Social Engineering
Preview - Social engineering
Chomsky on Bernays and Lippmann
Edward Bernays
Stuart Ewen On The Consumer Culture
Social Engineering, The Growth Economy and The Rise of Populism
Preview - Social Engineering
This part of the Primer will briefly describe social engineering, a critical enabler of the consumer culture. Noam Chomsky used the term "manufactured consent." Ralph Nader referred to his "growing up corporate."
Just about all of us have been on the receiving end of the consumer culture our entire lives - the incessant advertising, promotion of mass consumption and the various sub sets of consumer persuasion. Baby Boomers like myself can remember in detail commercials and ads from radio, TV and print from many years ago. Buying, selling, consuming and making money to pay for all the stuff is the basis for our entire way of life - what we do for a living, our "spare" time, our relationships with others, transportation, communications and just about everything else, the consumer culture is all we know. A typical American lifestyle consumes far more than what is needed to be comfortable. But the problem is more than climate change and destroyed habitat.
We learned how to be part of the consumer culture at home, school, from daily life and from popular media. The consumer culture defines our lives, our world views and even what we think about ourselves. The consumer culture is a big passive aggressive phenomena. We see the ads of all the happy people but that message doesn't show the climate change, substance abuse, damage to public health and a long list of other problems that are products of the consumer culture. A constant supply of distractions has allowed many of our society's problems to only grow worse. Spectator sports and vanity shopping distract from effectively addressing all kinds of deepening problems.
To better judge the consumer culture, appreciate the harm it does and contemplate alternatives, we need to understand where did that culture of shallow excess come from and why. Social engineering gave rise to the consumer culture. We can give Edward Bernays a lot of the credit for envisioning the consumer culture, both what mass consumer consumption would look like and how to make it happen. Bernays was not alone with his world view from the 1930's through the 60's +, but we will use him as an important participant to explain the story. And certainly, where Bernays left off, others have only picked up the pace in more recent years.
A Short Intro
The simple critique of capitalism [also from other thoughtful writers] as described earlier in the Primer, the cartoonish mythologies, the external costs and non negotiating the American Way of Live are a nice start to question the System. Going further to debunk the System by way of explaining the social engineering of our society deepens the critique to better understand just how cynical and predatory the System is. The purpose of a deeper critique of the System is to provide more incentive and encouragement for a peaceful, healthy and widespread push back to reclaim our own dignity, humanity and care for the natural world.
Some people, understandably, would be pissed off to think they have been manipulated, taken advantage of and strung along all their lives by predatory economic interests. A look at social engineering can add to our own incentive to create alternatives to the consumer culture. Pissed off energy or any kind of disdain for the System can be channeled in a positive way - to help create the opposite of the consumer culture - sustainability and uplift.
We can review the past, consider the present, imagine something healthy and take action on behalf of sustainability and uplift for our own selves, our families, friends, communities and for the natural world.
Social engineering, as used in the Primer, is a scheme where a small minority of actors bring together economic, political and public relations power to shape the values and behavior of the majority in ways that benefit the economic and political interests of that small minority. The scheme depends on maintaining a dependable flow of products and services - the distractions - to keep the great majority from interfering with the scheme. The scheme depends on the manipulation of mass perception and values so people want all that stuff. We see and experience the results,,, people are shaped into behaving contrary to their own best interests.
The excess consumption of the US is looked to as a model for others all over the world to imitate. A movement in the US against the consumer culture can help encourage others to push back against social engineering and the consumer culture where they live, something like the global youth movement of the 60's that had some of its most iconic expressions in the US. Today's de growth movement is a strengthening companion for pushing back on consumption.
The Article
We have all lived in the consumer culture for all our lives. Its all we know. As individuals, we have been on the receiving end of untold thousands of advertisements since we were kids. Bill boards, t shirts, magazines, radio, television and now the internet. The consumer culture is delivered to us even more graphically with TV and movies with the promotion of big homes, big cars, celebrities with fancy lifestyles, product placement and red carpets with celebrities dressed like Halloween.
Even as a critic of the consumer culture and its celebrated over consumption, I was taken aback when digging deeper into the question for writing the Primer, I learned much more about where did all this messaging come from and why. I was vaguely aware of Noam Chomsky's phrase manufactured consent and Ralph Nader's term growing up corporate. I was also a big fan of the iconic book Your Money Or Your Life by Vicki Robbins and Joe Dominguez.
We are finding it is not sustainable eco logically and from this perspective, is not desirable for many social and even spiritual reasons anyway. Its difficult to overemphasize the importance of understanding how the consumer came into being and how that understanding brings us to the idea of paradigm shift.
Who can better explain economic, historical and political conditions than Noam Chomsky? An overview from an article Noam Chomsky wrote for Z Magazine in 1991 will make more sense if we first have a short look at the subjects of Chomsky's article, Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann.
Bernays, Lippmann and others articulated a vision generations ago that has played out with remarkable accuracy. They were colleagues and contemporaries for decades from the 1920's into the 70's. They are referenced in this account as advocates of social engineering but, curiously, they were both partial to democracy, with certain caveats, and both had progressive social ideals.
