

But the democrats optimism was to be short-lived. In November 1992 Clinton was triumphantly elected President. But within weeks his administration discovered that the budgets deficit was far greater than they had anticipated. At a meeting in the White House in January 1993 the head of the Federal Reserve told them that the deficit was nearly 300 Billion dollars. There was no way they could borrow more without panicking the markets and causing a crisis. The only way to pay for the proposed tax cuts would be to cut government spending not just in defense but on welfare. Clinton was faced with a choice between the old politics and the new and he chose the old. The tax cuts were dropped and he tried to inspire the country with the old democratic ideal of government spending to help the poor and disadvantaged.

Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - At the start of the Clinton administration many of us including I believe President Clinton himself reverted back to an older tradition, tried to lift the public to talk about genuine ideals beyond the individual. And that reformed agenda being not only universal health care, and child care, and dealing with the widening inequalities in our society, and homelessness, many things that many citizens - particularly middle income citizens just didn't want to deal with.

But the suburban voters who had been promised tax cuts were not inspired by Bill Clinton's vision. They felt betrayed and wanted revenge. Their opportunity came in 1994 with the congressional elections. The Republicans led by Newt Gingrich promised huge tax cuts and to dismantle the welfare system. The voters who had defected to Clinton switched sides yet again and the Republicans won both houses of Congress in a landslide. For Clinton it was a disaster. Faced with a hostile congress there was no way for him to get his reforms through. His personal popularity plummeted and it seemed certain he would not be re-elected in two years time. In desperation and without telling his cabinet Clinton turned for help to one of America's most ruthless political strategists, Dick Morris.

Dick Morris - Strategy Advisor to President Clinton 1994-1996 - Clinton was in serious trouble he had lost the 94 election, he had lost control of Congress, and he hired me to come back and save him. So he was basically asking me to perform roughly the same role as a life preserver would if you are drowning.

What Morris told Clinton was that to win re-election he would have to transform the very nature of politics. The crucial swing voters in the suburbs now thought and behaved like consumers. The only way to win them back was to forget all ideology and instead turn politics into a form of consumer business. Clinton must try to identify their personal desires and whims and then promise to fulfill them. If he followed those consumer rules they would follow him.

Dick Morris - Strategy Advisor to President Clinton 1994-1996 - I said that I felt the most important thing for him to do was to bring to the political system the same consumer rules philosophy that the business community has. Because I think politics needs to be as responsive to the whims and desires of the marketplace as business is. And it needs to be sensitive to the bottom line - profits or votes - as a business is. I think all of this involves a changed view of the voters so that instead of treating them as targets you treat them as owners. Instead of treating them as something that you can manipulate you treat them as something you need to learn from. And instead of feeling that you can stay in one place and you can manipulate the voters you need to learn what they want and move yourself to accommodate them.

To get inside the minds of the swing voters Morris brought lifestyle marketing into politics for the first time. He went to one of America's most prominent market research firms called Penn and Schoen and commissioned what they called a neuro-personality poll. It was a massive survey of hundreds of thousands of voters but the only political questions it asked were to find out if someone was a swing voter or not. All the other questions were intimate psychological ones designed to see whether swing voters fell into identifiable psychological types.

Mark Penn - Market Researcher for President Clinton - 1995-2000 - Well we were asking people questions like do you think you're the life of the party? Do you think when you see things you like to have a list and organize them? Do you like to plan things ahead or be more spontaneous? Where do you like to go? What sports do you like to play? What would you do with your spouse on a romantic weekend? So we were asking people some very personal questions about their own lives to see were the kinds of people that were likely to change their vote also possessing a certain kind of personality traits and in fact they were.

The neuro-personality poll allowed the Clinton team to segment swing voters into different lifestyle types. They were given names like Pools and Patios, or Caps and Gowns who were urban intellectuals living in university towns. From this, the team could identify ways in which they could make individuals feel more secure in their chosen lifestyles. Just as business had learned to do with products. Dick Morris called it small-bore politics. Tiny details of peoples personal lives and personal anxieties which politics never even thought about or noticed before but which now had become the key to winning power.

