Your Thoughts Are Not Your Own Volume Two: Marketing, Movies and Music

by Neil Sanders

“Dan Houser, contrasts a 'nudge' with a 'shove'. The latter, you feel. The former, you don't. The whole idea is that you are being manipulated without your knowledge. That, says Houser, is a very non-transparent policy. And non-transparency invites politicians and officials to promote their own, hidden agendas. It might even invite corruption. It certainly makes it difficult for the public or the media to check and control 'nudge' policies when they are, by design, unseen.”

Sunstein and Thaler stated that "The libertarian aspect of our strategies lies in the straightforward insistence that, in general, people should be free to do what they like-and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so". The paternalistic portion of the term according to the authors "lies in the claim that it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better".

Choice architecture describes the way in which decisions are influenced by how the choices are presented. It is by arranging the choice architecture that individuals can be nudged in a certain way without taking away their freedom of decision.

“For Thaler and Sunstein, the job of creating a libertarian paternalistic agenda is to create the right conditions (or ‘social norms’ as the authors call them) to encourage more people to change their behaviour. This is a telling retreat from political debate, which is replaced by a psychological agenda that appeals to base, biological urges rather than any view of ourselves as people who are rational in the decisions we make.”

Creating ‘social norms’, to me, is merely a rather feeble rebranding of the concept of the ‘manufacture of consent’. This approach to the management of people by shaping their environment is the very definition of mass mind control. The public, like the proverbial slowly boiling frog, does not realize their environment is changing to their detriment at the behest of the self-appointed architects of our lives.

The key to these techniques effectiveness lies in the covert manner in which they are applied. Perceptions can be managed and people can be directed in a particular direction, all the time convinced that they are thinking for themselves.

“The most secret knowledge, a science which outdates history, is the science of control over people, governments and civilizations. The foundation of this ultimate discipline is the control of wealth. Through the control of wealth comes the control of public information. Through the control of news media comes thought control. A significant portion of the American public is yet to become aware of the Invisible Government of Monetary Power.”

English aristocrat Bertrand Russell also confirmed in his book The Impact of Science on Society his belief that mass psychology should be used on the populous to better control them. “I think the subject will be of most importance politically is mass psychology … Various results will soon be arrived at: that the influence of home is obstructive … Although this science will be diligently studied, it should be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen …”

John Dewey noted in 1897: “Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.”

Elwood Cubberly, the future Dean of Education at Stanford, extolled his belief that schools should essentially be factories, "In which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

President Woodrow Wilson would repeat these sentiments in a speech to the top echelons of American businessmen: “We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

“In 1962, an NIMH-sponsored report, “The Role of Schools in Mental Health,” stated unambiguously, “Education does not mean teaching people to know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave,” a clear echo of the Rockefeller Foundation’s “dream” from an earlier part of the century. Schools were to be nothing more than behavioural engineering plants.

The watershed moment when modern schooling swept all competition from the field was the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 (ESEA). The Act allocated substantial federal funds to psychological and psychiatric programs in school, opening the door to a full palette of “interventions” by psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, agencies, and various specialists. All were invited to use the schoolhouse as a satellite office, in urban ghettos, as a primary office. Now it was the law.”

“Government front group Demos, an integral part of the British establishment which was founded by Marxists, is terrified that children are using the Internet to question what they are taught in school, and has vowed to abolish any such critical thinking to reinforce the education system's role as a tool of indoctrination. A BBC News report reflects Demos' panic at "conspiracy theories" (i.e. any critical thought that questions the official consensus) being brought into the classroom. “It's a delicious irony that we've highlighted many times before and it underpins the entire education system. While complaining that children are not engaging in "critical thinking," Demos, a government front group, is abolishing any notion of critical thinking by telling students that they should only believe what the government and the mainstream media tells them is true - the same establishment that has been caught proliferating lies time and time again.” The group has waged war on "conspiracy theories," particularly the suggestion that 7/7 and 9/11 involved state complicity, and has urged the government to "fight back" by infiltrating conspiracy websites to spread state propaganda. Demos has also characterized people who question the official fable of 7/7 and 9/11 as extremists and terrorist recruiters. The strategy mirrors that advocated by White House information czar Cass Sunstein, who in a 2008 white paper similarly called for conspiracy websites to be infiltrated and undermin...