Edward Bernays was born into a well off family in Austria in 1891. His mother was Sigmund Freud's sister and his father was Sigmund Freud's wife's brother. His family moved to the US when he was just a child. Bernays graduated with a degree in agriculture but over the 19 teens, he found his way into the commercial world of promotion and advertising. He is best known for his seminal book, "Propaganda," an early account on shaping opinion and wants. [note, Bernays uses the term propoganda in the sense of meaning information, not the "Soviet" mind control we think of today]
In the 30's he ran a campaign to popularize cigarette smoking for women on behalf of Chesterfield cigarettes. He also burnished and sanitized the public image for the new, at the time, strongman of Guatemala who was installed by a CIA coup in1953. Bernays built an impressive resume over the course of the 20's to 60's including public relations campaigns for Ivory Soap, popularizing serving sized ice cream containers and promoting bananas.
Its important to understand, Bernays was not a simple advertising executive. His campaigns were to shape public opinion and perceptions. He was making use of his uncle's ground breaking theories of social behavior.
Also interesting, if not ironic, Bernays was not an authoritarian. He and others within his circle believed democracy called for men of means, character and intellect to be the policy and decision makers of society. The masses were considered in capable of understanding the complexities of managing society and therefore, it was their role to behave properly and not interfere with public affairs. Bernays felt this social management was a responsibility of those with intellect and good intentions and could be benign and democratic. Better to have honest and upstanding men managing society rather than allow less altruistic men gain position to influence society for their own agenda at the expense of the common people. Again, epic levels of irony, as if being smart equated with being ethical.
Walter Lippmann was a journalist with a career spanning 60 years. He was a Pulitzer Prize winner two times, highly accomplished in his field and considered by many as a pioneer of modern journalism. Like Bernays, he was from a well off intellectual family. He was a media critic with a great interest to reconcile liberty and democracy. He was an advisor to Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson. He was skeptical of the intellectual capacity of common people to participate in public policy and decision making and also a critic of his own profession, journalism in regard to truth-full reporting.
Lippmann compared the masses to a “thundering herd.” The best plan for society was for the masses to be governed by a class of intellectuals and experts, a “specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality.” Lippmann believed in democracy but a version where the masses do not participate directly, rather through the elite managers. But Lippmann also had reservations about the elite decision makers as not always up to the task entrusted to them. His book The Public Philosophy, 1955 went as far as to state intellectual managers were undermining democracy.
Chomsky's article in Z Magazine makes reference to both Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann. The article describes the role of the masses and the elites.
Chomsky explains how both Lippmann and Bernays define the roles of the two basic groups of society. The first group is small in number. These are the few and chosen who guide society and second, the masses who need to be guided. Chomsky's article is information dense. Chomsky begins with a quote from Bernays -
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized opinions and behavior of the masses is an important element in democratic society. It is the intelligent minorities that need to make use of propaganda [again, meaning information] continuously and systematically.”
Chomsky's quote is very similar to this one from Bernays's book, Propaganda
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."
Next Chomsky comments, “It follows that two political roles need to be clearly distinguished.” He refers to an extended quote from Walter Lippmann. “First there is the role of the specialized class, the insiders the responsible men who have access to information and understanding . Ideally, they should have a special education for public office and should master the criteria for solving the problems of society.”
Chomsky continues to quote Lippmann. “The public men form opinion and take responsibility for the formation of sound public opinion. They initiate, they administer, they settle and should be protected from ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. The general public are incapable of dealing with the substance of the problems.”
Particularly important to this article, Lippmann explains, a successful government satisfies the material and cultural wants of the masses.
Note, keep this last sentence in mind about satisfying the cultural and material wants of the masses. We will refer to it in a couple minutes. Chomsky continues to describe Lippmann's rules of order for the general public.
“It is not for the public to pass judgement on the intrinsic merits of an issue or to offer analysis or solutions. But merely on occasion to place its force at the disposal of one or another of responsible men. The public does not reason, investigate, persuade, bargain or settle.” Lippmann continues, “The public acts only by aligning itself as a partisan to someone who is in a position to act executively. The public must be put in its place. The public, the bewildered herd, trampling and roaring, is only to be the interested spectator of action. Not to be a participant.”
That's all I have from the article by Chomsky. Chomsky's article is 30 years old but he makes reference to opinions and writings from Lippmann and Bernays that predate the his article by half a century.
The Primer agrees a healthy society does need a coherent set of values and goals that bring people together. But this society's continued and directed focus on over-consumption and distractions is a virtual guarantee the masses will not be up to the task of governing themselves. Civic culture is not the product of spectator sports or celebrity hype. More of the consumer culture will only make most of our current large problems even worse. Paradigm shift offers a healthy and creative alternative to learn the skills needed for real democracy.
The vision Chomsky credits to Bernays and Lippmann is, of course, exactly what we have. Its a remarkable arrangement of social role playing they describe and even more remarkable how social engineered consumer culture fulfills their vision.