Doug Schoen - Market Researcher for President Clinton - 1995-2000 - It was an America that focused on day to day practical concerns - should I wear seatbelts, should I stop smoking, should I wear a school uniform, is my neighborhood being protected. It was not so much a new individualism as the social order as we had known it had broken down so we got into people's heads, understood their psychology about lifestyle, about values, what they thought was important, what issues they wanted politicians and the president to address. And these issues proved to be very very different from what the conventional wisdom had suggested.

As the election campaign began, Clinton revealed Morris's new approach to a shocked White House. All traditional policies were to be dropped. Instead he would concentrate exclusively on policies that targeted the worries of swing voters. V-Chips would be fitted into televisions to prevent children from watching pornography and mobile phones would be fitted into school buses to make parents feel more secure. Dick Morris also persuaded the president to spend his leisure time in the same way as particular swing voters. He sent Clinton on a hunting holiday dressed in exactly the Gortex outfits the group called Big Sky Families liked. The aim was to reflect swing voters lifestyles back to them. The liberals in Clinton's cabinet hated this approach.

Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - I would say Dick why have a campaign if all the president is going to do is offer up all these little bite-sized miniature initiatives that appealed to people desires like consumers buying soap. V-Chips that you could put in your televisions so children could not have pornography and school uniforms. Why talk about them, they're so mundane and they're so tiny, and he would say if we don't do this we may not get re-elected. And I would say what's the point of getting re-elected if you have no mandate to do anything when you're re-elected and he'd say what's the point of having a mandate if you can't get re-elected? Isn't the ultimate goal getting re-elected?

But Morris's new politics were an extraordinary success. Clinton's ratings among the swing voters began to soar and Dick Morris along with the marketeer Mark Penn took effective charge of making White House policy. Mark Penn set up a huge call center in an office block in Denver and every night hundreds of telephone operators called swing voters in suburbs across the country to check with them every detail of policies Clinton was proposing.

James Bennet - Washington correspondent, New York Times - The policy was made by a group of people manning telephones in Denver Colorado placing calls to voters in places like Westchester and Pasadena and asking them what they wanted from their government, and asking them very specifically about specific policies that Bill Clinton was considering. Would you be more likely to support him if he offered this particular government service or if he offered that one. Those people told them what they thought, Mark Penn transmitted that to Bill Clinton and it came out of his mouth. So essentially it was suburbanite voters, suburban voters in the 90s were creating American domestic policy and some of it's foreign policy as well. Mark Penn was polling on questions like whether we should bomb in Bosnia, things like that.

Morris also insisted that Clinton make a symbolic sacrifice of the old politics to convince the swing voters to trust him. In August 1996 Clinton signed a bill which ended the system of guaranteed help to poor and unemployed. Welfare would be cut back after two years in order to force people into work. The new system was called Welfare to Work and would he said be a hand up not a hand out. It was the effective end of the guaranteed welfare system created by President Roosevelt 60 years before. For many in Clinton's cabinet it was also the end of the progressive political ideal that Roosevelt had represented. The belief that one used a position of leadership to persuade the voters to think and behave as social beings, not as self-interested individuals.

Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - Dick Morris and the pollsters had won. And by that I mean the people who ultimately got to the president shared the president's mind were those who viewed the voters as just a collection of individual desires that had to be catered to and pandered to. It suggests that democracy is nothing more and should be nothing more than pandering to these un-thought about very primitive desires. Primitive in the sense that they are not even necessarily conscious, just what people want in terms of satisfying themselves.

And the same triumph of the politics of the self was about to happen in Britain too. In 1994 Tony Blair had become the leader of the labor party and the reforming group centered around Peter Mandelson became all powerful. Almost every night Philip Gould ran focus groups with swing voters in the suburbs, but this time he was listened to. The desires and fears of the new aspirational classes became the force shaping labor party policies.

