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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: The Doors Of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything Rense The Doors Of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything By Tim O'Shea http://www.thedoctorwithin.com 8-18-1 Aldous Huxley's inspired 1956 essay detailed the vivid, mind-expanding, multisensory insights of his mescaline adventures. By altering his brain chemistry with natural psychotropics, Huxley tapped into a rich and fluid world of shimmering, indescribable beauty and power. With his neurosensory input thus triggered, Huxley was able to enter that parallel universe described by every mystic and space captain in recorded history. Whether by hallucination or epiphany, Huxley sought to remove all controls, all filters, all cultural conditioning from his perceptions and to confront Nature or the World or Reality first-hand - in its unpasteurized, unedited, unretouched, infinite rawness. Those bonds are much harder to break today, half a century later. We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever known. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased. The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely regulated. Who cares, right? It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. In an effort to save time, I would like to provide just a little background on the handling of information in this country. Once the basic principles are illustrated about how our current system of media control arose historically, the reader might be more apt to question any given popular opinion. If everybody believes something, it's probably wrong. We call that Conventional Wisdom. In America, conventional wisdom that has mass acceptance is usually contrived: somebody paid for it. Examples: * Pharmaceuticals restore health * Vaccination brings immunity * The cure for cancer is just around the corner * Menopause is a disease condition * When a child is sick, he needs immediate antibiotics * When a child has a fever he needs Tylenol * Hospitals are safe and clean. * America has the best health care in the world. * Americans have the best health in the world. * Milk is a good source of calcium. * You never outgrow your need for milk. * Vitamin C is ascorbic acid. * Aspirin prevents heart attacks. * Heart drugs improve the heart. * Back and neck pain are the only reasons for spinal adjustment. * No child can get into school without being vaccinated. * The FDA thoroughly tests all drugs before they go on the market. * Back and neck pain are the only reason for spinal adjustment. * Pregnancy is a serious medical condition * Chemotherapy and radiation are effective cures for cancer * When your child is diagnosed with an ear infection, antibiotics should be given immediately 'just in case' * Ear tubes are for the good of the child. * Estrogen drugs prevent osteoporosis after menopause. * Pediatricians are the most highly trained of al medical specialists. * The purpose of the health care industry is health. * HIV is the cause of AIDS. * AZT is the cure. * Without vaccines, infectious diseases will return * Fluoride in the city water protects your teeth * Flu shots prevent the flu. * Vaccines are thoroughly tested before being placed on the Mandated Schedule. * Doctors are certain that the benefits of vaccines far outweigh any possible risks. * There is a power shortage in California. * There is a meningitis epidemic in California. * The NASDAQ is a natural market controlled only by supply and demand. * Chronic pain is a natural consequence of aging. * Soy is your healthiest source of protein. * Insulin shots cure diabetes. * After we take out your gall bladder you can eat anything you want * Allergy medicine will cure allergies. This is a list of illusions, that have cost billions and billions to conjure up. Did you ever wonder why you never see the President speaking publicly unless he is reading? Or why most people in this country think generally the same about most of the above issues? HOW THIS WHOLE SET-UP GOT STARTED In Trust Us We're Experts, Stauber and Rampton pull together some compelling data describing the science of creating public opinion in America. They trace modern public influence back to the early part of the last century, highlighting the work of guys like Edward L. Bernays, the Father of Spin. From his own amazing chronicle Propaganda, we learn how Edward L. Bernays took the ideas of his famous uncle Sigmund Freud himself and applied them to the emerging science of mass persuasion. The only difference was that instead of using these principles to uncover hidden themes in the human unconscious, the way Freudian psychology does, Bernays used these same ideas to mask agendas and to create illusions that deceive and misrepresent, for marketing purposes. THE FATHER OF SPIN Bernays dominated the PR industry until the 1940s, and was a significant force for another 40 years after that. (Tye) During all that time, Bernays took on hundreds of diverse assignments to create a public perception about some idea or product. A few examples: As a neophyte with the Committee on Public Information, one of Bernays' first assignments was to help sell the First World War to the American public with the idea to "Make the World Safe for Democracy." (Ewen) A few years later, Bernays set up a stunt to popularize the notion of women smoking cigarettes. In organizing the 1929 Easter Parade in New York City, Bernays showed himself as a force to be reckoned with. He organized the Torches of Liberty Brigade in which