<<back to MAIN AGE<<

18.Aug.2001 Warum Amerikaner fast alles glauben -deutsche Version-

Huxley's,Aldous

inspired

1956

essay

detailed

the vivid,

mind-expanding,

multisensory insights

of his mescaline adventures.

By altering his brain chemistry

with natural psychotropics,

Huxley tapped into a rich and fluid world

of shimmering, indescribable beauty and power.

With his neurosensory input thus triggered,

Huxley was able to enter that parallel universe

described by every mystic and space captain

in recorded history.

Whether by hallucination or epiphany,

Huxley sought to remove all controls, all filters,

all cultural conditioning from his perceptions and

to confront Nature or the World or Reality first-hand -

in its unpasteurized, unedited, unretouched, infinite rawness.

Those bonds are much harder to break today,

half a century later.

We

are the most conditioned,

programmed

beings the world has ever known.

Not only are our thoughts

and

attitudes

continually

being shaped and molded;

our very awareness of the whole design

seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased.

The doors of our perception

are carefully and precisely regulated.

Who cares, right?

It is an exhausting and endless task

to keep explaining to people

how most issues of conventional wisdom

are scientifically implanted

in the public consciousness

by a thousand media clips per day.

In an effort to save time,

I would like to provide just a little background

on the handling of information in this country.

Once the basic principles are illustrated

about how our current system of media control

arose historically,

the reader might be more apt

to question any given popular opinion.

If everybody believes something,

it's probably wrong.

We call that

Conventional Wisdom.

In America,

conventional wisdom

that has mass acceptance

is usually contrived:

somebody paid for it.

Examples:

* Pharmaceuticals restore health

* Vaccination brings immunity

* The cure for cancer is just around the corner

* Menopause is a disease condition

* When a child is sick, he needs immediate antibiotics

* When a child has a fever he needs Tylenol

* Hospitals are safe and clean.

* America has the best health care in the world.

* Americans have the best health in the world.

* Milk is a good source of calcium.

* You never outgrow your need for milk.

* Vitamin C is ascorbic acid.

* Aspirin prevents heart attacks.

* Heart drugs improve the heart.

* Back and neck pain are the only reasons for spinal adjustment.

* No child can get into school without being vaccinated.

* The FDA thoroughly tests all drugs before they go on the market.

* Back and neck pain are the only reason for spinal adjustment.

* Pregnancy is a serious medical condition

* Chemotherapy and radiation are effective cures for cancer

* When your child is diagnosed with an ear infection,

antibiotics should be given immediately 'just in case'

* Ear tubes are for the good of the child.

* Estrogen drugs prevent osteoporosis after menopause.

* Pediatricians are the most highly trained of al medical specialists.

* The purpose of the health care industry is health.

* HIV is the cause of AIDS.

* AZT is the cure.

* Without vaccines, infectious diseases will return

* Fluoride in the city water protects your teeth

* Flu shots prevent the flu.

* Vaccines are thoroughly tested before being placed on the Mandated Schedule.

* Doctors are certain that the benefits of vaccines far outweigh any possible risks.

* There is a power shortage in California.

* There is a meningitis epidemic in California.

* The NASDAQ is a natural market controlled only by supply and demand.

* Chronic pain is a natural consequence of aging.

* Soy is your healthiest source of protein.

* Insulin shots cure diabetes.

* After we take out your gall bladder you can eat anything you want

* Allergy medicine will cure allergies.

This is a list of illusions,

that have cost billions and billions to conjure up.

Did you ever wonder why you never see the President speaking publicly unless he is reading?

Or why most people in this country think generally the same about most of the above issues?

HOW THIS WHOLE SET-UP GOT STARTED

In „Trust Us We're Experts“, Stauber and Rampton

pull together some compelling data

describing the science of creating public opinion in America.

They trace modern public influence back to

the early part of the last century,

highlighting the work of guys like

Edward L. Bernays, the Father of Spin.

From his own amazing chronicle Propaganda,

we learn how Edward L. Bernays took the ideas of his famous

uncle Sigmund Freud

himself

and

applied them to the emerging science of mass persuasion.

The only difference was that

instead of using these principles

to uncover hidden themes in the human unconscious,

the way Freudian psychology does,

Edward L. Bernays

used these same ideas

to mask agendas

and to create illusions

that deceive and

misrepresent,

for marketing purposes.

THE FATHER OF SPIN

Bernays dominated the PR industry until the 1940s,

and was a significant force

for another 40 years after that.

