Once the idea was firmly in place that people could be controlled without their realizing it because the control was through their subconscious drives for love, lust and acquisition, leaders in politics and business were quick to understand what Freud’s nephew Bernays pointed out to them. Even a guy like Ike, who warned us about the dangers of the industrial-military complex, welcomed the government/corporation complex, because he thought that a democracy was synonymous with the “free market,” even one that was covertly controlled by an elite intent on personal wealth. This is a continuation of the tension that is explicit in England: the House of Lords versus the House of Commons. Those who are “better” and privileged, against the masses who demand things by threatening to riot in the streets. Which is worse: tyranny or chaos?
Advertising/politics worked pretty well until the forces released by William Reich separated people into a narcissistic insistence on having their own individual way. Bernays and his heirs had a little trouble getting a handle on this development until they began to do surveys of what people thought about their own inner wants and desires. In a post-war world where a lot of things had been delayed or suppressed, the idea of having something that you really wanted caught fire in a hurry. Esp. things like convertibles with big fins that were “four inches longer” than last year. No longer did you buy something because you really needed it (sturdy shoes) but because it made you feel elite (four-inch heels). (Elite often meaning sexy, er, sexier than the others, therefore entitled to more.) And it was a sign of being elite to be “inner-directed,” standing apart from the masses, unmoved by advertising or even consensus research. But, of course, that arrogance was easily exploited. (Ask the Unitarians.)
Once this juggernaut got started, an opposite movement of hippies, beats and idealists formed in opposition. Minority groups were tired of the boxes they were stuffed into. Disorder ensued. Violent suppression quickly followed. This was also happening in the USSR. In the US one solution was going back to the questionnaire to discover “lifestyles” which were supposed to be value-based. They were something like the “denomination” concept that kept Christians from tearing each other apart over variations in dogma. One’s “lifestyle” was based on what one did, which was soon encouraged into venues that would require equipment and clothing and travel and books and certain kinds of food and drink and clubs and . . . So now being gay is not a moral disgrace but a lifestyle, supported by society so long as one contributed to the economy.
This was interpreted by some as corruption and chaos. (Remember Adam Curtis is saying this, not me.) Two powerful movements arose out of this dread of disorder/change: American Neo-conservatism (Curtis names them) and Islamic fundamentalism. Actually the Martin Marty Center at the U of Chicago Divinity School found that the whole world was pulling back into fundamentalism, each according to its own system, because they were all feeling the danger of increasingly complex and powerful technology, and because the advertising political forces had found a new product: terror. By now everyone had everything they needed (well, everyone who mattered) and if they didn’t it was their own fault, and there was some worry that the economy would break down because no one would buy anything anymore. How big a garage can you build? How big a house? How many TV’s? But fear never runs out.
When politicians get hold of fear-mongering, they know all too well that what people fear is fear itself. People can’t stand anxiety. It makes them take pills. Curtis does not say, but it’s easy to understand how this contributes to the wave of expensive life-extending care as well as the insurance industry. Even the environmentalists stoop to terror and Mother Nature obliges through a media eager to report catastrophes like earthquakes, floods, droughts and starvation. Curtis does not explore the idea of the Other, but the images show them in plenitude. Now it is not starving Jews trapped in concentration camps, but starving Somalis trapped in refugee camps.
The next step is in a series called “The Trap.” I’ll start watching a little later, but I have to say that so far every step has rung true for me and my experiences in county and city government (even small town government), ministry, and teaching. In every context an elite has decided they know what is best (for them) and has maneuvered, lied, threatened and conditioning-rewarded people without the masses figuring it out. As the Native American said, “They asked us to close our eyes to pray, and when we opened our eyes, our land was gone.”
This is as true for the UUA as it is for Roman Catholicism. That is, one cannot get to virtue by going from group to another, one country to another. You cannot be saved by the Dalai Lama or Saul Alinsky, because it’s so deep in us. It’s not that new a phenomenon but the scale of it, the reach of it, and the global consequences for millions are new. For a while we thought scientists (like Freud) could save us, until their daughters pointed out a few things. For a while we thought artists and musicians could save us until they ended up dead with needles in their arms. And there were those virtuous politicians tapping their toes in airport restrooms, voting no no no no no.
The underlying answer, I believe, is twofold. First, giving up the idea of an elite that is entitled to control everything else unless the nature of their eliteness is a matter of self-sacrifice and service to others (which was the old Native American source of power among chiefs, NOT inheritance), and second, giving up free-floating fear/anxiety. We’ve got to have the courage to act for the good of the whole and we’ve got to have the confidence to serve, not by being suicide bombers but by working steadily and dependably. It takes a lot more courage to live day by day. We need to find joy again, I think, in the ordinary sensate world and through intimate relationships. What it comes down to is a true religious shift from trying to secure individual eternal life that ends change to accepting full consciousness of the moving wovenness of all being.
Okay, now I’m brave enough to watch “The Trap.” (It turned out to be Delusions of Grandeur.)
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