ThirstyFish

The other day, I sat through a four hour award-winning British documentary titled The Century of the Self. The documentary analyzes how the works of prominent psychologists Sigmund Freud, his daughter Anna Freud, his nephew Edward Bernays, and radical psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich influenced the way major corporations and governments have dealt with and controlled people in the 20th Century. Most who find the documentary interesting enough to sit through, will likely find it extremely disturbing.

Edward Bernays built on Sigmund Freud's idea that "human beings are driven by unconscious and irrational forces" to develop techniques in public relations utilized by corporate and government entities to market goods and to manufacture consent. Employed by banks and corporations, Bernays and other psychologists, through the use of mass media, transformed Americans into a consumer society. In essence, the documentary raises the question: "How much of what we call I, is really I?" Are we unknowingly being manipulated by corporations and governments to be "convenient" for their goals? The casuistic assumption that governments and corporations know what is best for us, thereby they have a unilateral right to control our minds through propaganda, is not an easy thing to swallow.

The assertion that we live in a democracy, that all citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives, is an illusion. We only say what our manipulators want us to say. Take a look back at the photograph posted above. If I asked, who you think that person is, it would hardly be you that's answering, but rather your manufactured self. Think about it.

Song of the Day: Princes of the Universe - Queen (1986)