suffragettes marched in the parade smoking cigarettes as a mark of women's liberation. Such publicity followed from that one event that from then on women have felt secure about destroying their own lungs in public, the same way that men have always done. Bernays popularized the idea of bacon for breakfast. Not one to turn down a challenge, he set up the advertising format along with the AMA that lasted for nearly 50 years proving that cigarettes are beneficial to health. Just look at ads in issues of Life or Time from the 40s and 50s. During the next several decades Bernays and his colleagues evolved the principles by which masses of people could be generally swayed through messages repeated over and over hundreds of times. One the value of media became apparent, other countries of the world tried to follow our lead. But Bernays really was the gold standard. Josef Goebbels, who was Hitler's minister of propaganda, studied the principles of Edward Bernays when Goebbels was developing the popular rationale he would use to convince the Germans that they had to purify their race. (Stauber) SMOKE AND MIRRORS Bernay's job was to reframe an issue; to create a desired image that would put a particular product or concept in a desirable light. Bernays described the public as a 'herd that needed to be led.' And this herdlike thinking makes people "susceptible to leadership." Bernays never deviated from his fundamental axiom to "control the masses without their knowing it." The best PR happens with the people unaware that they are being manipulated. Stauber describes Bernays' rationale like this: "the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in a democratic society." Trust Us p 42 These early mass persuaders postured themselves as performing a moral service for humanity in general - democracy was too good for people; they needed to be told what to think, because they were incapable of rational thought by themselves. Here's a paragraph from Bernays' Propaganda: "Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind." A tad different from Thomas Jefferson's view on the subject: "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not take it from them, but to inform their discretion." Inform their discretion. Bernays believed that only a few possessed the necessary insight into the Big Picture to be entrusted with this sacred task. And luckily, he saw himself as one of that few. HERE COMES THE MONEY Once the possibilities of applying Freudian psychology to mass media were glimpsed, Bernays soon had more corporate clients than he could handle. Global corporations fell all over themselves courting the new Image Makers. There were dozens of goods and services and ideas to be sold to a susceptible public. Over the years, these players have had the money to make their images happen. A few examples: Philip Morris Pfizer Union Carbide Allstate Monsanto Eli Lilly tobacco industry Ciba Geigy lead industry Coors DuPont Chlorox Shell Oil Standard Oil Procter & Gamble Boeing General Motors Dow Chemical General Mills Goodyear THE PLAYERS Dozens of PR firms have emerged to answer that demand. Among them: Burson-Marsteller Edelman Hill & Knowlton Kamer-Singer Ketchum Mongovin, Biscoe, and Duchin BSMG Buder-Finn Though world-famous within the PR industry, these are names we don't know, and for good reason. The best PR goes unnoticed. For decades they have created the opinions that most of us were raised with, on virtually any issue which has the remotest commercial value, including: pharmaceutical drugs vaccines medicine as a profession alternative medicine fluoridation of city water chlorine household cleaning products tobacco dioxin global warming leaded gasoline cancer research and treatment pollution of the oceans forests and lumber images of celebrities, including damage control crisis and disaster management genetically modified foods aspartame food additives; processed foods dental amalgams LESSON #1 Bernays learned early on that the most effective way to create credibility for a product or an image was by "independent third-party" endorsement. For example, if General Motors were to come out and say that global warming is a hoax thought up by some liberal tree-huggers, people would suspect GM's motives, since GM's fortune is made by selling automobiles. If however some independent research institute with a very credible sounding name like the Global Climate Coalition comes out with a scientific report that says global warming is really a fiction, people begin to get confused and to have doubts about the original issue. So that's exactly what Bernays did. With a policy inspired by genius, he set up "more institutes and foundations than Rockefeller and Carnegie combined." (Stauber p 45) Quietly financed by the industries whose products were being evaluated, these "independent" research agencies would churn out "scientific" studies and press materials that could create any image their handlers wanted. Such front groups are given high-sounding names like: Temperature Research Foundation International Food Information Council Consumer Alert The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition Air Hygiene Foundation Industrial Health Federation International Food Information Council Manhattan Institute Center for Produce Quality Tobacco Institute Research Council Cato Institute American Council on Science and Health Global Climate Coalition Alliance for Better Foods Sound pretty legit don't they? CANNED NEWS RELEASES As Stauber explains, these organizations and hundreds of others like them are front groups whose sole mission