The Century of the Self: 'engineering consent'

DadaKopf

Did anyone see 'The Century of the Self' tonight on BBC 2? It was about this fella called Edward Bernays who single-handedly invented public relations and 'engineering consent' in the 1900's by drawing from the psychology of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

Here's a list of sites relating to him on google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&q=edward+bernays&spell=1

Though it's a programme about the self, I think it was a frightening indictment of what capitalism changed into at the turn of the century - from need to desire. It essentially pinpointed the connection that was made in corporate America in the 1920s between consumerism and democracy. Many people on these boards in different threads have commented that this relationship is natural - this program confirmed that it is entirely manufactured.

Another even more frightening comparison they drew was between America and Nazi Germany. When the New Deal arrived after the Wall St. Crash, it turned out that Roosavelt and Goebbels were both attempting to do the same thing - move the mob away from an individualistic nature and the market away from laissez faire capitalism and return both to an integrated society of civic cooperation and state-legislated economy in the interest of the common good, not the private. This generally involved huge state projects and a large curtailing of corporations' freedoms - however, it resulted in an ideological battle between Bernays's desire bound, mob mentality approach to control and Gallup's more trusting opinion poll approach (if the polls say they're not satisfied, then the government has to do something about what's gone wrong).

It nicely escaped rhetorical anti-capitalist drivel and made a very, very strong point about how capitalism, as much as any other economic and political system, is based on power and control and that the masses can easily be manipulated.

They were both fascinating points but many more were made in the programme. For those interested, it's on Saturdays at 8:00pm on BBC 2 for the next few weeks. I don't think there's a BBC website up about it.

mike65

It was a good programme, while it told me nothing I did'nt already know (or suspect!) about marketing, I was'nt aware
of either Edward Bernays or anyone like him being so
influential, still its just as well he was a capitalist I'd hate to imagine if he'd batted for the other side.

I like to think I never bought anything that I did'nt need! ha!

Mike.

Meh

I watched the first few minutes of it. I turned it off after they said that 1) Freud's theories of the human subconscious are universally accepted and 2) the use of consumerism for social control was a 20th century invention ("bread and circuses", anyone?).

mike65

It was my birthday on Friday and as per usual my mum bought me something practical , namely a nice new pair of Dockers Khakis
trousers, as clipped the tags off I noticed one of them had a fold, which I opened up to reveal the following-

NO RESTRICTIONS

Freedom is not something you are given, its simply a state of mind
so tickle the moment with both hands and see if you get a laugh.
Accept no boundaries, stand out from the crowd, forget rules and regulations, just do exactly what you want. Rise above the clutter, create your own space, get a different angle on life, wear Dockers (R) and do it on your own terms.

Spare us!:rolleyes:


A perfect illustration of one of the prime edicts of Bernays, namely associating a product with emotion.

Mike.

DadaKopf

mike65: could you scan that thing in and email it to me if you still have it, please? That's fascinating.

Meh: could you elaborate on those two points?

mike65

Sorry Dadakopf, I dont have a scanner - no really!

That was all that was on the tag plus a French translation.

Mike.

Meh

Originally posted by DadaKopf
Meh: could you elaborate on those two points?

Freud's theories are, to put it mildly, controversial.

Freud was a "cargo cult" scientist, who was closer to L. Ron Hubbard than Einstein...

To put it less mildly, a lot of people think they're complete horsesh1t. The program just unquestioningly assumed that they were true and took them as its starting point.

DadaKopf

Hehehe, and this is coming from a website called www.human-nature.com.

Of course much of what Freud said was nonsense but, nevertheless, he was instrumental in a radical and necessary overhaul of how we conceive of the mind and what it is, what it means to be human.

I don't think the programme actually took Freud's findings as gospel. If you had bothered watching the rest of it, you'd have noticed the programme put Freud into a specific historical context and whose theories about the self were to be contested by people like Gallup and so on. Freud's theories were a starting point and whether they're wrong or not, the overriding fact they have had a resonant impact on psychology from the 20's onwards.

Just watch the programme next week.