(Century of Self Part 1)
The century of the self part 1(4).mp4 from Ayon on Vimeo.
Notes
0:00
over 100 years ago a new theory about human nature was put forward by sigmund freud. he had discovered he said, hidden sexual and agressive forces hidden deep inside the minds of all human beings. Forces that, if left uncontrolled. led individuals and societies to chaos and destruction.
This series is about how those in power have used freuds theories to try and control a crowd in the age of mass democracy.
1:00
Edward Bernays - freuds nephew
His influence on the 20th century was as great as his uncles. he was the first person to take freuds ideas about humans to manipulate masses.
he showed american corporations how they make people want things they don't need by linking their mass produced goods to their unconscious hidden desires.
POLITICAL IDEA
out of this would come a new political idea of how to control the masses - by satisfying people inner selfish desires to make them happy and docile.
Physcoanalyus
Freuds ideas about how the human minds works are now an accepted part of society - as psychoanalysis.
i100 years ago frauds ideas were hated by society. frauds ideas were not only embarrassing, but the idea of analysis a persons feeling were a threate to their control. You were not allowed to show your feelings in those days.
4:00
Freud put that thought into question. to examine yourself, you would have to put a lot of other things into question - your society and everything that surrounds you. This wasnt a good thing at the time because the rulers of the empire wanted to remain in control.
Freud devised a method he called Physocanalysis. By analysing dreams he had discoverd powerful sexual and agressive forces which were the animalistic past. Feelings we repressed becasue they were too dangerous.
4:40
DR ERNEST JONES - Colleague of Freud
Freud devised a method of exploring a part of the mind which we nowadays call the unconscious. A part which is totally unknown to our conciousness. That there exsists a barrier in you.
GREAT BIT HERE ABOUT WAR
IN 1914 - The Austrian-Hungarian Empire led Europe into war and as the horror mounted, Freud daw it as horrible evidence of the truth in his findings. He wrote we should of expected people to behave like this from our knowledge of physcoanalysis. Governments had unleashed the hidden forces in human beings an noone seemed to know how to stop them.
At this time, Edward Bernays was working as a press agent in america. His main client, was the world famous opera singer Caruzo who was touring the USA.
Bernays parents had moved to america 20 years before, but he had kept in touch with his uncle, joiing him for holidays in the alps. Bernays was about to return to europe for a different reason, America had announced it wsa anetering the war against Germany and Austira.
BERNAYS USES UNCLES TRICKS TO PROMOTE THE IDEA OF GOING TO WAR TO AMERICA
6:30
Bernays was emplyed to promote Americas war aims in the press. The president of the USA said America would fight ot bring demoncracy to the whole of enurope and Bernays proved skillful in promoting the idea home and abroad.
7:40
The propaganda surrounding wilson portrayed him as a man who would let the individual be free. They had made him a hero of the masses as as he watched the crowds of people, Bernays wondered if it would be possible to the same kind of mass manipulation but in peace time.
Bernays seen how effective Propaganda was in War for the Germans and for USA and decided it could also be used for Peace.
"When I came back to the USA I decided that if you could use Propaganda for WAR, you can certainly use it for peace, and propagana got to be a bad word becasue of the Germans using it. What he did, was try and find some other words - Public Relation Council. " Edward Bernays
Bernays came back to America and it was now an Industral hub of millions of people clustered together. This was the first time he used the "Public Relation Council". he was determined to find a way to manage and alter the way the masses felt. To do this he turned to the writings of his unvle Sigmund.
Bernays read his uncles writings, and wondered if he might make money by manipulating these hidden desires foudn in people called the "unconcious".
9:50
"Eddy come up with an idea that you have to put out things that would play on peoples irrational emotions. That moved him away from all goverment parties who though that if you just hit people with factual infomation, they would look at that and say oh,of course. Eddy knew, that was not the way it would work. "
10:15
BERNAYS SETS OUT TO EXPERIMENT WITH POPULAR CLASSES MINDS
Bernays set out to experiment with the minds of the popular classes. his most dramatic experiment was to persuade women to smoke. At that time there was a tabbo against women smoking and one of his early clients asked Bernays to look into it. He says they have lost half their market due to the taboo.
WOMEN SMOKING EXPERIMENT
12:00
A.A. Brill for a large fee told Bernays that cigarettes were a symbol for the penis, and male power. If he could find a way to challenge this male power, then women would smoke, because they would have their own penis'.
Bernays persuaded a group of young women at a large event to hide their ciagarettes, then when he asked then to get them out and dramatically light them up, using them as their "Torches of Freedom".
He knew it would be an outcry, and was ready with the phrase "Torches of Freedom" which means that everyone who believes in this equality. Liberty is holding up the torch. Emotion, Memory, Rational Phrase. All of this is together. The next day this was around the world! From that point forward, the sale of cigarette rised. he had made them socially acceptable with one action.