So how do the masses stay happy and distracted? Recall the the line from Chomsky's article. “The criteria we apply to the success of government is that government satisfies the material and cultural wants of the people.” This is important. Safe to say, not only does the successful government satisfy the wants of the masses, that government also is a patron and beneficiary of the social engineering that defines what those wants are and government also serves to look after the needs of the big businesses that sell the products the masses are taught to want.
Government and business are partners in crime.
That said, government does sand off some of the rough edges of capitalism but the social programs to help the least well off from roaring and trampling too loud depend on the wealth generated by the consumer culture. That condition does not bode well. A sustainable economic system will not generate the kind of wealth needed to help prevent tens of millions of poor people from becoming unmanageable.
The current System produces millions of casualties - homeless, working poor, drug abuse - already in the "best" of times. The historical downslope due to economic over reach catching up with the System will be less able to afford even today's modest social safety nets. Moreover, a paradigm shift society, to take care of its needs within the boundaries of the natural world will not produce anywhere near the financial wealth of the current System.
The best outcome given the current conditions is
1] Invest smarter in addressing the well known social problems
2] Engage those in need to play a greater role in resolving their challenges
3] Discontinue the political and economic conditions that create so many casualties
Paradigm shift can reduce the number of casualties by reducing many of the conditions that cause the casualties. Paradigm shift would approach addressing those casualties in a very different way. HERE are some thoughts on that tangent.
Social Engineering and The Consumer Culture
Our faux democracy is the product of a dumbed down socially engineered society. The masses do have a role to play in politics via elections, ballot initiative and other options but its role is limited because there is minimal consideration about finding solutions to our society's problems when the conversation is confined by existing protocol and thinking. The numbers of, "out of the box" activists among the general population is small. Paradigm shift can help move "passive consumers" to "active citizens" and ideally, make political inroads within the current System. Making those inroads is a tall task but there are many examples of citizen initiative pushing back on the Mainstream even with the confines of standard protocol.
A good tangent short story. Eugene has a local toxics right to know program much stronger than the federal system thanks to citizen activists in spite of much greater funding by the opposition that opposed a citizen ballot initiative. The citizens won. As a result, now in Eugene, more kinds of toxic chemicals used by businesses at smaller amounts need to be reported in Eugene than federal law requires. Over the years, use of toxics has decreased in Eugene. HERE is more. Still, many of those toxics don't fit sustainability. Very likely, many of the businesses that use toxic chemicals and report under Eugene's right to know program, would not exist at all in a paradigm shift society.
Another shot of Mainstream realism. Here is more historical content describing the onset of social engineering and the consumer culture.
Here are several quotes that clearly show the convergence between economic need, business profitability, social management and political expediency. These quotes from several sources over 100 years, show historical coherence. Those making the comments may or may not have considered the terms social engineering or consumer culture but all these quotes fit together in a continuum starting from the early years of the consumer culture and leading to the present.
1] In his ground breaking book Propaganda, in 1928, Edward Bernays wrote “Mass production can be profitable only if its rhythm can be maintained. The business can sell its product in a steady stream and increasing quantity. Today [in Bernays's time], supply must actively reach its corresponding demand and can not afford to wait for the public to ask for its product. It must continue constant touch through advertising and propaganda to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will keep its costly plant profitable.”
2[ Victor Lebow, a 20th century economist and retail analyst remarked in 1955, “Our enormously productive economy demands we make consumption our way of life. That we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, discarded and replaced at an ever accelerating rate.” Lebow was painfully correct.
3] Stewart Ewen, a progressive contemporary historian, author and lecturer on media and the consumer culture interviewed Edward Bernays himself in 1990. This is how Ewen, certainly with his own opinions, describes his conversation with Bernays. “Throughout our conversation, Bernays conveyed his hallucination with democracy. A highly educated class of opinion molding tacticians is continuously at work adjusting the mental scenery from which the public mind with its limited intellect derives its opinions. Throughout the interview he [Bernays] describes public relations as a response to a trans historic concern, the requirement from those in power to shape the attitudes of the general population.”
Another article dating to 1975 by Stewart Ewen deserve attention. It fits in perfectly with social engineering. The gist of the article is that in the early days of mass production in the 1920's and 30's, there was an enormous leap in the amount of stuff coming out of US factories. There needed to be a corresponding leap in consumption to keep up and keep the System moving.
In this article, Ewen provides an impressive set of quotes from his research that show the early conceptions of the consumer culture and social engineering. Here are some highlights from the article.
Henry Ford’s moving assembly line, invented in 1910 and its need for specialized worker tasks, set off a remarkable series of changes to a wide range of economic and cultural practices. Few at the time would have imagined the results, but some had an inkling.
By the 1920’s, industrial output in the US had exploded.
Ewen compares before and after the moving assembly line. In quantitative terms, the change was staggering. And this was only the early going of mass consumption. Here is the quote - In 1910,,,,” the time required to assemble a chassis was twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes. By spring of 1914, the Highland Park plant was turning out over l,000 vehicles a day, and the average labor time for assembling a chassis had dropped to one hour and thirty-three minutes.”
As prosperity and wages grew, new factories opened and the beginning of early advertising added more to consumption, this was the infancy of the modern consumer culture.