is to advance the image of the global corporations who fund them, like those listed on page 2 above. This is accomplished in part by an endless stream of 'press releases' announcing "breakthrough" research to every radio station and newspaper in the country. (Robbins) Many of these canned reports read like straight news, and indeed are purposely molded in the news format. This saves journalists the trouble of researching the subjects on their own, especially on topics aboutwhich they know very little. Entire sections of the release or in the case of video news releases, the whole thing can be just lifted intact, with no editing, given the byline of the reporter or newspaper or TV station - and voilá! Instant news - copy and paste. Written by corporate PR firms. Does this really happen? Every single day, since the 1920s when the idea of the News Release was first invented by Ivy Lee. (Stauber, p 22) Sometimes as many as half the stories appearing in an issue of the Wall St. Journal are based solely on such PR press releases.. (22) These types of stories are mixed right in with legitimately researched stories. Unless you have done the research yourself, you won't be able to tell the difference. THE LANGUAGE OF SPIN As 1920s spin pioneers like Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays gained more experience, they began to formulate rules and guidelines for creating public opinion. They learned quickly that mob psychology must focus on emotion, not facts. Since the mob is incapable of rational thought, motivation must be based not on logic but on presentation. Here are some of the axioms of the new science of PR: * technology is a religion unto itself * if people are incapable of rational thought, real democracy is dangerous * important decisions should be left to experts * when reframing issues, stay away from substance; create images * never state a clearly demonstrable lie Words are very carefully chosen for their emotional impact. Here's an example. A front group called the International Food Information Council handles the public's natural aversion to genetically modified foods. Trigger words are repeated all through the text. Now in the case of GM foods, the public is instinctively afraid of these experimental new creations which have suddenly popped up on our grocery shelves which are said to have DNA alterations. The IFIC wants to reassure the public of the safety of GM foods, so it avoids words like: Frankenfoods Hitler biotech chemical DNA experiments manipulate money safety scientists radiation roulette gene-splicing gene gun random Instead, good PR for GM foods contains words like: hybrids natural order beauty choice bounty cross-breeding diversity earth farmer organic wholesome. It's basic Freudian/Tony Robbins word association. The fact that GM foods are not hybrids that have been subjected to the slow and careful scientific methods of real cross-breeding doesn't really matter. This is pseudoscience, not science. Form is everything and substance just a passing myth. (Trevanian) Who do you think funds the International Food Information Council? Take a wild guess. Right - Monsanto, DuPont, Frito-Lay, Coca Cola, Nutrasweet - those in a position to make fortunes from GM foods. (Stauber p 20) CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD PROPAGANDA As the science of mass control evolved, PR firms developed further guidelines for effective copy. Here are some of the gems: - dehumanize the attacked party by labeling and name calling - speak in glittering generalities using emotionally positive words - when covering something up, don't use plain English; stall for time; distract - get endorsements from celebrities, churches, sports figures, street people...anyone who has no expertise in the subject at hand - the 'plain folks' ruse: us billionaires are just like you - when minimizing outrage, don't say anything memorable - when minimizing outrage, point out the benefits of what just happened - when minimizing outrage, avoid moral issues Keep this list. Start watching for these techniques. Not hard to find - look at today's paper or tonight's TV news. See what they're doing; these guys are good! SCIENCE FOR HIRE PR firms have become very sophisticated in the preparation of news releases. They have learned how to attach the names of famous scientists to research that those scientists have not even looked at. (Stauber, p 201) This is a common occurrence. In this way the editors of newspapers and TV news shows are often not even aware that an individual release is a total PR fabrication. Or at least they have "deniability," right? Stauber tells the amazing story of how leaded gas came into the picture. In 1922, General Motors discovered that adding lead to gasoline gave cars more horsepower. When there was some concern about safety, GM paid the Bureau of Mines to do some fake "testing" and publish spurious research that 'proved' that inhalation of lead was harmless. Enter Charles Kettering. Founder of the world famous Sloan-Kettering Memorial Institute for medical research, Charles Kettering also happened to be an executive with General Motors. By some strange coincidence, we soon have the Sloan Kettering institute issuing reports stating that lead occurs naturally in the body and that the body has a way of eliminating low level exposure. Through its association with The Industrial Hygiene Foundation and PR giant Hill & Knowlton, Sloane Kettering opposed all anti-lead research for years. (Stauber p 92). Without organized scientific opposition, for the next 60 years more and more gasoline became leaded, until by the 1970s, 90% or our gasoline was leaded. Finally it became too obvious to hide that lead was a major carcinogen, and leaded gas was phased out in the late 1980s. But during those 60 years, it is estimated that some 30 million tons of lead were released in vapor form onto American streets and highways. 