by Olivia Woodward
18. May 2009 11:06
I just came across an article by Sharon Beder (author of Environmental Principles and Policies, Suiting Themselves and Free Market Missionaries) at Thomas Paine’s Corner. It’s a really interesting excerpted analysis of the creation of consumer culture and how it’s affected the way we work. I was surprised when reading the article not to come across a mention of Edward Bernays, who I’ve long-considered the father of modern advertising. Perhaps I’ve been too influenced by Adam Curtis’s brilliant documentary the Century of the Self, which deals in detail with Bernays and his role in the invention of modern advertising and consumer culture.
Curtis portrays Bernays as a cynical manipulator of mortal minds and having read more about the man, as well as some of his work, I find it hard to disagree. It’s often better to directly quote rather than paraphrase, and so to Bernays and his 1928 book Propaganda: “many of man's thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress. A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself. A man buying a car may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion, whereas the fact may be that he would really prefer not to be burdened with it, and would rather walk for the sake of his health. He may really want it because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success in business, or a means of pleasing his wife.” And thus the advertising industry as we know it was born.
Bernays specialized in what he called the “engineering of consent” or, “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses”. Bernays was Sigmund Freud’s nephew and is renowned for having taken his uncle’s theories on people's unconscious, psychological motivations and applied them to the then emerging field of public relations. Propaganda is a remarkably candid book, and Bernays swings between lamenting the misunderstood meaning of the eponymous word and making shiver-inducing statements: “If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it” (Propaganda, 1928) naturally, such control and manipulation would be meted out by an intellectual elite.
But I didn’t set out to lambaste one man, I was hoping to get people’s reading/watching suggestions on the subject of consumption and the capitalist model of economic growth; concepts that Jonathon Porritt successfully amalgamates with sustainability but which are, in fact, its antithesis.For a fun, light-hearted take on the subject there’s The Story of Stuff, an animated film with little line drawings and a voiceover that is only patronising some of the time. Three Earthscan books, some old, some new: Jonathan Aldred, The Skeptical EconomistTim Jackson The Earthscan Reader on Sustainable Consumption and Prosperity without Growth
