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Edited on Fri Jan-25-08 07:36 AM by tom_paine
combined with the power of the greatest propaganda delivery system ever know: television.
This literally put the power of the mental atomic bomb into the hands of the wealthy and the ruling class.
It was too tempting to resist, and even if there was no "smoky back room" where everything was decided (likely there wasn't, it was hundreds of separate smoky back rooms) it was simply a confluence of self-interest that flowed toward the path of least resistance.
Advertising, marketing, PR and propaganda became even more powerful when 500-channel cable TV came along, further shattering the American sense of community and giving birth to the possibilty that an enitirely False Reality Bubble could be woven being strict circular and self-referential.
Of all psychology's greatest gifts to tyrants (not that I am criticizing the science itself, it is just a tool and the morality lies in the hands of those who use it) was the ironclad rule that the larger the number of people in a given target group, the easier it is to manipulate them in ways which are increasingly predictable.
Get it? The LARGER group of people, the easier they are to manipulate.
But all of this is useless without a delivery system: television. Ironically, when we were all essentially captives of a mere three TV networks, this kind of propaganda was not utilized too often or too powerfully, if at all.
I think that was because we had just defeated Hitler and the Nazis. It was too soon and our collective memories were too strong against it. Yes, even the rich and powerful couldn't bring themselves to behave too close to the Nazis, which were perhaps the nakedest, most distilled form of evil the world has ever seen.
Now that we have put some distance between them and us, time-wise, people don't worry so much about not behaving like Nazis anymore. Anyway, much of their propaganda strategies were reborn in American fashion under the rubric of psychology, advertising, PR and marketing.
Again, these advanced sciences, combined with the media saturation of society, put the power of the mental nuclear bomb in the hands of our rulers. In the end, people are people, which is to say primates. Our very nature is for dominance and hierarchy, comfort and material acquisition. It is what evolution bred us to be.
I suspect that, if there are intelligent and successful species out there, they all realized that they had to get away from their evolutionary imperatives to advance to the next phase.
We humans, our technology, our progress all FEED our outmoded evolutionary imperatives. And THAT, I believe, is the recipe for an unsuccessful species, as ours is shaping up to be. Though I suppose anything is possible and that we will come out of coming Dark Ages and environmental collapse better and stronger and wiser than we are now.
But I wouldn't count on it.
Who can fail to look at the ease at which advertisers and marketers dupe millions using psychological, subconscious techniques. Why bother debating and reasoning and arguing when this potent tool is just laying around? Why bother treating the Subjects as human beings, when advertsiing and psychology teach that the Subjects are infantile and easily manipulated. The Foundign Fathers kicked Machiavelli out the front door of Liberty, so to speak, but he snuck in the back door of advertising and marketing.
Anyway, there are many reasons why the Old Republic fell, and this is just one of them.
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