30 million tons. That is PR, my friends. JUNK SCIENCE In 1993 a guy named Peter Huber wrote a new book and coined a new term. The book was Galileo's Revenge and the term was junk science. Huber's shallow thesis was that real science supports technology, industry, and progress. Anything else was suddenly junk science. Not surprisingly, Stauber explains how Huber's book was supported by the industry-backed Manhattan Institute. Huber's book was generally dismissed not only because it was so poorly written, but because it failed to realize one fact: true scientific research begins with no conclusions. Real scientists are seeking the truth because they do not yet know what the truth is. True scientific method goes like this: 1. form a hypothesis 2. make predictions for that hypothesis 3. test the predictions 4. reject or revise the hypothesis based on the research findings Boston University scientist Dr. David Ozonoff explains that ideas in science are themselves like "living organisms, that must be nourished, supported, and cultivated with resources for making them grow and flourish." (Stauber p 205) Great ideas that don't get this financial support because the commercial angles are not immediately obvious - these ideas wither and die. Another way you can often distinguish real science from phony is that real science points out flaws in its own research. Phony science pretends there were no flaws. THE REAL JUNK SCIENCE Contrast this with modern PR and its constant pretensions to sound science. Corporate sponsored research, whether it's in the area of drugs, GM foods, or chemistry begins with predetermined conclusions. It is the job of the scientists then to prove that these conclusions are true, because of the economic upside that proof will bring to the industries paying for that research. This invidious approach to science has shifted the entire focus of research in America during the past 50 years, as any true scientist is likely to admit. Stauber documents the increasing amount of corporate sponsorship of university research. (206) This has nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge. Scientists lament that research has become just another commodity, something bought and sold. (Crossen) THE TWO MAIN TARGETS OF "SOUND SCIENCE" It is shocking when Stauber shows how the vast majority of corporate PR today opposes any research that seeks to protect: Public Health and The Environment It's a funny thing that most of the time when we see the phrase "junk science," it is in a context of defending something that may threaten either the environment or our health. This makes sense when one realizes that money changes hands only by selling the illusion of health and the illusion of environmental protection. True public health and real preservation of the earth's environment have very low market value. Stauber thinks it ironic that industry's self-proclaimed debunkers of junk science are usually non-scientists themselves. (255) Here again they can do this because the issue is not science, but the creation of images. THE LANGUAGE OF ATTACK When PR firms attack legitimate environmental groups and alternative medicine people, they again use special words which will carry an emotional punch: outraged sound science junk science sensible scaremongering responsible phobia hoax alarmist hysteria The next time you are reading a newspaper article about an environmental or health issue, note how the author shows bias by using the above terms. This is the result of very specialized training. Another standard PR tactic is to use the rhetoric of the environmentalists themselves to defend a dangerous and untested product that poses an actual threat to the environment. This we see constantly in the PR smokescreen that surrounds genetically modified foods. They talk about how GM foods are necessary to grow more food and to end world hunger, when the reality is that GM foods actually have lower yields per acre than natural crops. (Stauber p 173) The grand design sort of comes into focus once you realize that almost all GM foods have been created by the sellers of herbicides and pesticides so that those plants can withstand greater amounts of herbicides and pesticides. (The Magic Bean) THE MIRAGE OF PEER REVIEW Publish or perish is the classic dilemma of every research scientist. That means whoever expects funding for the next research project had better get the current research paper published in the best scientific journals. And we all know that the best scientific journals, like JAMA, New England Journal, British Medical Journal, etc. are peer-reviewed. Peer review means that any articles which actually get published, between all those full color drug ads and pharmaceutical centerfolds, have been reviewed and accepted by some really smart guys with a lot of credentials. The assumption is, if the article made it past peer review, the data and the conclusions of the research study have been thoroughly checked out and bear some resemblance to physical reality. But there are a few problems with this hot little set up. First off, money. Even though prestigious venerable medical journals pretend to be so objective and scientific and incorruptible, the reality is that they face the same type of being called to account