(Tye) During all that time,

Bernays took on hundreds of diverse assignments

to create a public perception about some idea or product.

A few examples:

As a neophyte with the

Committee on Public Information,

one of Bernays' first assignments was

to help sell

the First World War

to the American public

with the idea to

"Make the World Safe for Democracy." (Ewen)

A few years later,

Bernays set up a stunt

to popularize the notion of women smoking cigarettes.

In organizing the

1929

Easter Parade in New York City,

Bernays showed himself as a force to be reckoned with.

He organized the

Torches of Liberty Brigade

in which suffragettes marched in the parade

smoking cigarettes

as a mark of women's liberation.

Such publicity followed from that one event that

from then on

women have felt secure about destroying their own lungs in public,

the same way that men have always done.

Bernays

popularized the idea of bacon for breakfast.

Not one to turn down a challenge,

he set up the advertising format

along with the AMA

that lasted for nearly 50 years

proving that cigarettes are beneficial to health.

Just look at ads in issues of Life or Time from the 40s and 50s.

During the next several decades

Bernays and his colleagues

evolved the principles

by which

masses of people

could be

generally

swayed through messages

repeated over and over hundreds of times.

When the value of media became apparent,

other countries of the world

tried to follow our lead.

But Bernays really was the gold standard.

Josef Goebbels,

who was Hitler's minister of propaganda,

studied the principles of Edward Bernays

when Goebbels was developing the popular rationale

he would use to convince the Germans

that they had to purify their race. (Stauber)

SMOKE&MIRRORS

Bernays ' job was to reframe an issue;

to create a desired image

that would put a particular product or concept in a desirable light.

Bernays described the public as a 'herd that needed to be led.'

And this herdlike thinking makes people "susceptible to leadership."

Bernays never deviated from his fundamental axiom to

"control the masses without their knowing it."

The best PR happens with the people unaware

that they are being manipulated.

Stauber describes Bernays' rationale like this:

"the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary

to overcome chaos and conflict in a democratic society."

Trust Us p 42

These early mass persuaders

postured themselves

as performing a moral service for humanity in general

- democracy was too good for people;

they needed to be told what to think,

because they were incapable of rational thought by themselves.

Here's a paragraph from

Bernays' Propaganda:

"Those who manipulate

the unseen mechanism of society

constitute an invisible government

which is the true ruling power

of our country.

We are governed,

our minds molded,

our tastes formed,

our ideas suggested

largely by men

we have never heard of.

This is a logical result

of the way

in which

our

democratic

society is organized.

Vast numbers of

human

beings

must

cooperate

in this manner

if they are to live

together

as

a

smoothly functioning

society.

In almost every act of our lives

whether in the sphere of politics or business

in our social conduct or our ethical thinking,

we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons

who understand the mental processes and social patterns

of the masses.

It is they

who pull the wires

that control the public mind."

A tad different from Thomas Jefferson's view on the subject:

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society

but the people themselves;

and

if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control

with a wholesome discretion,

the remedy is not take it from them,

but to inform their discretion."

Inform their discretion.

Bernays

believed

that only a few

possessed the necessary insight

into the Big Picture

to be entrusted with this sacred task.

And luckily, he saw himself as one of that few.

HERE COMES THE MONEY

Once the possibilities of

applying Freudian psychology

to mass media

were glimpsed,

Bernays soon had more corporate clients than he could handle.

Global corporations fell all over themselves

courting the new Image Makers.

There were dozens of goods and services and ideas to be sold to a susceptible public.

Over the years,

these players have had the money

to make their images happen.

A few examples:

Philip Morris

Pfizer

Union Carbide

Allstate

Monsanto

Eli

Lilly tobacco industry

Ciba Geigy lead industry

Coors

DuPont

Chlorox

Shell Oil

Standard Oil

Procter & Gamble

Boeing

General Motors

Dow Chemical

General Mills

Goodyear

THE PLAYERS

Dozens of PR firms have emerged to answer that demand.

Among them:

Burson-Marsteller

Edelman

Hill & Knowlton

Kamer-Singer

Ketchum

Mongovin,

Biscoe,

and

Duchin

BSMG

Buder-Finn

Though world-famous within the PR industry,

these are names we don't know,

and for good reason.

The best PR goes unnoticed.