Bernays had created the idea that if women smoked, it would make them more powerful and independent, an idea that still persists today.
LINKING PRODUCTS TO PEOPLES EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS MAKE THEM ACT IRRATIONALLY
13:50
It made Bernays realise that it was possible to be able to make people act irrationally, if you were able to link certain products to their emotions and feelings.
The idea that smoking would make women freer was completely irrational. but it made them feel more independent. It meant that irrelevant objects could become powerful symbols of how you wanted to be seen by others.
14:30
SELLING THINGS BY MAKING PEOPLE FEEL BETTER BY BUYING IT
PETER STRAUSS - Employee of Bernays (1948-52)
He saw that the way to sell a product was not to buy an automobole but that you will feel better about it, if you have this automobile. He originated that idea that they werent just purchasing something but they were engagin themselves emotionally and personally.
FACISNATED AMERICAS CORPERATIONS!
What Bernays was doing facinated americas corperations. They had come out of the war rich and powerful but had a worry that the system of mass production had flurished during the war and million of good was pouring off the production line. they was figthened of the danger of overporduction - when people had enough goods and would stop buying.
Up until then the majority of products still was sold to the masses on the basis of need. Shoes Stockings, even cars were promtoed in funtional terms - for their durability.The aim of the adverts was to show people the products pracgical vertues. nothing more.
Corporations had to change how american thought about products.
16 : 30
What the corporations had to do, was transform how americans thought about products. A top banker, Mazer, at the time was clear about how this was necessary and he wrote...
"We must shift America from a needs to a Desire 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. Mans Desires, must overshadow his needs."
GREAT QUOTE ON HOW BEFORE THIS TIME AMERICANS BOUGHT WHAT THEY NEEDED AND ATE WHAT THEY NEEDED. THEY DIDNT DESIRE MORE THAN THAT.
Peter Solomon - Investment Banker - Lehmen Brothers
"Prior to that time, there was no consumer, there was american worker and american owners and they manufactured, they saves and ate what they had to and people shopped for what they needed. And while the very rich might have bought things they didn't need, most people did not. And Mazer visoned a break with that were you bought things you didn't actually need, but you wanted. as aposed to needed. "
A man at the centre of all this was Edward Bernays.
Stewart Ewan - Historian of Public Relations.
"Bernays really is the guy in the USA more than anyone else who brings to the table, phycological theory as something that is ann essential part of how from the corporate side we appeal to the masses effectively and the whole sort of merchandising establishment and sales is ready for sigmund freud and what motivates the human mind. theres an openness for sigmund freuds techniques to be used to sell to the masses. "
17:54
TECHNIQUES STILL USED TODAY
Bernays Job was to produce a new type of customer...
Bernays began to create many of the techniques of mass consumer persuasion, that we now live wil. He was employed by william worth to promte his new womens magazines and bernays glamourised them by placing articles and advertisements which featured that products from some of his other clients to famous film stars, liek clara bow, who was also his client.
He also began the practice of product placement within the movies and dressed the stars at the fils premiers with clothes and jewellery of firms he represented.
he was the first person to tell car companies that they could sell a car based on male sexuality.
he paid employees to issue reports that said products were good for you, then pretended they were independent studies.
He organised fashion shows in department shows and paid celebrities to repeat the new and essential messages.
19:13
Mrs Stillman - 1920s Celebrity Aviator.
I wonder why you all want to dress the same, with the same hats and the same coats. Im sure all of you are insteresting and have interesting things about you. But looking at you on the street, you all look so much the same. And thats why im talking to you about the phcology of dress. Try and express yourselves better in youyr dress. bring out certain things you think are hidden. "
GREAT QUOTE ON CONSUMERISM.
In 1927. a journalist wrote " A change has come over our democracy, it is called consumption. The American citizens first importance to his country is now no longer that of a citizen, but that of consumerism.
20:00
The growing wave in consumerism helped in turn to create a stock market boom. and ywat agin Bernays was involved. promoting the idea of normal people should by shares and borrow money from banks he represented. yet again millions followed his advice.
Bernays fixes a plan for president to meet famous figures in order to gain reputation with masses
In 1934, the president contacted Bernays. President coolidege was a quiet man and the press portrayed him as a dull humanless figure. Bernays solution was to do exaclty the same as he hsad done with products.He persuaded 34 famous filmstars to visit the whitehouse and for the first time, politics became involved with public relations.
New headline "Presdient Coolidge entertains actors at whitehouse" and "President nearly laughed".
22:00
In his old age, Freud become pessimistic. He wrote about the agressive things within groups of human beings. he wrote that he had underestimated human beings, they were far more dangerous than he'd originally thought.
He felt man was a sadistic and bad species.