that all glossy magazines must confront: don't antagonize your advertisers. Those full-page drug ads in the best journals cost millions,Jack. How long will a pharmaceutical company pay for ad space in a magazine that prints some very sound scientific research paper that attacks the safety of the drug in the centerfold? Think about it. The editors aren't that stupid. Another problem is the conflict of interest thing. There's a formal requirement for all medical journals that any financial ties between an author and a product manufacturer be disclosed in the article. In practice, it never happens. A study done in 1997 of 142 medical journals did not find even one such disclosure. (Wall St. Journal, 2 Feb 99) A 1998 study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that 96% of peer reviewed articles had financial ties to the drug they were studying. (Stelfox, 1998) Big shock, huh? Any disclosures? Yeah, right. This study should be pointed out whenever somebody starts getting too pompous about the objectivity of peer review, like they often do. Then there's the outright purchase of space. A drug company may simply pay $100,000 to a journal to have a favorable article printed. (Stauber, p 204) Fraud in peer review journals is nothing new. In 1987, the New England Journal ran an article that followed the research of R. Slutsky MD over a seven year period. During that time, Dr. Slutsky had published 137 articles in a number of peer-reviewed journals. NEJM found that in at least 60 of these 137, there was evidence of major scientific fraud and misrepresentation, including: * reporting data for experiments that were never done * reporting measurements that were never made * reporting statistical analyses that were never done oEngler Dean Black PhD, describes what he the calls the Babel Effect that results when this very common and frequently undetected scientific fraudulent data in peer-reviewed journals are quoted by other researchers, who are in turn re-quoted by still others, and so on. Want to see something that sort of re-frames this whole discussion? Check out the McDonald's ads which often appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Then keep in mind that this is the same publication that for almost 50 years ran cigarette ads proclaiming the health benefits of tobacco. (Robbins) Very scientific, oh yes. KILL YOUR TV? Hope this chapter has given you a hint to start reading newspaper and magazine articles a little differently, and perhaps start watching TV news shows with a slightly different attitude than you had before. Always ask, what are they selling here, and who's selling it? And if you actually follow up on Stauber & Rampton's book and check out some of the other resources below, you might even glimpse the possibility of advancing your life one quantum simply by ceasing to subject your brain to mass media. That's right - no more newspapers, no more TV news, no more Time magazine or Newsweek. You could actually do that. Just think what you could do with the extra time alone. Really feel like you need to "relax" or find out "what's going on in the world" for a few hours every day? Think about the news of the past couple of years for a minute. Do you really suppose the major stories that have dominated headlines and TV news have been "what is going on in the world?" Do you actually think there's been nothing going on besides the contrived tech slump, the contrived power shortages, the re-filtered accounts of foreign violence and disaster, and all the other non-stories that the puppeteers dangle before us every day? What about when they get a big one, like with OJ or Monica Lewinsky or the Oklahoma city bombing? Do we really need to know all that detail, day after day? Do we have any way of verifying all that detail, even if we wanted to? What is the purpose of news? To inform the public? Hardly. The sole purpose of news is to keep the public in a state of fear and uncertainty so that they'll watch again tomorrow and be subjected to the same advertising. Oversimplification? Of course. That's the mark of mass media mastery - simplicity. The invisible hand. Like Edward Bernays said, the people must be controlled without them knowing it. Consider this: what was really going on in the world all that time they were distracting us with all that stupid vexatious daily smokescreen? Fear and uncertainty -- that's what keeps people coming back for more. If this seems like a radical outlook, let's take it one step further: What would you lose from your life if you stopped watching TV and stopped reading newspapers altogether? Would your life really suffer any financial, moral, intellectual or academic loss from such a decision? Do you really need to have your family continually absorbing the illiterate, amoral, phony, uncultivated, desperately brainless values of the people featured in the average nightly TV program? Are these fake, programmed robots "normal"? Do you need to have your life values constantly spoonfed to you? Are those shows really amusing, or just a necessary distraction to keep you from looking at reality, or trying to figure things out yourself by doing a little independent reading? Name one example of how your life is improved by watching TV news and reading the evening paper. What measurable gain is there for you? PLANET OF THE APES? There's no question that as a nation, we're getting dumber year by year. Look at the presidents we've been choosing lately. Ever notice the blatant grammar mistakes so ubiquitous in today's advertising and billboards? Literacy is marginal in most American