An increasing number of businessmen at the time realized there was an urgent need to find a new way to sell all the stuff that came off those newly productive assembly lines. A radically different set of nation wide values and life’s material expectations was called for along with developing the advertising and promotion to, essentially, train the public for its role to become buyers and consumers for the flood of products thanks to new techniques in commerce, investments and a booming economy.
A whole series of quotes from the early - mid 1900's.
“Foresighted businessmen began to see the necessity of organizing their businesses not merely around the production of goods, but around the creation of a buying public.”
“Now men and women had to be habituated to respond to the demands of the productive machinery.”
“By the demand of workers for the right to be better consumers, the aspirations of labor would be profitably coordinated with the aspirations of capital.”
“Within the vision of consumption as a “school of freedom,” the entry into the consumer market was described as a “civilizing” experience. “Civilization” was the expanded cultural world which flowed from capitalism’s broad capacity to commodify material resources.”
“Explicating his notion of the way in which man develops a sense of himself from infancy, Allport [another social commentator] asserted that our consciousness of ourselves is largely a reflection of the consciousness which others have of us - “My idea of myself is rather my own idea of my neighbor’s view of me.”
“The functional goal of national advertising was the creation of desires and habits.”
“Once again linking the rhetoric of freedom to the necessities of capitalism.”
“Advertising, as a part of mass distribution within modernizing industries, became a major sector for business investment.”
“The utilitarian value of a product or the traditional notion of mechanical quality were no longer sufficient inducements to move merchandise at the necessary rate and volume required by mass production.”
“One writer in Printers’ Ink commented that “advertising helps to keep the masses dissatisfied with their mode of life, discontented with ugly things around them. Satisfied customers are not as profitable as discontented ones.”
Overall, these quotes, and many others add up to an undeniable conclusion - our society is a fabrication of money making interests. We have been taught to have enormous material expectations to satisfy the demands of a growth based economic system. A pumped up consumer appetite for the masses fully compliments the need to keep the roaring herd satisfied with stuff and distracted from those making policy and decisions as the environment and human potential and capacity pays the price.
Here is a link to Ewen’s article along with his extensive bookmarks. https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/ewen.captainsconsciousness.pdf
5] Finally, a very short quote, attributed to former president George Bush [and several others] fits well with the previous salvo. At the first world environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, attendees from 192 countries came together with a goal to reach agreements to address deepening global environmental problems. Compromises were made, positions hardened, positions softened. With the US well known to have the greatest negative impact on the global environment, any meaningful agreement would require the US to make commitments to reduce its eco footprint.
With the whole world watching, American president George Bush put the debate to rest with the statement, “The American Way of Life is Non Negotiable.” The level of USA arrogance is off the charts. The message being, the over consuming American lifestyle is more important than climate change or any other global environmental or social concern.
The social engineering of the American public has been wildly successful. The consumer culture has delivered an avalanche of products and services. I have traveled a good deal. The consumer culture is a global affair but there is no where I have been, 35 or so countries, that can rival the size of the average American's eco footprint - the size of cars, the size of homes, the size of people. The US military budget is about equal to the next 8 largest country military budgets. Something like 800 billion dollars a year to protect those massive eco footprints. More on the military and foreign policy HERE
Social Engineering Conclusions
The important message from this article and the Primer is that our society, our individual lives, friends, family, communities and every day reality has been shaped to a high degree to fit the needs of political and economic interests that are often and increasingly at odds with our own and the environment.
Imagine, our lives and way we view the world and our own selves is largely a purposeful fabrication by entities with interests at odds to the well being of people and planet. Our society is product like it was made in a BF Skinner lab.
When I was in elementary school we learned songs that glorified and boasted about the wealth of Texas and the size of homes in Dallas. Ethical psychologists have warned their colleagues against using behavioral psychology for business clients.
The commercial messaging on line, on TV, print, T shirts, bill boards, product placement have been distressingly effective.
The consumer culture is causing climate change and a wide range of other damages to the natural world. The consumer culture and its growth based economic system distract and degrade positive human potential and our capacity to act in our own best interests. We are referred to and see ourselves as consumers rather than citizens and human beings, each of us with our own unique and positive capacities to make common cause with others for the good of people and planet.
Do I believe there is a small group of wealthy men holding weekly meetings to choreograph the global consumer culture? No. Do I think conventional politics can solve these problems? No. Capitalism has a self guiding logic with no self reflection or brakes and the political system exists to serve it [sanding off the rough edges at times] and the consumer culture has enormous momentum.
We do need stores, transportation, places to live, meaningful employment, opportunity, schools, culture, recreation and security.
The longer the current System continues, the greater the disruption when the time comes and it falls into disarray.
There is minimal chance to the current social/economic/political System will reform itself. At the same time, that System has provided us with enormous assets and tools to make use of for creating a healthy and uplifted preferred future. Our best hope is to build positive alternatives in our own lives, with friend, neighbors, into the neighborhood and community, making common cause with others, grow that movement and increase its scale so it peacefully replaces the current System.
Or at least, have as many positive elements and examples in place and do the best we can as the current Mainstream comes in for a rough landing. The more people engaged in paradigm shift and sharing what they are learning with the wider world the better, no matter what.
