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    The Nephew from Hell: Edward Bernays and the science of American bullshit

    By David Seaton on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 3:24pm |

    A couple of summers ago I read a lovely book called "The Metaphysical Club - A Story of  Ideas in America", a Pulitzer Prize winner, by Louis Menand.  The book is about a group of philosophers: William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey, thinkers who grew out of the yeast culture of Emerson and Thoreau's Boston. The period in which these men worked, was the aftermath of the American Civil War, a time marked by an explosion of sordid robber barons and hucksters of every stripe whose patron saint might be P. T. Barnum, certainly not Saint Dismas, the "good thief".

     

    At that time two America's coexisted, one dark and sleazy: the America of Jay Gould and Boss Tweed and another pure and bright: the America of James and Holmes. As different as they were, both of them, each in their way, were as real, as clearly drawn, as mordant and as "what you see is what you get" as the writings of Mark Twain and Herman Melville. 

     

    While I was reading the book I kept getting the feeling that the sense of reality that permeated that era of America's past, has been almost entirely lost. I have experienced some of that reality myself in the person of my grandmother, who was born and raised in 19th century America, and the men and women she grew up with in the tiny Midwestern village, where I spent many of my summers as a small boy. I wondered, while reading, "The Metaphysical Club" when and how America had become such a sinkhole of spin and mendacious euphemism, storytelling and bullshit. I had no answer, only the feeling of a better, nobler, America that had been lost. An America I am much proud of, hardly recognizable in the bloated, deluded, self-indulgent America of today.  Who was responsible for wrecking it, when, how? I had no answer.

     

    Then, the other day, a good friend sent me the link to the video that I have posted at the top of this piece and I suddenly was getting an idea when bullshit became America's native dialect. When I saw it, I thought it might have been some historical fiction dreamed up by Doctorow.

     

    Here is the summary of the video.

    BBC resume of "The Century of Self":

     

    The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

     

    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 eroticising 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.

     

    It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world.

    I am going to say some pretty strong and uncomplimentary things about Freud's nephew Edward Bernays, so before going any farther, I wish to make clear, that I consider Sigmund Freud himself as one of the noblest and most creative minds in western history, a man who dedicated his life to fearlessly exploring the darkest recesses of the human mind with an intent solely to heal and ameliorate the human condition. As a tiny, but revealing sample of Freud's nobility and humanity, this sample, his account of his meeting with William James, will have to suffice.

    Another event of this time which made a lasting impression on me was a meeting with William James the philosopher. I shall never forget one little scene that occurred as we were on a walk together. He stopped suddenly, handed me a bag he was carrying and asked me to walk on, saying that he would catch me up as soon as he had got through an attack of angina pectoris which was just coming on. He died of that disease a year later; and I have always wished that I might be as fearless as he was in the face of approaching death.

    The video shows that it was Bernays' public relations skills that made a scientist like Freud and his very complex and esoteric theories a household word in middle class America on the order of Picasso and Charley Chaplin and led to today's enervating psychobabble and of course led to the insidious and Orwellian monster of American marketing. 

     

    Where Freud saw knowledge for healing Bernays just saw money and he showed America's corporations how to mine humanity's dark side for profit. Pimping is an honest dollar compared to Bernays' game.

     

    One of the great ironies of this video is to learn that Eddy Bernays, the man who taught American women to smoke, was also a major influence on an admirer of his, Joseph Goebbels, who used "Uncle Siggy's" insights into the levers and pulleys of human emotions to whip up a bestial  frenzy in the highly civilized German people, a frenzy that ultimately killed and "smoked" six million European Jews. Sigmund Freud fortunately died in the first months of the war and so never really learned what use his ideas had finally been put to. 

     

    If you stop and think about it Bernays may be one of the most poisonous and evil men in history, certainly in America's history, nobody, not even Ayn Rand, can touch him.

     

    This video is an hour long with three more to follow, but it is a true treasure. Please watch it.

    Cross posted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

    Comments

    “You can’t be afraid of words that speak the truth. I don’t
    like words that hide the truth. I don’t like words that
    conceal reality. I don’t like euphemisms or euphemistic
    language. And American english is loaded with euphemisms.
    Because Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with
    reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they
    invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from
    it. And it gets worse with every generation. For some reason
    it just keeps getting worse.

    I’ll give you an example of that. There’s a condition in
    combat. Most people know about it. It’s when a fighting
    person’s nervous system has been stressed to it’s absolute
    peak and maximum, can’t take any more input. The nervous
    system has either snapped or is about to snap. In the first
    world war that condition was called shell shock. Simple,
    honest, direct language. Two syllables. Shell shock. Almost
    sounds like the guns themselves. That was 70 years ago. Then
    a whole generation went by. And the second world war came
    along and the very same combat condition was called battle
    fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say.
    Doesn’t seem to be as hard to say. Fatigue is a nicer word
    than shock. Shell shock…battle fatigue.