secondary schools. Three-fourths of California high school seniors can't read well enough to pass their exit exams. ( SJ Mercury 20 Jul 01) If you think other parts of the country are smarter, try this one: hand any high school senior a book by Dumas or Jane Austen, and ask them to open to any random page and just read one paragraph out loud. Go ahead, do it. SAT scales are arbitrarily shifted lower and lower to disguise how dumb kids are getting year by year. (ADD: A Designer Disease) At least 10% have documented "learning disabilities," which are reinforced and rewarded by special treatment and special drugs. Ever hear of anyone failing a grade any more? Or observe the intellectual level of the average movie which these days may only last one or two weeks in the theatres, especially if it has insufficient explosions, chase scenes, silicone, fake martial arts, and cretinesque dialogue. Radio? Consider the low mental qualifications of the falsely animated corporate simians hired as DJs -- seems like they're only allowed to have 50 thoughts, which they just repeat at random. And at what point did popular music cease to require the study of any musical instrument or theory whatsoever, not to mention lyric? Perhaps we just don't understand this emerging art form, right? The Darwinism of MTV - apes descended from man. Ever notice how most articles in any of the glossy magazines sound like they were all written by the same guy? And this writer just graduated from junior college? And yet has all the correct opinions on social issues, no original ideas, and that shallow, smug, homogenized corporate omniscience, to assure us that everything is going to be fine... Yes, everything is fine. All this is great news for the PR industry - makes their job that much easier. Not only are very few paying attention to the process of conditioning; fewer are capable of understanding it even if somebody explained it to them. TEA IN THE CAFETERIA Let's say you're in a crowded cafeteria, and you buy a cup of tea. And as you're about to sit down you see your friend way across the room. So you put the tea down and walk across the room and talk to your friend for a few minutes. Now, coming back to your tea, are you just going to pick it up and drink it? Remember, this is a crowded place and you've just left your tea unattended for several minutes. You've given anybody in that room access to your tea. Why should your mind be any different? Turning on the TV, or uncritically absorbing mass publications every day - these activities allow access to our minds by "just anyone" - anyone who has an agenda, anyone with the resources to create a public image via popular media. As we've seen above, just because we read something or see something on TV doesn't mean it's true or worth knowing. So the idea here is, like the tea, the mind is also worth guarding, worth limiting access to it. This is the only life we get. Time is our total capital. Why waste it allowing our potential, our personality, our values to be shaped, crafted, and limited according to the whims of the mass panderers? There are many truly important decisions that are crucial to our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being, decisions which require information and research. If it's an issue where money is involved, objective data won't be so easy to obtain. Remember, if everybody knows something, that image has been bought and paid for. Real knowledge takes a little effort, a little excavation down at least one level below what "everybody knows." 1 REFERENCES Stauber & Rampton Trust Us, We're Experts Tarcher/Putnam 2001 Ewen, Stuart PR!: A Social History of Spin 1996 ISBN: 0-465-06168-0 Published by Basic Books, A Division of Harper Collins Tye, Larry The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations Crown Publishers, Inc. 2001 King, R Medical journals rarely disclose researchers' ties Wall St. Journal, 2 Feb 99. Engler, R et al. Misrepresentation and Responsibility in Medical Research New England Journal of Medicine v 317 p 1383 26 Nov 1987 Black, D PhD Health At the Crossroads Tapestry 1988. Trevanian Shibumi 1983. Crossen, C Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America 1996. Robbins, J Reclaiming Our Health Kramer 1996. Jefferson, T Writings New York Library of America, p 493; 1984. O'Shea T The Magic Bean 2000 http://www.thedoctorwithin.com Alternative Medicine magazine May 2001. MainPage http://www.rense.com This Site Served by TheHostPros
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#1. To: gengis gandhi (#0)
Superb article, GG, thanks for posting. It's really good to review in detail how so many of our comonly held notions actually got started, especially as we now see that many of them are conflict with common sense or actual experience.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
Thursday, March 16, 2006 The mind once expanded by a new idea never returns to its' original size
If we know we're being conditioned and we succumb to it then it's a choice. Otherwise it's just a reason to hire more bureaucrats.
I like this one.
Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. – George Washington
I do hate the way my fellow americans are so affected by the tv. I say the tv tells people what to think and what to feel. If the tv told people that 2+2=5, then people would believe this and they'd say that those who think 2+2=4 are weird. People are trained to think that all legimate points of view are on tv, and they're not willing to hear points of view not expressed on tv. people have become essentially insane over it.
