Okay "RoadsEnd",, why don't you now tell us what was, in your words, very good
about it.
RoadsEnd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Tis very good.
Peace,
K
On Sep 16, 2008, at 9:57 PM, Vigilius Haufniensis wrote:
Haven't seen this yet, but it looks good. -Vmann
http://tracker.conspiracycentral.net/torrents-details.php?id=1777
The Century Of The Self - Part 1of4
Happiness Machines
The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew,
Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s
and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He
showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't
need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.
Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of
mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity
endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.
His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading
them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was
convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was
a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner
irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy
and thus docile.
It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's
world.
http://tracker.conspiracycentral.net/torrents-details.php?id=1778
The Century Of The Self - Part 2of4
The Engineering of Consent
The programme explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud's
ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses.
Politicians and planners came to believe Freud's underlying premise - that deep
within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They
were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to
the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again they set out to
find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind.
Sigmund Freud's daughter, Anna, and his nephew, Edward Bernays, provided the
centrepiece philosophy. The US government, big business, and the CIA used their
ideas to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the American
people. But this was not a cynical exercise in manipulation. Those in power
believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society
was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of
normal American life.
http://tracker.conspiracycentral.net/torrents-details.php?id=1779
The Century Of The Self - Part 3of4
There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of
Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a
pupil of Freud's, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family.
He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It
should be encouraged to express itself.
Out of this came a political movement that sought to create new beings free of
the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people's minds by
business and politics.
This programme shows how this rapidly developed in America through self-help
movements like Werber Erhard's Erhard Seminar Training - into the irresistible
rise of the expressive self: the Me Generation.
But the American corporations soon realised that this new self was not a threat
but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to
feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that
individuality. To do this they turned to techniques developed by Freudian
psychoanalysts to read the inner desires of the new self.
http://tracker.conspiracycentral.net/torrents-details.php?id=1780
The Century Of The Self - Part 4of4
Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America,
turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the inner
desires of the self.
Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used
the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain
power. They set out to mould their policies to people's inner desires and
feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products.
Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics,
business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who
followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of
public relations in the 1920s.
The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy,
one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they
didn't realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these
techniques had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of
controlling them.
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