Philip Gould - New Labor Strategy Advisor Election Campaign 1997 - In that period I was talking to people who used to vote conservative and were considering voting labor and they want it understood they are financially pressed and there are limits to the extent to which taxation can be improved, and they think crime is an issue that matters to them, they want welfare to go to people who deserve welfare not to people who do not. This was seen by many in the labor party as selfish. I never saw that it was selfish I believed that Dad or Mom doing the best for their families was not selfish they're just doing the best for their families, that's what people do.

Derek Draper - Assistant to Peter Mandelson 1992-1995 - The philosophy of the campaign is let's concentrate on swing voters let's focus group them to find out what they want and what will appeal to them and let's just relentlessly push those things in the election. Philip Gould was crucial because he gave the 'raw material' if you like for these politicians to do this kind of politics, in that when he came up with stuff they'd follow it, pretty much without exception. Blair himself would pour over these sort of twelve page memos and say well this is what we must do. Groups of eight people you know dinking wine and eating Cheerios what they thought determined effectively everything that the labor party did.

And although those running the campaign would like to portray the new approach as their invention it was in fact copied from the Americans even down to the phrases that the American marketeers had tested on their swing voters.

Doug Schoen - Market Researcher for President Clinton - 1995-2000 - Peter Mandelson and their team were in the United States watching what we did and copied almost verbatim our approach in their 1997 campaign. Mandelson is not a fool and if anything he saw something that worked and said why not do it. And I can remember reading their manifesto and thinking they just took it lock stock and barrel. You know on the one hand you're proud and on the other hand you're cursing.

And as in America labor was forced to drop policies that would not directly benefit the swing voters even if it meant sacrificing it's fundamental principles. The commitment to public control of industry which was enshrined as Clause Four of the party constitution was dropped. The aim of Clause Four had been to use the collective power of the people to challenge the unfettered greed of business. But now Tony Blair was faced with crucial voters who no longer saw themselves as exploited by the free market. They saw themselves as individual consumers who were fulfilled and given identity by what business delivered them. The new Clause Four promised not to control the free market but to let it flourish.

Derek Draper - Assistant to Peter Mandelson 1992-1995 - What new labor did was suit people who exert power in society not through the political system or not through the democratic political system, so it's big business, and it suits interest in the status quo and just off the top of my head you know those three things are what the labor party is supposed to be a counter-force to. What that means is big business get to carry on exerting their power behind the scenes getting their way because their no count of adding pressure because you know count of adding pressure is not going to come from eight people sipping wine in Kettering.

But those who masterminded labor's victory in 1997 saw it as a triumphant vindication of a new form of democracy. By understanding and fulfilling people's inner desires through the focus group they were giving power to individuals not treating them as faceless groups who were told by politicians what was good for them.

Philip Gould - New Labor Strategy Advisor Election Campaign 1997 - I don't see the focus group as some marketing tool I see the focus group as a way of hearing what the people have to say. And I see the focus group as a way to a new form of politics. 1997 was I think fundamentally important in that I think it is the end of elitist politics that has dominated Britain for so much of the last hundred years.

In 1939 Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew created a vision of a future world in which the consumer was king. It was at the World's Fair in New York and Bernays called it Democracity. It was one of the earliest and most dramatic portrayals of a consumerist democracy. A society in which the needs and desires of individuals were read and fulfilled by business in the free market.

Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations - The World's Fair created a spectacle in which all of these concerns were met and they met by Westinghouse and General Motors and the American Cash Register Company and company after company presented itself as the sort of centerpiece of a society in which human desire and human want and human anxiety would all be responded to and it would all be met purely through the free enterprise system. There was this sort of notion that the free market was something not guided by ideologies or by political power, it was something that was simply guided by the people's will.