    Then we had the war in Korea in 1950. Madison Avenue was
    riding high by that time. And the very same combat condition
    was called Operational Exhaustion. Hey we’re up to 8
    syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely
    out of the phrase now. It’s totally sterile now. Operational
    Exhaustion: sounds like something that might happen to your
    car. Then of course came the war in Vietnam, which has only
    been over for about 16 or 17 years. And thanks to the lies
    and deceit surrounding that war, I guess it’s no surprise
    that the very same condition was called Post-Traumatic
    Stress Disorder. Still 8 syllables, but we’ve added a
    hyphen. And the pain is completely buried under jargon.
    Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I bet you, if we’d still
    been calling it shell shock, some of those Vietnam veterans
    might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I
    bet you that.

    But it didn’t happen. And one of the reasons is because we
    were using that soft language, that language that takes out
    the life out of life. And it is a function of time it does
    keep getting worse.

    Give you another example. Sometime during my life toilet
    paper became bathroom tissue. I wasn’t notified of this. No
    one asked me if I agreed with it. It just happened. Toilet
    paper became bathroom tissue. Sneakers became running shoes.
    False teeth became dental appliances. Medicine became
    medication. Information became directory assistance. The
    dump became the land fill. Car crashes became automobile
    accidents. Partly cloudy became partly sunny. Motels became
    motor lodges. House trailers became mobile homes. Used cars
    became previously owned transportation. Room service became
    guest room dining. Constipation became occasional
    irregularity.

    When I was a little kid if I got sick they wanted me to go
    to a hospital and see the doctor. Now they want me to go to
    a health maintenance organization. Or a wellness center to
    consult a health care delivery professional. Poor people
    used to live in slums. Now the economically disadvantaged
    occupy sub-standard housing in the inner cities. And they’re
    broke! They’re broke. They don’t have a negative cash flow
    position. They’re f–kin’ broke! Because a lot of them were
    fired. You know, fired. Management wanted to curtail
    redundancies in the human resources area. So many people are
    no longer viable members of the work force. Smug, greedy
    well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal
    their sins. It’s as simple as that. The CIA doesn’t kill
    people anymore, they neutralize people, or they depopulate the area.

    The government doesn’t lie, it engages in disinformation.The pentagon actually
    measures radiation in something they call sunshine units.
    Israeli murderers are called commandos. Arab commandos are
    called terrorists. Contra killers are called freedom
    fighters. Well if crime fighters fight crime and fire
    fighters fight fire what do freedom fighters fight? They
    never mention that part of it to us, do they?

    And some of this stuff is just silly. We know that. Like
    when the airlines tell us to pre-board. What the hell is
    pre-board? What does that mean? To get on before you get on?

    They say they’re going to pre-board those passengers in need
    of special assistance …cripples! Simple honest direct
    language. There’s no shame attached to the word cripple I
    can find in any dictionary. In fact it’s a word used in
    Bible translations. “Jesus healed the cripples.” Doesn’t
    take seven words to describe that condition. But we don’t
    have cripples in this country anymore. We have the
    physically challenged. Is that a grotesque enough evasion
    for you? How about differently-abled? I’ve heard them called
    that. Differently-abled! You can’t even call these people
    handicapped anymore. They say: “We’re not handicapped, we’re
    handy capable!” These poor people have been bullsh-tted by
    the system into believing that if you change the name of the
    condition somehow you’ll change the condition. Well hey
    cousin … doesn’t happen!

    We have no more deaf people in this country. Hearing
    impaired. No more blind people. Partially sighted or
    visually impaired. No more stupid people, everyone has a
    learning disorder. Or he’s minimally exceptional. How would
    you like to told that about your child? ‘He’s minimally
    exceptional.’ Psychologists have actually started calling
    ugly people those with severe appearance deficits. It’s
    getting so bad that any day now I expect to hear a rape
    victim referred to as an unwilling sperm recipient!

    And we have no more old people in this country. No more old
    people. We shipped them all away and we brought in these
    senior citizens. Isn’t that a typically American twentieth
    century phrase? Bloodless. Lifeless. No pulse in one of
    them. A senior citizen. But I’ve accepted that one. I’ve
    come to terms with it. I know it’s here to stay. We’ll never
    get rid of it. But the one I do resist, the one I keep
    resisting, is when they look at an old guy and say, “Look at
    him Dan, he’s ninety years young.” Imagine the fear of aging
    that reveals. To not even be able to use the word old to
    describe someone. To have to use an antonym.