Bernays learned early on that the most effective way to create credibility for a product or an image was by "independent third-party" endorsement. And that is true because the audience doesn't (and almost never has) judged arguments on their merits, but rather by the source. They learned quickly that mob psychology must focus on emotion, not facts. Since the mob is incapable of rational thought, motivation must be based not on logic but on presentation. Absolutely correct. It's a logical consequence of scarcity in time and knowledge. People learn primarily by imitation, not through Reason. When you don't have the time, specialized knowledge, or ability to verify a claim for yourself, generally (but not always) the safest course is to imitate, to go with the herd. This has survival value. You do not need to see the lion in the grass with your own eyes before running -- just follow the other stampeding gazelles. Predators key not on sickness or old age per se, but on difference. Since imitating your neighbors is not always the best course in the face of knowledge scarcity, there will always be some finite contingent of contrarians, iconoclasts, and Free-"thinkers" most of whom themselves aren't any more (or less) rational than the herd majority. they needed to be told what to think, because they were incapable of rational thought by themselves. That first part is a bit presumptuous, and the "leaders" kid themselves if they believe they aren't herding too. The second part isn't quite right either. While people are mostly capable of rational thought, the victorious argument is determined by arational processes. Jefferson lived back in the time when it was still possible for a single man to have an excellent command of the majority of mankind's scientific knowledge, so naturally he had a different attitude.
It wouldn't surprise me if this regime starts hitting the subliminal messages button.
Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. – George Washington
That bugs me too, especially when trying to reason with them and they swear if FOX said it, it has to be true, they wouldn't make up things! It's those damn liberals on the internet who lie!!! And then their brains shut down.
Good though disturbing point.
I think they already have. The tv and the base values it promotes has had a great affect on Americans, warping all sense of right and wrong. The media is reshaping our society in a terrible way.
Outstanding post, if I had the time and energy I would write an essay on how the corporate/Zionist media employs Bernays' techniques to present the moron in the WH as a great leader, no doubt Tony Snow as the new WH Press guy will bring the art form to a higher level and prepare the American people for the nuking of Iran.
Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.
I don't watch TV anymore. A few years ago it occured to me that huge hit, All in the Family, was a despicable program. Compare the father, Archie Bunker, with fathers such as Ward Cleaver and Andy Griffith. It was protraying America was stupid, bigoted, working-class -- people whose toilets you could hear flush from downstairs.
"I aim to misbehave" -- Mal Reynolds, Firefly
you're exactly right. that is exactly how they portrayed americans on that show and on many shows. they don't even want us to have a positive self- image. what a propaganda machine that is able to do this! and like someone else said they make the moron bush seem like a great leader to some people, that is a powerful propaganda machine! americans have taken such huge PRIDE in freedom. But this 'freedom' is a fraud because the people who make our tv shows and give us our news are a small clique of people able to make it look like whatever point of view they wish to propagate is all their is. and yet if we really had a free country, then we'd have lots of variety to watch on tv and different points of view in the news. we don't have that at all.
Supposedly subliminal messaging is illegal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_message Instances Before the reelection of French president Francois Mitterand in 1988, a subliminal picture of him was mixed in the title sequence of French national television daily news show, and it appeared for several consecutive days. During the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, a television ad campaigning for Republican candidate George W. Bush showed words (and parts thereof) scaling from the foreground to the background on a television screen. When the word BUREAUCRATS flashed on the screen, one frame showed only the last part, RATS. Democrats promptly asked the FCC to look into the matter, but no penalties were ever assessed in the case. The effect this had on the overall presidential race was unclear. The Democrats and Al Gore received ridicule for finding malicious intent in something that could have been a simple mistake; the Republicans received ridicule for the lack of attention to detail and Bush's mispronunciation of "subliminal" (it came out as "subliminable"). Another instance of subliminal advertising revolves around commercials for the game Hksker Dk? which flashed the message 'Get it', in the United States and Canada, prompting a furor.
Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. – George Washington
Excellent Dakmar. I knew we agreed about more than your wry, fine sense of humor.
Towards the end of his days, despairing of the encroachments of the federal government, Jefferson wrote of congressmen that we might as well try reasoning with the marble columns encircling them. The Masters of Propaganda have deduced the corollary: We might as well try reasoning with the machines with which the people cast their votes. Is the human condition tragedy or farce? Perhaps the best we can do is what Jefferson advised: Place ourselves in a position to profit from the chapter of accidents ensuing from their folly, and console ourselves with the knowledge that this, too, will pass.
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