Consumerism and Propaganda

Ever wonder why people stood in line for hours waiting to get that new 600 dollar iPhone, when they already had a phone in their pocket? Consumerism and propaganda friends. My mother liked to call it "keeping up with the Jones family".

Alot of these posts on this blog might seem strange to you(they do to me sometimes as well), there is a reason for that, tricks used to ignore whats really going on and fill your life with useless garbage(like mtv).

I'm getting ahead of myself, let me start by saying this, humans are social creatures. We crave approval from our peers/loved ones. Any thinking or acting outside of this group(your group) will get you laughed at and maybe out casted to be alone. So we tend to go along with most mainstream thinking(an example of this would be clothes, although you might not like ed hardy/nike/fubu/etc, you don't fight against what he and others are doing).

Now what does this have to do with anything? Good question, and the answer is, that propaganda is so ingrained in our lives, that we push propaganda our self without ever knowing it.

In fact, in my opinion, peer pressure is the strongest form of propaganda, along with ideals and belief's passed down from parents to children. Now most people believe that they cant be fooled or brainwashed, or that the thoughts are their own.

I wish them a safe journey, but we already know what life has in store for them dont we? Pain and confusion, why oh why did i take out that 2nd loan on the house, man i thought my job would be here forever, and damn my stocks were wiped out.

Sadly this is none of their fault or yours or mine. we have been raised this way, to consume as much as we can, buy a big house, have kids, and then fill your house with stuff. It started back in the early 1900's and by the fifty's they had it perfected. In the early 1900's Americans bought only what they needed, today we buy every plastic thing under the sun.

Before tv was even around they were doing study's on how to influnce people thru the radio...


It has been suggested War of the Worlds was a psychological warfare experiment. In the 1999 documentary, Masters of the Universe: The Secret Birth of the Federal Reserve, writer Daniel Hopsicker claims the Rockefeller Foundation funded the broadcast, studied the panic, and compiled a report available to a few. A variation has the Radio Project and the Rockefeller Foundation as conspirators.[8] In a theatrical trailer for his film F For Fake, Welles joked about such theories, jesting that the broadcast indeed "had secret sponsors".
While Mercury Theatre had no sponsor, CBS and the Rockefeller Foundation were contracting the leading crowd psychology researchers of the time; CBS had Edward Bernays, the Rockefeller Foundation had Ivy Lee. With the involvement of Frank Stanton in the Radio Project and his position in the CBS research department, it is possible the "creative curiosity" of Orson Welles came from conversations within these business circles.


A detailed documentary on these circles and the ideas behind social manipulation was made by the BBC, called The Century of the Self




I moved that last sentence down because its so important, look for this video online, it's free to watch, so watch it.

Watch it and then come to understand why it's called tv "programs", why your always working for that next big purchase. Think about it, right now you have something in mind to spend your money on, something you need maybe, but something you want for sure.


How did we fall so far so fast? how did we go from working one job and enjoying time with our loved ones, too working two jobs, just to pay for a house 3 times too big for me, with a big phat car payment, me spending 50 hours a week on my xbox after work, and never spending time with our loved ones?


All this has been planned friends, thru the use of group think and peer pressure, backdoor deals and twisting some arms.Our country and our kids lives have been sold out from under us. Wonder why our kids are so dumb now?



According to researcher Mack White ( http://www.mackwhite.com/), "Psychologist Hadley Cantril conducted a study of the effects of the broadcast and published his findings in a book, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. This study explored the power of broadcast media, particularly as it relates to the suggestibility of human beings under the influence of fear. Cantril was affiliated with Princeton University's Radio Research Project, which was funded in 1937 by the Rockefeller Foundation. Also affiliated with the Project was Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) executive Frank Stanton, whose network had broadcast the program. Stanton would later go on to head the news division of CBS, and in time would become president of the network, as well as chairman of the board of the RAND Corporation, the influential think tank which has done groundbreaking research on, among other things, mass brainwashing. Two years later, with Rockefeller Foundation money, Cantril established the Office of Public Opinion Research (OPOR), also at Princeton. Among the studies conducted by the OPOR was an analysis of the effectiveness of "psycho-political operations" (propaganda, in plain English) of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Then, during World War II, Cantril and Rockefeller money assisted CFR member and CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow in setting up the Princeton Listening Center, the purpose of which was to study Nazi radio propaganda with the object of applying Nazi techniques to OSS propaganda. Out of this project came a new government agency, the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS). The FBIS eventually became the United States Information Agency (USIA), which is the propaganda arm of the National Security Council. Thus, by the end of the 1940s, the basic research had been done and the propaganda apparatus of the national security state had been set up--just in time for the Dawn of Television."

Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal that when a person watches television, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the seat of logical thought. Here, information is broken down into its component parts and critically analyzed. The right brain, however, treats incoming data uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical responses. The shift from left to right brain activity also causes the release of endorphins, the body's own natural opiates--thus, it is possible to become physically addicted to watching television, a hypothesis borne out by numerous studies which have shown that very few people are able to kick the television habit. It's no longer an overstatement to note that the youth today that are raised and taught through network television are intellectually dead by their early teens.

The dumbing down of humanity is represented by another shift which occurs in the brain when we watch television. Activity in the higher brain regions (such as the neo-cortex) is diminished, while activity in the lower brain regions (such as the limbic system) increases. The latter, commonly referred to as the reptile brain, is associated with more primitive mental functions, such as the "fight or flight" response. The reptile brain is unable to distinguish between reality and the simulated reality of television. To the reptile brain, if it looks real, it is real. Thus, though we know on a conscious level it is "only a film," on a conscious level we do not--the heart beats faster, for instance, while we watch a suspenseful scene. Similarly, we know the commercial is trying to manipulate us, but on an unconscious level the commercial nonetheless succeeds in, say, making us feel inadequate until we buy whatever thing is being advertised--and the effect is all the more powerful because it is unconscious, operating on the deepest level of human response. The reptile brain makes it possible for us to survive as biological beings, but it also leaves us vulnerable to the manipulations of television programmers. This is where the manipulators use our own emotions as strings to control us. The distortions and directions we are being moved to are taking place in the subconscious, often undetected.

Propaganda techniques were first codified and applied in a scientific manner by journalist Walter Lippman and psychologist Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud) early in the 20th century. During World War I, Lippman and Bernays were hired by then United States President, Woodrow Wilson, to participate in the Creel Commission, the mission of which was to sway popular opinion in favor of entering the war, on the side of Britain. Edward Bernays said in his 1928 book Propaganda that, "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."


http://www.rense.com/general69/mass.htm


And while the link might be considered by some as "conspiracy" garbage, let me remind you, the brainwashed reader, that almost everything in the world today is a conspiracy. The birth of our country was one of the biggest conspiracy's ever. George and Ben and Thomas were called crazy, to imagine they could take on the worlds biggest army and start their own country. It was such a no win conspiracy that only 3% of americans took part in the revolution.


I will do a post about conspiracy next. As always comments, insults on my intelligence,or anything else post it in comments.