Demos was founded in 1993 by Marxists Martin Jacques and Geoff Mulgan, and was closely affiliated with Tony Blair’s Labour government.

Britons “may have to modify their notion of freedom”,

Why do politicians, with seemingly opposed views, go to the same think tank for advice and training?

Peoples’ need to conform can be manipulated by inducing a feeling of responsibility. This is particularly effective if the responsibility is to a corporate or social entity, or an authority figure. This is shown in the Milgram electrocution test and Stanford Prison experiment, in which participants ‘harmed’ strangers so as to not deviate from the conditions of the test, at the behest of an authority figure.

Deindividuation refers to the psychological phenomenon of a person losing their inhibitions because they are no longer identifiable as an individual. The concept of deindividuation has been used to explain why people who are usually placid and conformist can become violent during riots and seemingly give in to the overwhelming mentality of the mob. According to deindividuation theory, the psychological state of deindividuation is aroused when individuals join crowds or large groups and become literally absorbed by it. The state is characterized by diminished awareness of the sense of self and the concept of individuality. This in turn reduces an individual's self-restraint and normal regulation of behaviour. Being part of a large powerful group means that individuals within it feel as if they can get away with actions that would normally be punishable or anti social. They literally have the support of the group behind them. The theory is an extension of the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and his concept of individuals hypnotically becoming intertwined with the mind-set of a larger group.

The inclusion into a larger group has been suggested as the reason for selfish attitudes in large cities. People feel lost in the expanse of the urban environment and the huge bustle of people and react accordingly, with lowered inhibitions.

The experiment, originally planned to span over two weeks, ended prematurely after a mere six days due to the sadistic treatment of the prisoners by those in the roles of the guards.

Asch discovered that in over a third of cases, the single participant who was not in on the test was swayed by the opinions of others and, with no prompting from others, blindly agreed with them. In these cases the participant went along with the group and gave incorrect answers. When asked about the clearly incorrect answers participants defended themselves and claimed that even when they knew the given answer was wrong, they stuck with the majority decision as they believed the group knew something that they themselves did not. Asch noted that 74% of subjects conformed with the incorrect opinion of the majority at least once. The rate of conformity was reduced when one or more, other than the real test subject, involved in the test provided the correct answer. False answers also fell when participants were allowed to write down their responses rather than verbally stating them as this provided the required anonymity from the group.

The use of polls in the various media outlets can be an incredibly effective way of directing rather than recording public opinion.

Encouraging a crowd to chant a slogan is referred to in certain psychological schools as a thought-stopping technique.

This means that advertising is more effective when you are not fully paying attention to it. It is by this psychological process that we unknowingly learn the words to songs, catchphrases and slogans, as they embed within our subconscious.

By appealing to naturally occurring manifestations of ‘herd mentality’ and ‘group think’, large numbers of people can have their opinions and actions dictated. The larger the group, the harder it is for an individual to stand opposed to their ethos. Therefore, the larger a group, the more easily they are coerced into a specific action or mind-frame.

When you watch TV you go into an alpha state brainwave pattern, which is technically a hypnotic trance.

In an experiment performed in 1969, Herbert Krugman monitored a test subject through a series of trials that investigated a person’s response to watching television. Krugman discovered that in less than one minute from the beginning of viewing the television, the test subjects brainwave patterns switched from beta waves (associated with active, logical thought and critical analysis) to alpha waves. When the subject stopped watching television and began reading a magazine, the brainwaves reverted to beta waves.

There is no need for an advertiser to use subliminal messages.

A partially declassified CIA document dated 17January 1958 stated “it may be that subliminal projection can be utilized in such a way as to feature a visual suggestion such as obey”. Author and activist Martin A. Lee, in an interview printed in the February 1980 issue of High Times magazine, quoted an anonymous CIA agent as saying “Some thought was given to whether or not we could affect political outcomes by using subliminal perception on TV and Radio”.