GOOD QUOTES ON PEOPLE ACTING IN GROUPS AND MOBS. HAVING POWER.
In the late 1920's jouranlists was scared by Freuds writings about how people can act in groups and mobs and have the power destory things as big as governments and it was they belived happened in Russia.
To many this meant that one of the leading priciples of mass democracy was wrong. The blief that human beings could be trusted to make decisions on a rational bases.
27:00
After this scare, what was needed was a new system that would be used to control the unconsious of the masses.
BERNAYS CONTROLS UNCONCIOUS
In the 1920's Bernays argues he had written a series of books which was delivering this system of controlling the uncious, which is what lipman was calling for. he was creating a new way to mange the irrational thoughts of the masses. he called it the engineering of consent.
A NEW IDEA TO RUN MASS DEMOCRACY . HAPPY DOCILE BODIES
30:00
In 1928, a president came to power who agreed with Bernays . President hoover was the first politican who belived that consumerism had become the central motor to american life. After his election he told a group of advertisers ..
"You have taken over the job of desire and have trasnformed people into constantly moving happiness machines. Machines which have become the key, to economic progress.
What was begining to emerge in the 1920's was a new idea on how to run mass democracy. At it's heart was the consuming self, which not only made the ecomy work, but was happy and docile and so created a stable society.
GOOD QUOTE ON KEEPING DOCILE HAPPY BODIES SO LEADER CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT
Stewart Ewan.
In Bernays mind that was neccasery. That if you can keep stimulating the irrational self, then leadership can basically go on doing what it wants to do."
34:00
29th October 1929 - STOCK MARKET COLLAPSES - Bernays is FUCKED!
It was disasterous. Recession and Unemplyment meant people wasn't buying. Bernays' moment of power seemed to be over.
This hit europe too. In Germany and Austria, there were massive street fights over people from different parties.
Freud was suffering from cancer in his Jaw and wrote a book called civilisation and its discontents'
Powerful attack on the idea that civilisation was an expression of human progress. he argues instead it was created to control the dangerous animalistic instincts inside human beings.
FREUD SAYS INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM IS IMPOSSIBLE UNDER DEMOCRACY - can link to under nazi germany and also under corperations today.
He said the idea of individual freedom, which was at the heart of democracy, was impossible. Humasn beings could never be allowed to truly expressed themselves because it was truly too dangerous. They must always be controlled and thus always keepen tabs on.
Man dosent want to be civilised. cicisation is discontetn but its what is needed for survival. Freud didn't belive in the idea of equality in man.
36 : 00
HITLER GETS INVOLVED!
Freud was not alone in his pessimism. Politicians like Adolf Hitler, emerged from a growing despair in the 1920's about democracy. The nazi's were convinced that democracy was dangerous because it unleashed a selfish individualism, but didn't have the means to control it.
Hitlers party, stood in election, promising that they would abandon democracy because of the chaos it led to.
In March 1933, the National Socialists were elected ot power in Germany and they set out to create a society, that would control human beings in a different way.
One of their first acts was to take control of business. The free market was too unstable as the crash in america had proved, so business was controled by the state, as was workers leisure time.
One of it's mottos was Service, Not Self.
The Nazi's did not see this as a return to an old form of autocratic control, it was a new alternative to democracy, in which the feeling and the desires of the masses, would still be central, but they would be channeld in such a way, was to bind the nation together.
The chief expose of this was Josef Guerbles. Administer of Propaganda .
Guerbils - Administrator of Propaganda in Nazi Germany is a fan of Benays writings
Geurbils
"It may be a good thing, to hold power based on guns. It is far better, if you win the heart of a nation, and keep it's affection!"
Guerbils organised huge rallies with a function he said to forge the mind of a nation, into a unity of thinking, feeling and desire. One of his inspirations he told an American journalist, was the writings of Freuds Nephew, Bernays.
NAZIS USE FREUDS IDEAS AND FEARS ABOUT HUMANS TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
In his work on crowd phycology, Freud had described how the frightening irrationality inside human beings could emerge in such groups. The deep, what he called libidinal forces of desire are 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 deliberatly encoraging these forces becasue they belive that they could master and control them.
39:40
Vienna 2000
Dr Leopold Lowenthal
Freud was saying that masses was bound by labidinal forces. they love each other and delgate their ideas to the guy on top. labinal forces are forces of love.
41:00
In America too, Democracy was under threat by the force of the angry mob. There was growing violence at the crash of the stock market as the angry population took out they frustration on the corporations who had seemed to have cause this disaster.
A new president was elected in 1932 who was also going to use the power of the state to control the free market. His aim was not to destroy democracy, but to strengthen it and to do this, he was going to develop a new way of dealing with the masses.
It was the start of what become known as the new deal.