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Preview - Social engineering
Chomsky on Bernays and Lippmann
Edward Bernays
Stuart Ewen On The Consumer Culture
Social Engineering, The Growth Economy and The Rise of Populism
Preview - Social Engineering
This part of the Primer will briefly describe social engineering, a critical enabler of the consumer culture. Noam Chomsky used the term "manufactured consent." Ralph Nader referred to his "growing up corporate."
Just about all of us have been on the receiving end of the consumer culture our entire lives - the incessant advertising, promotion of mass consumption and the various sub sets of consumer persuasion. Baby Boomers like myself can remember in detail commercials and ads from radio, TV and print from many years ago. Buying, selling, consuming and making money to pay for all the stuff is the basis for our entire way of life - what we do for a living, our "spare" time, our relationships with others, transportation, communications and just about everything else, the consumer culture is all we know. A typical American lifestyle consumes far more than what is needed to be comfortable. But the problem is more than climate change and destroyed habitat.
We learned how to be part of the consumer culture at home, school, from daily life and from popular media. The consumer culture defines our lives, our world views and even what we think about ourselves. The consumer culture is a big passive aggressive phenomena. We see the ads of all the happy people but that message doesn't show the climate change, substance abuse, damage to public health and a long list of other problems that are products of the consumer culture. A constant supply of distractions has allowed many of our society's problems to only grow worse. Spectator sports and vanity shopping distract from effectively addressing all kinds of deepening problems.
To better judge the consumer culture, appreciate the harm it does and contemplate alternatives, we need to understand where did that culture of shallow excess come from and why. Social engineering gave rise to the consumer culture. We can give Edward Bernays a lot of the credit for envisioning the consumer culture, both what mass consumer consumption would look like and how to make it happen. Bernays was not alone with his world view from the 1930's through the 60's +, but we will use him as an important participant to explain the story. And certainly, where Bernays left off, others have only picked up the pace in more recent years.
A Short Intro
The simple critique of capitalism [also from other thoughtful writers] as described earlier in the Primer, the cartoonish mythologies, the external costs and non negotiating the American Way of Live are a nice start to question the System. Going further to debunk the System by way of explaining the social engineering of our society deepens the critique to better understand just how cynical and predatory the System is. The purpose of a deeper critique of the System is to provide more incentive and encouragement for a peaceful, healthy and widespread push back to reclaim our own dignity, humanity and care for the natural world.
Some people, understandably, would be pissed off to think they have been manipulated, taken advantage of and strung along all their lives by predatory economic interests. A look at social engineering can add to our own incentive to create alternatives to the consumer culture. Pissed off energy or any kind of disdain for the System can be channeled in a positive way - to help create the opposite of the consumer culture - sustainability and uplift.
We can review the past, consider the present, imagine something healthy and take action on behalf of sustainability and uplift for our own selves, our families, friends, communities and for the natural world.
Social engineering, as used in the Primer, is a scheme where a small minority of actors bring together economic, political and public relations power to shape the values and behavior of the majority in ways that benefit the economic and political interests of that small minority. The scheme depends on maintaining a dependable flow of products and services - the distractions - to keep the great majority from interfering with the scheme. The scheme depends on the manipulation of mass perception and values so people want all that stuff. We see and experience the results,,, people are shaped into behaving contrary to their own best interests.
The excess consumption of the US is looked to as a model for others all over the world to imitate. A movement in the US against the consumer culture can help encourage others to push back against social engineering and the consumer culture where they live, something like the global youth movement of the 60's that had some of its most iconic expressions in the US. Today's de growth movement is a strengthening companion for pushing back on consumption.
The Article
We have all lived in the consumer culture for all our lives. Its all we know. As individuals, we have been on the receiving end of untold thousands of advertisements since we were kids. Bill boards, t shirts, magazines, radio, television and now the internet. The consumer culture is delivered to us even more graphically with TV and movies with the promotion of big homes, big cars, celebrities with fancy lifestyles, product placement and red carpets with celebrities dressed like Halloween.
Even as a critic of the consumer culture and its celebrated over consumption, I was taken aback when digging deeper into the question for writing the Primer, I learned much more about where did all this messaging come from and why. I was vaguely aware of Noam Chomsky's phrase manufactured consent and Ralph Nader's term growing up corporate. I was also a big fan of the iconic book Your Money Or Your Life by Vicki Robbins and Joe Dominguez.
We are finding it is not sustainable eco logically and from this perspective, is not desirable for many social and even spiritual reasons anyway. Its difficult to overemphasize the importance of understanding how the consumer came into being and how that understanding brings us to the idea of paradigm shift.
Who can better explain economic, historical and political conditions than Noam Chomsky? An overview from an article Noam Chomsky wrote for Z Magazine in 1991 will make more sense if we first have a short look at the subjects of Chomsky's article, Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann.
Bernays, Lippmann and others articulated a vision generations ago that has played out with remarkable accuracy. They were colleagues and contemporaries for decades from the 1920's into the 70's. They are referenced in this account as advocates of social engineering but, curiously, they were both partial to democracy, with certain caveats, and both had progressive social ideals.
