Why are Americans so easy to manipulate?

[Ian Livingston]

Good ole Eddy Bernays.

I've been puzzling over this quite a bit lately, and, as I watched the Ken
Burns sponsored PBS series The West, it struck me just how quickly the
conquest of West moved. Fifty years after Lewis and Clark escorted
Sacagawea home to her people, the American government acquired all the land
within the current boundaries of the US west of the Mississippi. Fifty
years. And in the 150 years following the Mexican American war, we have,
well.... You know all that. Here we are, a bunch people, few of whom have
met, carrying on instantaneous communication from Germany to San Narciso.
The point is, I think Americans are so easy to manipulate because delayed
gratification to us means waiting until after sunrise to have the first
drink of the day. Or the first toke, whatever. We don't do protracted
planning and do not want to investigate a project before we get it done and
get the cash in hand. We're greedy, impatient, and self-important--so much
so that we even want to hurry up and save the world. "We want the world and
we want it--now." But we don't want it collectively. We each want it in our
own way. "I'm gonna get my kicks before the shithouse goes up in flames!"
That's what makes us such easy prey for the corporations. They get theirs
by the penny, by the pound, by the deal struck in the courtroom that turns
the law in their favor, against each of us here between the shores who
place implicit faith in industry but who won't even ride to work on the
same train.

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 6:53 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 8:50 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > The corporatization of society requires a population that accepts
> > control by authorities, and so when psychologists and psychiatrists
> > began providing techniques that could control people, the
> > corporatocracy embraced mental health professionals.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > http://www.salon.com/2012/10/13/why_are_americans_so_easy_to_manipulate/
>
> This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to
> try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.
> Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception
> of the human mind and its workings profoundly.
>
> [...]
>
> http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all creeds
the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in
reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness
groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest
urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
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