He had a job to plan and run industrial projects for the good of the nation. HE was convinced that capitalism was no good anymore for a modern industrialised america. and attracted attention of the Nazis.
43:00
Americas Movements Attract Nazis
Guerbils. " I am very interested in social developments in America. I belive that President Roosevelt has chosen the right path. We are dealing with the greatest social problems ever known. Millions of unemployed must get their jobs back and this cannot be left to private initiative. It is the government that must tackle the problem. "
America was trying to sort out a nation like Nazis, but unlike Nazis belived Humans were rational and could be trusted to voice an opinion.
But although Roosevelt, like the Nazis was trying to organise society in a different way, unlike the nazi's, he believed that human beings were rational and could be trusted to take an active part in government. He believed it was possible to explain his policies to ordinary americans and take into account, their opinions.
To do this he was helped by the new ideas of an American social scientist called Geroge Gallop. They believed in asking strict factual questions and trusting the public to voice an opinion, and acted against Bernays' ideas. Scientific Polling established that people are rational and offfers a perfect rationality
Roosevelt was forging an alliance with the public and wanted to take control over big corporations and the money they make.
Big Businesses fight back, Led by Bernays'.
48:00
Faced with this, business fought back to regain dominance and a fight was led by Bernays under the Public Rekations.
A Campaign is launched specifically to gain an emotional attachment to the public with big business. Bernays' techniques used on a grand scale.
The Campaign set out dramatically to show america it was business not politicians that had forged modern america.
Bernays was an advisor to general motors, but he was no longer alone. A Massive Team led the campaign, They used billboards and Advertisements and got their message into Newspapers.
It became a bitter fight. in retaliation the government made films which warned the public of the manipulation of the press, by big business, and the centrail villain was the new figure of the Public Relations man (PR)
50:00
Bernays Powerful Imagination
Bernays was about to create a vision of the Utopia that free market capitalism would build in america if it was unleashed.
In 1939, New York hosted the worlds Fair, Edward Bernays was a central advisor. He insisted that the theme be the link between democracy and American business.
At the heart of the fair was a giant white done that Barnes named Democracity. and the central piece was a vast working model of americas future, constructed by the general motors corporation.
He wanted to keep Capitalism over Democracy or in a Democracy and did that by manipulating people in getting them to think you couldn't have a real democracy in anything but a capitalist society.
Which was capable of doing anything, of creating these wonderful highways of making moving pictures inside peoples house. Telephones that didn't need cords. sleek roadster.
It was consumerist, but at the same time, insured democracy and capitalism went together.
52:00
The worlds fair was a success and captured the heart of America. its vision was a new form of Democracy, in which business responded to peoples most desires in a way which politicians could never do.
THIS DEMOCRACY DEPENDED ON NOT TREATING PEOPLE AS ACTIVE CITIZENS BUT AS CONSUMERS
But it was a form of democracy that depending on treating people not as active citizens, like roosevelt did, but as passive comsumers. This was the key to control in a mass democracy.
GREAT QUOTE SAYING THAT DEMOCRACY IS NOW BASED ON PEOPLES SUBCONCIOUS DESIRES, NOT THEIR ACTIVE CITIZENRY.
"Its not that the people are in charge, but the peoples 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 that assumes an active citizenry to the public as passive consumers, driven by unconscious desires, and if in fact you can trigger those needs and desires, you can get what you want from them."
ID JUST LIKE TO ADD HERE THAT ITS FUNNY HOW THE IDEAS CREATED AND USED BY BERNAYS TO CONTROL MASS PEOPLE INTO BUYING PRODUCTS BY TARGETING THEIR INNER MOST DESIRES WAS ALSO USED BY THE NAZI'S IN A DIFFERENT WAY YES, BUT TO GET THE SAME LEVEL OF CONTROL OUT OF THE MASSES.
54:00
HITLER INVADES AUSTRIA - AUSWITCH
This struggle between the two views of human beings, whether they were rational or irrational was about to be changed by events in europe. events that would also change the fortunes of the freud family.
In march 1938, The Nazi took control over Austria, it was called Austwitch and as the crowd cheered on with mass adjuration in vienna, behind the scenes the Nazi's were whipping up and unleashing the hatred of the crowd against the enemies of the new greater germany.
Marcel Faust - Resident of Vienna (1930's)
"Austwich was an explosion of the terrible hatred of the enemies , or whatever they considered enemies, against Jews and anybody who apposed the Nazi's in Austria. They said you can do whatever you want, stealing, robbing, killing.
As all this happened in vienna, Freud decided he had to leave. His aim was to go to Britain, but he knew like most countries they was refusing entry to Jewish refugees. Jones, a leading Phychiatrist in Britain persuaded them to give Freud a work permit. May 1938 and some of his family set off for London.
Freud lived here while Britain prepared