Edward Bernays was born into a well off family in Austria in 1891. His mother was Sigmund Freud's sister and his father was Sigmund Freud's wife's brother. His family moved to the US when he was just a child. Bernays graduated with a degree in agriculture but over the 19 teens, he found his way into the commercial world of promotion and advertising. He is best known for his seminal book, "Propaganda," an early account on shaping opinion and wants. [note, Bernays uses the term propoganda in the sense of meaning information, not the "Soviet" mind control we think of today]
In the 30's he ran a campaign to popularize cigarette smoking for women on behalf of Chesterfield cigarettes. He also burnished and sanitized the public image for the new, at the time, strongman of Guatemala who was installed by a CIA coup in1953. Bernays built an impressive resume over the course of the 20's to 60's including public relations campaigns for Ivory Soap, popularizing serving sized ice cream containers and promoting bananas.
Its important to understand, Bernays was not a simple advertising executive. His campaigns were to shape public opinion and perceptions. He was making use of his uncle's ground breaking theories of social behavior.
Also interesting, if not ironic, Bernays was not an authoritarian. He and others within his circle believed democracy called for men of means, character and intellect to be the policy and decision makers of society. The masses were considered in capable of understanding the complexities of managing society and therefore, it was their role to behave properly and not interfere with public affairs. Bernays felt this social management was a responsibility of those with intellect and good intentions and could be benign and democratic. Better to have honest and upstanding men managing society rather than allow less altruistic men gain position to influence society for their own agenda at the expense of the common people. Again, epic levels of irony, as if being smart equated with being ethical.
Walter Lippmann was a journalist with a career spanning 60 years. He was a Pulitzer Prize winner two times, highly accomplished in his field and considered by many as a pioneer of modern journalism. Like Bernays, he was from a well off intellectual family. He was a media critic with a great interest to reconcile liberty and democracy. He was an advisor to Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson. He was skeptical of the intellectual capacity of common people to participate in public policy and decision making and also a critic of his own profession, journalism in regard to truth-full reporting.
Lippmann compared the masses to a “thundering herd.” The best plan for society was for the masses to be governed by a class of intellectuals and experts, a “specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality.” Lippmann believed in democracy but a version where the masses do not participate directly, rather through the elite managers. But Lippmann also had reservations about the elite decision makers as not always up to the task entrusted to them. His book The Public Philosophy, 1955 went as far as to state intellectual managers were undermining democracy.
Chomsky's article in Z Magazine makes reference to both Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann. The article describes the role of the masses and the elites.
Chomsky explains how both Lippmann and Bernays define the roles of the two basic groups of society. The first group is small in number. These are the few and chosen who guide society and second, the masses who need to be guided. Chomsky's article is information dense. Chomsky begins with a quote from Bernays -
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized opinions and behavior of the masses is an important element in democratic society. It is the intelligent minorities that need to make use of propaganda [again, meaning information] continuously and systematically.”
Chomsky's quote is very similar to this one from Bernays's book, Propaganda
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."
Next Chomsky comments, “It follows that two political roles need to be clearly distinguished.” He refers to an extended quote from Walter Lippmann. “First there is the role of the specialized class, the insiders the responsible men who have access to information and understanding . Ideally, they should have a special education for public office and should master the criteria for solving the problems of society.”
Chomsky continues to quote Lippmann. “The public men form opinion and take responsibility for the formation of sound public opinion. They initiate, they administer, they settle and should be protected from ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. The general public are incapable of dealing with the substance of the problems.”
Particularly important to this article, Lippmann explains, a successful government satisfies the material and cultural wants of the masses.
Note, keep this last sentence in mind about satisfying the cultural and material wants of the masses. We will refer to it in a couple minutes. Chomsky continues to describe Lippmann's rules of order for the general public.
“It is not for the public to pass judgement on the intrinsic merits of an issue or to offer analysis or solutions. But merely on occasion to place its force at the disposal of one or another of responsible men. The public does not reason, investigate, persuade, bargain or settle.” Lippmann continues, “The public acts only by aligning itself as a partisan to someone who is in a position to act executively. The public must be put in its place. The public, the bewildered herd, trampling and roaring, is only to be the interested spectator of action. Not to be a participant.”
That's all I have from the article by Chomsky. Chomsky's article is 30 years old but he makes reference to opinions and writings from Lippmann and Bernays that predate the his article by half a century.
The Primer agrees a healthy society does need a coherent set of values and goals that bring people together. But this society's continued and directed focus on over-consumption and distractions is a virtual guarantee the masses will not be up to the task of governing themselves. Civic culture is not the product of spectator sports or celebrity hype. More of the consumer culture will only make most of our current large problems even worse. Paradigm shift offers a healthy and creative alternative to learn the skills needed for real democracy.
The vision Chomsky credits to Bernays and Lippmann is, of course, exactly what we have. Its a remarkable arrangement of social role playing they describe and even more remarkable how social engineered consumer culture fulfills their vision.
