Throwback Thursday: Is That Really What You Want? How Do You Know? Thoughts from The Century of Self.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FIVE YEARS AGO THIS WEEK

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes 1:18

A couple weeks ago I saw a question on Quora that intrigued me. Someone asked, "What is the hardest truth?" Several thoughts came to mind, one of them being the awareness of how chained we are by habit, genetic disposition, the formative influence of our upbringing, our tastes, our temperaments… and that to change our selves is exceedingly hard and far more difficult than we imagine.

The irony is that we believe we're free agents. It certainly feels like we're free. I can order anything on this menu that I want, right? I can watch any movie I want. Or read any book I want.

In 2002 the BBC broadcast a four-part documentary called The Century of Self. It's an eye-opening look at recent history from a new angle, from "behind the curtain" as it were.

When we think of influential people in our lives, I doubt that very many of us think of Sigmund Freud. Most people (I have no evidence and am only guessing here) associate Freud with the idea of a patient lying on a couch talking to a psychologist taking notes, or with what seem like strange notions of repressed sexuality, Oedipal complexes and the like. The Century of Self addresses another way in which Freud influenced us, through techniques of mass manipulation developed and implemented by his nephew Edward Bernays, the founder of modern Public Relations (a term which itself is a euphemism for propaganda.)

"By satisfying the masses' inner selfish desires one made them happy, and thus docile." Bernays, this program claims, was central in the development of "the all-consuming self which has come to dominate our world today."

Why are there so many hoarders among us these days? How is it that there are so many storage facilities in existence today, a whole industry that sprang up to store excess stuff, stuff that people don't use or need or know what to do with because they have so much other stuff?

* * * *
The series has four parts. They were:
"Happiness Machines"
"The Engineering of Consent" 
"There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads; He Must Be Destroyed" 
"Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering"

A description of Part 1 includes this paragraph:

Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticizing the motorcar. His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.

The BBC PR for this documentary describes the program this way:
To many in politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly, the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

* * * *

Related Link

PR & Propaganda

There's much more that can be said here, but it's time to start my day. If you have time, the programs are enlightening. You can also read a synopsis here on Wikipedia.

Meantime, life outside goes on all around you. Think about it.

Throwback Thursday: And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

THROWBACK THURSDAY: DECEMBER 2010

Preface: It's been a tough year here for so many people in the world, but it's not the first year in history where people have experienced heartbreak. Yesterday I was talking with someone whose grandfather died in the Spanish Flu epidemic a century ago. This blog post is about horrors from that same decade. 

* * *

This past week I've been listening to a BBC audio book about the decade from 1910-20. The book is primarily recordings of eyewitnesses to history that was being lived at that time. For example, first person accounts from people who were on the Titanic and the responses of political and social observers of that tragedy. The same for the Lusitania, the sinking of another "immortal" ship, which served as a catalyst to bring the U.S.and Britain into the war while simultaneously stirring anti-German sentiment here and on the Isles. The Suffragettes and the Labor movement also have their stories told by people who were there.

 

But the First World War takes up the largest chunk of this period with eyewitness accounts from men who fought in every battle field, from Verdun, Marne, Ypres, Somme and more. The world had never witnessed slaughter and horror on such as scale. Britain buried a million of her young men and left millions scarred. Germany, France and Russia lost millions more.

The experiences of those who fought in the trenches have been repeatedly captured in films so that we get a sense of how bad it was. The stories on this BBC audiobook really amp up the impact. The lice that lived in the seams of their clothes, the foot deep muck that soaked their boots, the first encounters with toxic gases used as a weapon and the terrors it inflicted... The stories told by men who were there are harrowing.

Several share their first reactions to the announcement that Britain was at war. "I was fourteen and a half and we were worried the war would not last very long and we wouldn't be able to get into it because you had to be fifteen to go serve." Yes, war fever was a thrill and it was the young whose eyes glistened as their hearts sprang up.

Against this backdrop comes tale after tale of the nightmare hell of the real war, one of the most terrible battles being Gallipoli and Suvla Bay which was the first major offensive involving the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The green flies covered everything and when you were wounded your wounds were immediately swarmed over. The lice were even worse, but worst of all was the chaos and seeming pointlessness of it all. According to one of the survivors, his division was in total confusion as clumps of soldiers marched about aimlessly not sure what they were to do, their officers dead.

Joan Baez performed and recorded a song about this fragment of history. Based on how often I've played it, it must be a favorite of mine, written by Eric Bogle (ericbogle.net)...

AND THE BAND PLAYED WALTZING MATILDA 

When I was a young man I carried my pack 

And I lived the free life of a rover 

From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback 

I waltzed my Matilda all over 

Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son 

It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done 

So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun 

And they sent me away to the war. 

And the band played Waltzing Matilda 

As we sailed away from the quay 

And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers 

We sailed off to Gallipoli. 

How well I remember that terrible day How the blood stained the sand and the water 

And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay 

We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter 

Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well 

He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells 

And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell 

Nearly blew us right back to Australia. 

But the band played Waltzing Matilda 

As we stopped to bury our slain 

We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs 

Then we started all over again. 

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive 

In a mad world of blood, death and fire 

And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive 

But around me the corpses piled higher 

Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit 

And when I woke up in my hospital bed 

And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead 

Never knew there were worse things than dying. 

For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda 

All around the green bush far and near 

For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs 

No more waltzing Matilda for me. 

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed 

And they shipped us back home to Australia 

The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane 

Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla 

And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay 

I looked at the place where my legs used to be 

And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me 

To grieve and to mourn and to pity. 

And the band played Waltzing Matilda 

As they carried us down the gangway 

But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared 

Then turned all their faces away. 

And now every April I sit on my porch 

And I watch the parade pass before me 

And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march 

Reliving old dreams of past glory 

And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore 

The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war 

And the young people ask, 

"What are they marching for?" 

And I ask myself the same question. 

And the band plays Waltzing Matilda 

And the old men answer to the call 

But year after year their numbers get fewer 

Some day no one will march there at all. 

 Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda 

Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me 

And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong 

Who'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?

 --copyright © Eric Bogle