The Imprisoned American Mind: A Case of Mass Psychosis

[dumpster_baby]

The Imprisoned American Mind
by Manuel García, Jr.

August 2, 2004


...


In many ways, the rivalry between Republicans and Democrats is a battle to control the mass psychosis of American socio-political placidity. The insurgency of Ralph Nader and the Green Party is an attack on the psychosis itself. The fond hope of the insurgents is that the inevitable bite of reality (weak economy, outsourcing, healthcare insecurity, withdrawal of social services, the price of imperialism and war) prods political movement to the left within the body of the mass psychosis, so it transfers control to Kerry and the Democrats, and then continues to build leftward momentum as conservative delusions fall before a widening awareness of political reality. Then the real revolution has a chance to break through popular conservative narcolepsy and challenge the hold of corporate imperialism over American politics. Of such stuff are dreams made of.

...

Thomas Frank describes how the Democratic Party dropped the language of class warfare, and essentially abandoned unionism and the working class during the last thirty years, in an effort to win over corporate support and reflect the culture of affluent suburban professionals. In doing so, it opened the way for corporate-funded propagandists to craft a mass psychosis for social control of the working class. The success of this Republican-led effort is evident in states like Kansas, where self-inflicted impoverishment has left outcrops of affluence amidst a flatland of working class bitterness. The malevolent genius of the mass psychosis is evident in Frank's probing conclusion. Why shouldn't our culture just get worse and worse, if making it worse will only cause the people who worsen it to grow wealthier and wealthier?

George Lakoff is a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley; an expert in "framing," a communications ploy that defines the terms of debate, or defines a "frame" confining the extent of ideas available to influence a discussion. Republicans are masters of framing. As described by Orwell in his book 1984, the fundamental purpose of controlling the use of language (keeping discussion within a frame) is to limit the scope of thought; this is essential to social control. When you respond to an argument by using the terms defined by the framers, you have already lost. Lakoff uses the example of "tax relief," used by Republicans to insinuate that taxes are an inherent affliction. Lakoff suggests that Democrats (and any opponents of the Republicans) counter the "tax relief" excuse of relieving affliction, as a cover for enriching the wealthy, by discussing the "dues" we owe as a patriotic duty to support freedom, democracy, and the American way. In Lakoff's words,

...
Psychologists have described how the human mind can literally be confined in the virtual prison of a psychosis, and how repetition by authority figures, as well as control of frames of reference (social, moral, psychological, linguistic) can channel naive individual thought into dependable compliance within a mass psychosis. This situation affects the majority of Americans, and it is prudent to assume that you and I are among those so influenced. Because unreality is unreal, the attempt to maintain it in the face of reality builds up stress. Being psychotic is like running around with your eyes closed; sometimes you get headaches from running into telephone poles. Nine Eleven was one such pole.

>>>>>>>>>

Much more here:
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/mgarci19.html

[soothsayer]

1. Interesting. And of course there are those who say the flouride in the

water makes us even more pliable. Wouldn't surprise me.

[Miss Authoritiva]

2. Good God, that is the question.

"Why shouldn't our culture just get worse and worse, if making it worse will only cause the people who worsen it to grow wealthier and wealthier?"

I like to think of it as the Dick Cheney/Paris Hilton paradigm.

[UpInArms]

3. Edward Bernaise was the father of propaganda

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/stories/s903570.htm

excerpt:

The people who founded a public relations industry, the man who today is known as The Father of Public Relations, is a guy named Edward Bernaise, and he got his start doing propaganda on behalf of the Administration of Woodrow Wilson to support US entry into the First World War. A lot of the techniques that have been developed to encourage us to buy everything from automobiles to slap, have been developed initially by people whose job was to figure out how to influence the thinking of populations during wartime, and I think that’s contributed greatly to the development of a propaganda model of communications that affected us in a lot of ways that aren’t directly related, or are not seen to be directly related to wars.

[Happy Eddie]

4. Bio of this guy

His name is Edward Bernays.