So how do the masses stay happy and distracted? Recall the the line from Chomsky's article. “The criteria we apply to the success of government is that government satisfies the material and cultural wants of the people.” This is important. Safe to say, not only does the successful government satisfy the wants of the masses, that government also is a patron and beneficiary of the social engineering that defines what those wants are and government also serves to look after the needs of the big businesses that sell the products the masses are taught to want.
Government and business are partners in crime.
That said, government does sand off some of the rough edges of capitalism but the social programs to help the least well off from roaring and trampling too loud depend on the wealth generated by the consumer culture. That condition does not bode well. A sustainable economic system will not generate the kind of wealth needed to help prevent tens of millions of poor people from becoming unmanageable.
The current System produces millions of casualties - homeless, working poor, drug abuse - already in the "best" of times. The historical downslope due to economic over reach catching up with the System will be less able to afford even today's modest social safety nets. Moreover, a paradigm shift society, to take care of its needs within the boundaries of the natural world will not produce anywhere near the financial wealth of the current System.
The best outcome given the current conditions is
1] Invest smarter in addressing the well known social problems
2] Engage those in need to play a greater role in resolving their challenges
3] Discontinue the political and economic conditions that create so many casualties
Paradigm shift can reduce the number of casualties by reducing many of the conditions that cause the casualties. Paradigm shift would approach addressing those casualties in a very different way. HERE are some thoughts on that tangent.
Social Engineering and The Consumer Culture
Our faux democracy is the product of a dumbed down socially engineered society. The masses do have a role to play in politics via elections, ballot initiative and other options but its role is limited because there is minimal consideration about finding solutions to our society's problems when the conversation is confined by existing protocol and thinking. The numbers of, "out of the box" activists among the general population is small. Paradigm shift can help move "passive consumers" to "active citizens" and ideally, make political inroads within the current System. Making those inroads is a tall task but there are many examples of citizen initiative pushing back on the Mainstream even with the confines of standard protocol.
A good tangent short story. Eugene has a local toxics right to know program much stronger than the federal system thanks to citizen activists in spite of much greater funding by the opposition that opposed a citizen ballot initiative. The citizens won. As a result, now in Eugene, more kinds of toxic chemicals used by businesses at smaller amounts need to be reported in Eugene than federal law requires. Over the years, use of toxics has decreased in Eugene. HERE is more. Still, many of those toxics don't fit sustainability. Very likely, many of the businesses that use toxic chemicals and report under Eugene's right to know program, would not exist at all in a paradigm shift society.
Another shot of Mainstream realism. Here is more historical content describing the onset of social engineering and the consumer culture.
Here are several quotes that clearly show the convergence between economic need, business profitability, social management and political expediency. These quotes from several sources over 100 years, show historical coherence. Those making the comments may or may not have considered the terms social engineering or consumer culture but all these quotes fit together in a continuum starting from the early years of the consumer culture and leading to the present.
1] In his ground breaking book Propaganda, in 1928, Edward Bernays wrote “Mass production can be profitable only if its rhythm can be maintained. The business can sell its product in a steady stream and increasing quantity. Today [in Bernays's time], supply must actively reach its corresponding demand and can not afford to wait for the public to ask for its product. It must continue constant touch through advertising and propaganda to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will keep its costly plant profitable.”
2[ Victor Lebow, a 20th century economist and retail analyst remarked in 1955, “Our enormously productive economy demands we make consumption our way of life. That we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, discarded and replaced at an ever accelerating rate.” Lebow was painfully correct.
3] Stewart Ewen, a progressive contemporary historian, author and lecturer on media and the consumer culture interviewed Edward Bernays himself in 1990. This is how Ewen, certainly with his own opinions, describes his conversation with Bernays. “Throughout our conversation, Bernays conveyed his hallucination with democracy. A highly educated class of opinion molding tacticians is continuously at work adjusting the mental scenery from which the public mind with its limited intellect derives its opinions. Throughout the interview he [Bernays] describes public relations as a response to a trans historic concern, the requirement from those in power to shape the attitudes of the general population.”
Another article dating to 1975 by Stewart Ewen deserve attention. It fits in perfectly with social engineering. The gist of the article is that in the early days of mass production in the 1920's and 30's, there was an enormous leap in the amount of stuff coming out of US factories. There needed to be a corresponding leap in consumption to keep up and keep the System moving.
In this article, Ewen provides an impressive set of quotes from his research that show the early conceptions of the consumer culture and social engineering. Here are some highlights from the article.
Henry Ford’s moving assembly line, invented in 1910 and its need for specialized worker tasks, set off a remarkable series of changes to a wide range of economic and cultural practices. Few at the time would have imagined the results, but some had an inkling.
By the 1920’s, industrial output in the US had exploded.
Ewen compares before and after the moving assembly line. In quantitative terms, the change was staggering. And this was only the early going of mass consumption. Here is the quote - In 1910,,,,” the time required to assemble a chassis was twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes. By spring of 1914, the Highland Park plant was turning out over l,000 vehicles a day, and the average labor time for assembling a chassis had dropped to one hour and thirty-three minutes.”
As prosperity and wages grew, new factories opened and the beginning of early advertising added more to consumption, this was the infancy of the modern consumer culture.