Despite public opinion that the concept of subliminal advertising is a myth, several studies have shown the effective nature of the technique when employed correctly.

“University College London researchers have found the first physiological evidence that invisible subliminal images do attract the brain's attention on a subconscious level.

"What's interesting here is that your brain does log things that you aren't even aware of and can't ever become aware of.

instrumental learning can occur in the human brain without conscious processing of contextual cues.

In 1997 over seven hundred children in Japan were hospitalized with convulsions, due to the Pokemon cartoon inducing photosensitive epilepsy-type seizures.

Doctors at the time reported the effects of the TV programme were similar to that of hypnosis and that they had induced the healthy children into an unnatural seizure.

Subliminal advertising is not always necessary, as public opinion can be manipulated with a simple headline in a newspaper.

It does not matter that the headline merely raises questions about the agent or in some cases refutes accusations, the idea has been planted.

“Children are estimated to watch six hours of TV a day, an electronic medium deliberately designed to foster a short attention span, with quick three to five second visual cuts purposely stimulating the kind of artificial agitation that induces a child to respond to commercials. Is it any wonder that these kids have a short attention span?”

Therefore, if you are feeling pressured, a learnt response could be to alleviate the symptoms with the accepted cure, alcohol.

The more an event is shown on the television, the more significance is placed on this event in the real world by the cultivated viewer.

Gerbner discovered that the more a subject viewed the television, the more likely they were to over-estimate the levels of danger present in society.

world. In a 1968 study, Gerbner found that heavy viewers held beliefs and opinions similar to those portrayed on television as opposed to the true representations of these facts as held by the real world. This serves to highlight the effect that the popular media can have on our perceptions of reality.

“High drama with emotion plus crisis situation in a movie and drama is a tremendous method of getting points across. It's almost like coupling an idea with the drama and it's downloaded like a virus into your subconscious and you're being programmed and it's called "predictive programming." The technique is ancient and it's an old science. Plato in his Republic talks about the culture industry of his own day and how it was essential not only for maintaining control over the people by the elite but they had to control everything that was given to the public. In other words, anything the public saw in drama on stage was authorized. Not only was it authorized, in ancient Greece traveling troops of players would come into the cities and do their rounds and it was compulsory to attend. Everyone, even the slaves, had to attend at least one performance because just like today they had their agenda and their schedule and the upgrading of the system and it was done primarily through fiction,

recorded in Hollywood and then used as the stock ‘frog’ sound and distributed as a generic effect used worldwide in hundreds of films, radio plays, TV shows and adverts.

By as early as 1928, Edward Bernays already saw the immense potential of film to be used as a tool to standardize thought: “The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions. The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation. Because pictures are made to meet market demands, they reflect, emphasize and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than stimulate new ideas and opinions. The motion picture avails itself only of ideas and facts which are in vogue. As the newspaper seeks to purvey news, it seeks to purvey entertainment.” Bernays summarised: “As civilizations becomes more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which the public opinion can be regimented.”

Walter Lippmann believed that "the mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation". Citizens, he maintained, were too “self-centered to care about public policy except as pertaining to pressing local issues”. Lippmann viewed the purpose of the mass media as "intelligence work" for the greater good of the elite and maintaining the status quo. Within this role, journalists are a link between the elite controllers and the public. A journalist, in Lippmann’s opinion, should seek facts from the controlling influences to then transmit to the public, unchecked, who then use this information to form a general consensus. Lippmann compared the political savvy of an average man to a theater-goer walking into a play in the middle of the third act and leaving before the last curtain.

Marshall McLuhan famously stated, “Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America – not on the battlefields of Vietnam”.

1991 Task Force Report on Greater CIA Openness, compiled by then CIA Director Robert Gates’ newly appointed ‘Openness Task Force’, which ironically secretly debated whether or not the agency should be less secretive.