This was the model of democracy both new labor and the American democrats had bought into in order to regain power. They had used techniques developed by business to read the desires of consumers and they had accepted Bernays' claim that this was a better form of democracy. But in reality the World's Fair had been an elaborate piece of propaganda designed by Bernays for his clients, the giant American corporations. Privately Bernays did not believe that true democracy could ever work. He had been profoundly influenced in this by his uncle's theories of human nature. Freud believed that individuals were not driven by rational thought but by primitive unconscious desires and feelings. And Bernays believed that this meant it was too dangerous to let the masses ever have control over their own lives and consumerism was a way of giving people the illusion of control while allowing a responsible elite to continue managing society.

Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations - It's not that the people are in charge but that the people's desires are in charge. The people are not in charge the people exercise no decision-making power within this environment. So democracy is reduced from something which assumes an active citizenry to something which now increasingly is predicated on the idea of the public as passive consumers, the public as people who essentially what you are delivering them is doggy treats.

The problem for new labor was that it believed the propaganda. They took at face value the idea promoted by business that the systems used to read the consumers mind could form the basis for a new type of democracy. Once in power new labor tried to govern through a new system that Philip Gould called 'continuous democracy'. But what worked for business in designing products led the labor government into a bewildering maze of contradictory whims and desires. For much of labor's first term the focus groups said the railways were not a high priority and labors policies faithfully reflected this. But now those same groups are now blaming the government for not having invested more money sooner in the railways.

Derek Draper - Assistant to Peter Mandelson 1992-1995 - The point about focus group politics is that there isn't one because people are contradictory and irrational and so you have a problem in terms of deciding what you are going to do if all you do is listen to a mass of individual opinions that are forever fluctuating and don't really have any coherence and crucially are not set in contact. So that's why people can say you know I want lower taxes and better public services. Well of course they do. You know you say do you want to pay more taxes to get better public services and people are less sure. They then don't believe that if they pay more taxes they will be spent on better public services. So you end up in this quagmire and the truth is the politicians have to say look this is what I believe, I believe you should pay slightly more taxes to make better public services and I pledge that I am competent enough to use that money wisely do you want now to vote for me yes or no. And that's what Blair has failed to do. Tony Blair turned around and tries to feed back to them what they already believe and give them what they believe is sort of an individual incoherent contradictory nonsense and that's all he has to offer. And then he wonders why people don't get him. It isn't that they don't get him it's that they're looking for someone to do something that they can't do themselves which is actually come up with a coherent political opinion that they might have faith in.

New labor are faced with a dilemma. The system of consumer democracy they have embraced has trapped them into a series of short term and often contradictory policies. There are now growing demands that they fulfill a grander vision. That they use the power of government to deal with the problems of growing inequality and the decaying social fabric of the country. But to do this they will have to appeal to the electorate to think outside their own self-interest. And this would mean challenging the now dominant Freudian view of human beings as selfish instinct driven individuals which is a concept of human beings that has been fostered and encouraged by business because it produces ideal consumers. Although we feel we are free, in reality we like the politicians have become the slaves of our own desires. We have forgotten that we can be more than that, that there are other sides to human nature.

Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - Fundamentally here we have two different views of human nature and of democracy. You have the view that people are irrational that they are bundles of unconscious emotion that comes directly out of Freud. And businesses are very able to respond to that, that's what they have honed their skills to and that's what marketing really is all about - what are the symbols the images the music, the words that will appeal to these unconscious feelings. Politics must be more than that. Politics and leadership are about engaging the public in a rational discussion and deliberation about what is best and treating people with respect in terms of their rational abilities to debate what is best. If it's not that, if it is Freudian if it is basically a matter of appealing to the same basic unconscious feelings that business appeals to then why not let business do it? Business can do it better, business knows how to do it. Business after all is in the business of responding to those feelings.

from

http://hareloco.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E7089CD7CF32AA20!254.entry

http://hareloco.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E7089CD7CF32AA20!254.trak