Our recent Hedge School meeting had eight attendees discussing the first part of a four part documentary series, Adam Curtus' The Century of The Self. The Happiness Machine gave an account of how Freud’s theories were used by his nephew, Edward Bernays, in the development of the public relations industry. watch here -Basically we are human beings with uncontrollable desires, knowledge of these desires can be used to make us act in ways that we might not otherwise choose to.
The group discussed a
number of ideas coming from the documentary. The first point of note from our discussion was that we felt conflicted about Bernays, on the one hand he manipulated and profited from the exploitation of Freud's theories while on the other hand he had introduced the world to Freud's work's by getting them published in the United States. We were struck by how, during the 20th century, capitalism became inextricably linked with democracy. Capitalism seeks to control the masses while democracy is supposed to be a system of equals.
Despite none of us being overly fond of Bernays, we did wonder if we were blindly blaming him for things which were much greater than he could have controlled. We talked about how we, the group, might be buying in to the idea that we need to be happy, and that we even know how to achieve that. Perhaps by overthrowing the capitalist system for a socialist one we would just be replacing one abusive system for another? By appealing to our sense of what we lack we are turned into consumers. As a group we wished for nothing more than to 'fix' society by creating some sort of socialist utopian state. If only we could manipulate the public to convince them to vote for the 'left'..... perhaps we should use propaganda/ PR?
We then spent some time discussing politics, Obama, ideology and selling out in order to stay in power. In the end we are human beings, alive, with the sole purpose of replicating our genes. We are not, although we may think this, happiness machines.
Next meeting, Wednesday 8th October at 6pm, upstairs in the Friend in Hand!
Despite none of us being overly fond of Bernays, we did wonder if we were blindly blaming him for things which were much greater than he could have controlled. We talked about how we, the group, might be buying in to the idea that we need to be happy, and that we even know how to achieve that. Perhaps by overthrowing the capitalist system for a socialist one we would just be replacing one abusive system for another? By appealing to our sense of what we lack we are turned into consumers. As a group we wished for nothing more than to 'fix' society by creating some sort of socialist utopian state. If only we could manipulate the public to convince them to vote for the 'left'..... perhaps we should use propaganda/ PR?
We then spent some time discussing politics, Obama, ideology and selling out in order to stay in power. In the end we are human beings, alive, with the sole purpose of replicating our genes. We are not, although we may think this, happiness machines.
Next meeting, Wednesday 8th October at 6pm, upstairs in the Friend in Hand!
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