    And fear of aging is natural. It’s universal, isn’t it? We
    all have that. No one wants to get old. No one wants to die.
    But we do. So we con ourselves. I started conning myself
    when I got in my forties. I’d look in the mirror and say,
    “Well…I guess I’m getting …older.” Older sounds a little
    better than old, doesn’t it? Sounds like it might even last
    a little longer. I’m getting old. And it’s okay. Because
    thanks to our fear of death in this country I won’t have to
    die. I’ll pass away. Or I’ll expire, like a magazine
    subscription. If it happens in the hospital they’ll call it
    a terminal episode. The insurance company will refer to it
    as negative patient care outcome. And if it’s the result of
    malpractice they’ll say it was a therapeutic misadventure.
    I’m telling ya, some of this language makes me want to
    vomit. Well, maybe not vomit …makes me want to engage in
    an involuntary personal protein spill.” George Carlin – On Language

    They call it Politically Correct speech  I call it sanctimonious bull shit.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 3:56pm

    You and our late lamented Mr. Carlin got it right. Now go and watch the video and see how it happened.


    by David Seaton on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 4:17pm

    Great quote C.


    by Richard Day on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 4:47pm

    Here's a little trivia: before it was called "shell shock" in WWI, it was called "soldier's heart" in the "Civil" War. It might be funny, but there's a lot of what he says in that spiel I don't agree with. There are some good reasons for some so-called politically correct speech.


    by Verified Atheist on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 5:57pm

    Dingos kidneys !


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 6:48pm

    No, that was the revolutionary war.

    Now, if we take Carlin's theory to heart that fewer syllables are better, than we'll notice we went from four ("dingos kidneys") to three ("soldier's heart") to two ("shell shock") before starting our exponential climb to four and then eight. Now, an ignorant sod might think this means that WWI was the height of honesty and all that was good with the world, but what's much less known is that during the Spanish-American war, it was simply known as "fuck". Those were the salad days we should all be yearning for.


    by Verified Atheist on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 8:17pm

    I had not heard of Bernays or his pernicious influence, David. Thanks for the introduction.

    It's interesting that Bernays coined the phrase "engineering consent." The way Noam Chomsky rephrased it suggests he understood that we have moved past the design stage into full-fledged mass production.


    by acanuck on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 5:23pm

    how America had become such a sinkhole of spin and mendacious euphemism, storytelling and bullshit. I had no answer, only the feeling of a better, nobler, America that had been lost.

    You clearly haven't read any 19th-century American newspapers.


    by artappraiser on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 5:59pm

    There were always the two Americas, the crummy and the noble. 19th century newspapers published the Lincoln Douglas debates and people all over the country read them and discussed them intelligently, they led to Lincoln becoming president. No debate of that quality between comparable candidates could be "packaged" in today's America.


    by David Seaton on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 5:50am

    When asked what the first thing he would do if crowned emperor, Confucius replied that he would, "clarify the language". Clear speech being a clear sign of clear thought and clear thought being a sign of a clear conscious.

    Under the leadership of Bernays and his followers, American English has been significantly degraded, indeed debauched, as George Carlin skillfully illustrates in the monologue that cmaukonen has kindly posted here.

    As serfs of corporate America, its citizens are encouraged to use this debased language as feudal serfs were encouraged to use religion: as an opiate or evasion from fear, pain and oppression.

    As someone in the film points out, democracy is about changing the traditional relations of power, however the genius of American democracy has been to use democracy to maintain the traditional relations of power. This inevitably leads America's political course into doublethink and doubletalk, rather like the sermons of a TV evangelist with a taste in massage parlors.


    by David Seaton on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 5:49am

    How exactly does one measure the clarity of language? I find clinical terms (such as PTSD) more precise than colloquialisms (such as "shell shock"), and I find precise terms to be clearer. On the other hand, I think such "politically correct" terms such as "police officer" over "police woman" or "policeman" are sometimes less precise as they (deliberately) remove the sex of the subject from the description. In this case, however, I'd argue that the reduction in precision actually improves the clarity as it helps us to make fewer assumptions.

    That said, there are many phrase changes that are deliberately obfuscating - "collateral damage" comes to mind.


    by Verified Atheist on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 6:34am

    I am not a Taliban on this, for example I think it is better to say that somebody is suffering from Down's syndrome than to call them a mongoloid idiot


    by David Seaton on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:13am

    Which would also vilify the regular idiots. Like those who are currently in congress.


    by cmaukonen on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 11:32am

    My biggest problem with politically correct speech is that far, far too often it is phony, superficial, shallow and dishonest. Concealing the users true thoughts and feelings on the subject. The first thing that comes to mind when I hear it is....bullshit.


    by cmaukonen on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 11:10am

    My biggest problem with the way that politically correct speech is often portrayed is that different people mean different things when they raise that particular bogeyman and thus the phrase "politically correct" is among the least clear and least precise terms used. If a particular phrase is phony, superficial, shallow, and dishonest (and just to be clear, I'm in complete agreement that many phrases are), attack it on those grounds. Don't use "political correctness" as a proxy for the real problem.


    by Verified Atheist on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 11:27am

    I'm not that concerned with politically correct in itself, more with the debasement of language so I agree with the the line, "Don't use "political correctness" as a proxy for the real problem."


    by David Seaton on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 3:37pm

    Mmm, wait.  So this post is not going to include a recipe for Bearnaise sauce?

     


    by LisB on Fri, 02/18/2011 - 2:30am

    You are a quick study!Smile


    by David Seaton on Sat, 02/19/2011 - 7:19am