An increasing number of businessmen at the time realized there was an urgent need to find a new way to sell all the stuff that came off those newly productive assembly lines. A radically different set of nation wide values and life’s material expectations was called for along with developing the advertising and promotion to, essentially, train the public for its role to become buyers and consumers for the flood of products thanks to new techniques in commerce, investments and a booming economy.
A whole series of quotes from the early - mid 1900's.
“Foresighted businessmen began to see the necessity of organizing their businesses not merely around the production of goods, but around the creation of a buying public.”
“Now men and women had to be habituated to respond to the demands of the productive machinery.”
“By the demand of workers for the right to be better consumers, the aspirations of labor would be profitably coordinated with the aspirations of capital.”
“Within the vision of consumption as a “school of freedom,” the entry into the consumer market was described as a “civilizing” experience. “Civilization” was the expanded cultural world which flowed from capitalism’s broad capacity to commodify material resources.”
“Explicating his notion of the way in which man develops a sense of himself from infancy, Allport [another social commentator] asserted that our consciousness of ourselves is largely a reflection of the consciousness which others have of us - “My idea of myself is rather my own idea of my neighbor’s view of me.”
“The functional goal of national advertising was the creation of desires and habits.”
“Once again linking the rhetoric of freedom to the necessities of capitalism.”
“Advertising, as a part of mass distribution within modernizing industries, became a major sector for business investment.”
“The utilitarian value of a product or the traditional notion of mechanical quality were no longer sufficient inducements to move merchandise at the necessary rate and volume required by mass production.”
“One writer in Printers’ Ink commented that “advertising helps to keep the masses dissatisfied with their mode of life, discontented with ugly things around them. Satisfied customers are not as profitable as discontented ones.”
Overall, these quotes, and many others add up to an undeniable conclusion - our society is a fabrication of money making interests. We have been taught to have enormous material expectations to satisfy the demands of a growth based economic system. A pumped up consumer appetite for the masses fully compliments the need to keep the roaring herd satisfied with stuff and distracted from those making policy and decisions as the environment and human potential and capacity pays the price.
Here is a link to Ewen’s article along with his extensive bookmarks. https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/ewen.captainsconsciousness.pdf
5] Finally, a very short quote, attributed to former president George Bush [and several others] fits well with the previous salvo. At the first world environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, attendees from 192 countries came together with a goal to reach agreements to address deepening global environmental problems. Compromises were made, positions hardened, positions softened. With the US well known to have the greatest negative impact on the global environment, any meaningful agreement would require the US to make commitments to reduce its eco footprint.
With the whole world watching, American president George Bush put the debate to rest with the statement, “The American Way of Life is Non Negotiable.” The level of USA arrogance is off the charts. The message being, the over consuming American lifestyle is more important than climate change or any other global environmental or social concern.
The social engineering of the American public has been wildly successful. The consumer culture has delivered an avalanche of products and services. I have traveled a good deal. The consumer culture is a global affair but there is no where I have been, 35 or so countries, that can rival the size of the average American's eco footprint - the size of cars, the size of homes, the size of people. The US military budget is about equal to the next 8 largest country military budgets. Something like 800 billion dollars a year to protect those massive eco footprints. More on the military and foreign policy HERE
Social Engineering Conclusions
The important message from this article and the Primer is that our society, our individual lives, friends, family, communities and every day reality has been shaped to a high degree to fit the needs of political and economic interests that are often and increasingly at odds with our own and the environment.
Imagine, our lives and way we view the world and our own selves is largely a purposeful fabrication by entities with interests at odds to the well being of people and planet. Our society is product like it was made in a BF Skinner lab.
When I was in elementary school we learned songs that glorified and boasted about the wealth of Texas and the size of homes in Dallas. Ethical psychologists have warned their colleagues against using behavioral psychology for business clients.
The commercial messaging on line, on TV, print, T shirts, bill boards, product placement have been distressingly effective.
The consumer culture is causing climate change and a wide range of other damages to the natural world. The consumer culture and its growth based economic system distract and degrade positive human potential and our capacity to act in our own best interests. We are referred to and see ourselves as consumers rather than citizens and human beings, each of us with our own unique and positive capacities to make common cause with others for the good of people and planet.
Do I believe there is a small group of wealthy men holding weekly meetings to choreograph the global consumer culture? No. Do I think conventional politics can solve these problems? No. Capitalism has a self guiding logic with no self reflection or brakes and the political system exists to serve it [sanding off the rough edges at times] and the consumer culture has enormous momentum.
We do need stores, transportation, places to live, meaningful employment, opportunity, schools, culture, recreation and security.
The longer the current System continues, the greater the disruption when the time comes and it falls into disarray.
There is minimal chance to the current social/economic/political System will reform itself. At the same time, that System has provided us with enormous assets and tools to make use of for creating a healthy and uplifted preferred future. Our best hope is to build positive alternatives in our own lives, with friend, neighbors, into the neighborhood and community, making common cause with others, grow that movement and increase its scale so it peacefully replaces the current System.
Or at least, have as many positive elements and examples in place and do the best we can as the current Mainstream comes in for a rough landing. The more people engaged in paradigm shift and sharing what they are learning with the wider world the better, no matter what.
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