There's a bio by Larry Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the birth of public relations. I didn't think it was very interesting, but that was because Bernays (a nephew of Sigmund Freud) was a dull and kind of tawdry person. He did, however, become quite wealthy as one of the pioneer conceptualizers of public-relations strategy, so if you're into the history of marketing you'll want to take a look.

I wouldn't correct anybody's spelling normally (I'm a smartass, but a polite smartass). But if anybody wanted to look him up, using ABC's spelling would return a bunch of French recipes.

[KoKo]

5. Well...he's actually VERY interesting. Here's a little snip about him:

Bernays's celebration of propaganda helped define public relations, but it didn't win the industry many friends. In a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter described Bernays and Ivy Lee as "professional poisoners of the public mind, exploiters of foolishness, fanaticism and self-interest." And history itself showed the flaw in Bernays's claim that "manipulation of the masses" is natural and necessary in a democratic society. The fascist rise to power in Germany demonstrated that propaganda could be used to subvert democracy as easily as it could be used to "resolve conflict."

In his autobiography, titled Biography of an Idea, Bernays recalls a dinner at his home in 1933 where

Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Weigand his propaganda library, the best Weigand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Weigand, was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. ... Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.

Bernays is held in high regard even today, and was even named as one of the 1000 most influential people of all time.

http://encyclozine.com/Edward_Bernays

[H2O Man]

6. Very interesting.....

Eric Fromm wrote about similar ideas. He said that societies, like individuals, could exhibit the same symptoms of psychopathology as individuals. Societies with high rates of violence in the forms of homocide, suicide, substance abuse, and child abuse, are by definition sick societies. (Think of a family with those same four "symptoms" .... sick family!)

I posted a paper on dispute resolution and dealing with other pathological "issues" on General Discussion today. I think the topics are related.

[Tamyrlin79]

7. intriguing...

I thought that the article was excellent. It should be read by anyone who hopes to create a new kind of politics in this country.

[dumpster_baby]

8. The essence of a developing consensus among well-read progressives

That it is all about MARKETING, and although Garcia never mentions that word in this article, that is what it comes down to. THat is why all the scrambling and hustling and demonstrations and registering of voters means little. The Right built their power on molding the mind of the people. So before we can hope to elect progressives into office, we first have to create a worldview, a brand of politics that people can buy into.

We need to have those "authority figures" that Garcia mentions here. Those authority figures need to be consistently creating a political world for Americans; then, when, only after, that new political world has been created, along with a new vocabulary, a new framework of reference, THEN we can have politicians walk into that world, using that new vocabulary to create new rhetoric. John Kerry is a politician selected to walk into the woldview created by the Right, the worldview created by those well funded think tanks and foundations. In every sense, Kerry is the Democrats' Republican.


But it takes years and much money to use the mainstream media to create a counter-worldview to the Right. So how can we do it?

There is a model that we may be able to follow: the Free Software/Open Source software model. Hundreds or even thousands of software developers, many of them working for free, built software that has seriously impacted the software business. Free software has crippled Sun Microsystems and other large corporations. So maybe a more egalitarian, more accessible, a lower-barrier-entry model of the media is on the horizon. And if there is one, then even the well funded think tanks and paid-for, rightwing, teevee talking heads could not match the sheer numbers of all the online activists. There are enough online progressive activists right now to beat back the machine, but we do not have access to the mass media.

[woo me with science]

9. oh please...

it really amuses me....there's always a new theory about how Americans are duped and led and manipulated and hypnotized. Of course it is only the ones promoting and believing these theories who are wiser than the rest and capable of clear thinking. Nobody ever admits to *being* one of the brainwashed.

Silliness. People are as capable of thinking and analyzing and coming to conclusions as they ever were. This is excuse-making and smacks of elitism IMO.

[Xipe Totec]

10. They Used to Burn Witches

These people who are "as capable of thinking and analyzing and coming to conclusions as they ever were".

Reality has no meaning except through a frame of reference. You may call that frame of reference brainwashing, culture, philosophy, or psychoses. But ultimately we are all prisoners of our chosen frame.