I've been thinking a lot these days about how society is often so easily manipulated and exactly how this is done by everyone from the mass media, to entertainment, to advertisers, to social media, etc. Basically the answer is that the human brain and psychology has a lot of unknown quirks in its many process that enables a number of psychological "access points" that most people simply don't know or understand. However, if you do understand these processes and "access points", you can "hack" yours and others brains and behavior for both good and for bad. Sadly most of this is being used for bad these days, but I'll also cover some good things you can do for yourself as well within this series of articles.
I've been inspired to write this series by a recent video I've found that backs up an older study done with five monkeys. You may have heard of the "Five Monkeys" experiment below. What is most interesting about the experiment is that it demonstrates exactly how we get what we call "common culture."
It turns out that "culture" is nothing more than shared societal habits. These habits can be good, bad, or neutral, but culture is always created based upon collective responses to group experiences. As we move forward in time, this "culture" remains in group memory and behavior despite the fact that most of the time, no one understands the original reasons. The responses / behaviors are "sticky" even though the originally relevant group experience is very likely no longer relevant to the current conditions of the world. When asked about their "culture", the only answer most people can give generations down the line is, "we've just always done it this way."
The "Five Monkeys" experiment and its corresponding human experiment
Here's a summary of the above "Five Monkeys" video:
- A group of five monkeys are put in a cage and a bunch of bananas are hung from the ceiling under a ladder
- The natural instinct of the monkeys is of course to head up the ladder to get the bananas, but every time they try they get hosed down with what is basically a firehose with cold water
- After some time, the monkeys stop trying to get the bananas and this is when a new monkey is introduced, which of course immediately tries to get the bananas
- As soon as the new monkey heads for the bananas, the other monkeys afraid of being "firehosed", beat the piss out of the new monkey
- Over time, the original five monkeys are replaced one by one until no monkey is left that was ever "firehosed", but still none of the new monkeys will go for the bananas because they have been "socially engineered" to stay away from them
This is a fascinating experiment, but even more fascinating is a very similar experiment done with humans that was captured on video below. Be sure to have a watch of it and compare it to the "Five Monkeys" experiment above:
We are all being "socially engineered"
The value of understanding the above experiments is to be able to understand that our minds and behaviors can, and are, being hacked in similar ways on a regular basis whether we realize it or not. Going as far back as the time of Sigmund Freud, the study of psychology has been of extreme interest to governments and major corporate interests. Governments, corporations, religions, and many others major interests want to take advantage of our mental and social "access points" so as to manipulate all of us into predictable and controllable behavior. This is for both the political and monetary benefit of those doing the social engineering.
If you want to fully understand and identify how much of this control is going on, then you need to first understand the history of the many types of mind and behavioral hacking underway. I will cover a vast amount of today's mind manipulation in this series, but we will start now with a bit of the history of "public relations."
Public relations in its modern form was essentially started by the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays. "Eddie" Bernays had the great idea that human beings could be socially engineered (read subtly propagandized) via their subconscious desires; the same subconscious desires that were identified by his uncle "Siggy." Not long after this realization, Eddie started selling public relations consulting (i.e. social engineering) to major corporations, the Military-Industrial Complex, and intelligence agencies.
Eddie Bernays became incredibly influential starting at around the end of World War I. Bernays had attended the Versailles Peace Treaty outside Paris and knew all the major government propaganda players - the same ones that would work all through World War II as well as into post war / Cold War era of government mind control in the 50s and 60s. Due to his influence, Bernays got his way into just about every major advertising and government propaganda project and campaign of the early and mid 1900s.
Below are just a few infamous campaigns that Bernays himself led:
- The spreading of cigarette smoking to women as "torches of freedom" for the women's liberation movement
- The convincing of the American public to accept (deadly) fluoride in the water supply under the guise of preventing cavities
- The adding of an egg to instant cake mixes so that women could feel they contributed more (including sexually) when they baked a cake (a Freudian mind**k - excuse the pun)
- The propagandizing of a communist menace in Guatamala so that the United Fruit Corporation (Chiquita) could stage a coup and stay in total control of the country (the original "banana republic")
- The propaganda takedown of the last legitimate leader of Iran (Muhammed Mossadegh) so that British Petroleum as well as Arabian-American Oil could take over the oil fields under their puppet the Shah of Iran (Operation Ajax)
As you can see from the above "achievements" of Bernays, public relations was not about helping create a better society. To Bernays, public relations was about manipulating the masses (in oftentimes diabolical ways) to support the control and consumerism of the public. Bernays was one of the first to use the social normative forces and basic sex desires that are common today in advertising. If there was anyone that faithfully applied the "sex sells" mantra to advertising, it was Bernays.
I won't go into the full history of Eddie Bernays and public relations, but highly recommend that you watch at least the first episode of the excellent BBC documentary below called "The Century of Self." The documentary traces the history of Freud, Bernays, and other psychological / social manipulators as well as the many projects that they worked on for governments and corporations. It's a fascinating and somewhat scary history of how easily we can be mentally and behaviorally hacked and manipulated by those with money, power, and or influence.
Lots of hacks and history still to be covered
I will leave it here for the moment, but I will cover lots more on history and the hacking of the human mind and behavior in future segments. We'll get into how the mind can be specifically influenced and manipulated both directly as well as socially. We'll also cover numerous historical examples and how these historical manipulation efforts still massively influence us today.
In the meantime, please do leave your comments and additional insights in the comments section below.