For decades

they

have created the opinions

that most of us were raised with,

on virtually any issue

which has the remotest commercial value,

including:

pharmaceutical drugs

vaccines

medicine as a profession

alternative medicine

fluoridation of city water

chlorine household

cleaning products

tobacco

dioxin

global warming

leaded gasoline

cancer research and treatment

pollution of the oceans

forests and lumber

images of celebrities,

including damage control

crisis and disaster management

genetically modified foods

aspartame food additives;

processed foods

dental amalgams

LESSON #1

Bernays

learned early on

that the most effective way

to create credibility

for a product or an image

was by

"independent third-party" endorsement.

For example,

if General Motors were to come out and say

that global warming is a hoax thought up by some liberal tree-huggers,

people would suspect GM's motives,

since GM's fortune is made by selling automobiles.

If however

some independent research institute

with a very credible sounding name like

the Global Climate Coalition

comes out with a scientific report that says

global warming is really a fiction,

people begin to get confused

and to have doubts

about

the

original

issue.

So that's exactly what Bernays did.

With a policy inspired by genius,

he set up

"more institutes and foundations than Rockefeller &Carnegie combined."

(Stauber p 45)

Quietly

financed by the industries

whose products were being evaluated,

these "independent" research agencies

would churn out "scientific" studies

and press materials

that could create any image

their handlers wanted.

Such front groups are given high-sounding names like:

Temperature Research Foundation

International Food Information

Council

Consumer Alert

The Advancement of Sound

Science Coalition

Air Hygiene Foundation

Industrial Health Federation

International Food Information Council

Manhattan Institute

Center for Produce Quality

Tobacco Institute

Research Council

Cato Institute

American Council on Science and Health

Global Climate Coalition

Alliance for Better Foods

Sound pretty legit don't they?

CANNED NEWS RELEASES

As Stauber explains,

these organizations and hundreds of others like them

are front groups

whose sole mission is

to advance the image of the global corporations who fund them,

like those listed on page 2 above.

This is accomplished in part

by an endless stream of 'press releases'

announcing "breakthrough" research to every radio station and newspaper in the country.

(Robbins)

Many of these canned reports

read like straight news,

and indeed are purposely molded in the news format.

This saves journalists the trouble of researching the subjects on their own,

especially on topics about which they know very little.

Entire sections of the release or in the case of video news releases,

the whole thing can be just lifted intact,

with no editing, given the byline of the reporter or newspaper or TV station - and voilá!

Instant news - copy and paste.

Written by corporate PR firms.

Does this really happen?

Every single day, since the 1920s

when the idea of the News Release

was first invented by Ivy Lee. (Stauber, p 22)

Sometimes as many as half the stories appearing

in an issue of the Wall St. Journal

are based solely on such PR press releases.. (22)

These types of stories are mixed right in with legitimately researched stories.

Unless you have done the research yourself,

you won't be able to tell the difference.

THE LANGUAGE OF SPIN

As 1920s spin pioneers

like Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays

gained more experience,

they began to formulate rules and guidelines for creating public opinion.

They learned quickly that

mob psychology

must focus on emotion,

not facts.

Since the mob is incapable of rational thought,

motivation must be based not on logic but on presentation.

Here are some of the axioms of the new science of PR:

* technology is a religion unto itself

* if people are incapable of rational thought,

real democracy is dangerous

* important decisions should be left to experts

* when reframing issues,

stay away from substance;

create images

* never state a clearly demonstrable lie

Words are very carefully chosen for their emotional impact.

Here's an example.

A front group called the International Food Information Council

handles the public's natural aversion to genetically modified foods.

Trigger words are repeated all through the text.

Now in the case of GM foods,

the public is instinctively afraid

of these experimental new creations

which have suddenly popped up

on our grocery shelves

which are said to have DNA alterations.

The IFIC wants to reassure the public

of the safety of GM foods, so it avoids words like:

Frankenfoods

Hitler

biotech

chemical

DNA

experiments

manipulate

money

safety

scientists

radiation

roulette

gene-splicing

gene

gun

random

Instead,

good PR for GM foods contains words like:

hybrids

natural

order

beauty

choice

bounty

cross-breeding

diversity

earth

farmer

organic

wholesome.

It's basic Freudian/Tony Robbins word association.

The fact that GM foods are not hybrids that have been subjected

to the slow and careful scientific methods

of real cross-breeding

doesn't really matter.

This is pseudoscience,

not science.

Form is everything and substance just a passing myth.

(Trevanian)

Who do you think funds the International Food Information Council?

Take a wild guess.

Right - Monsanto, DuPont, Frito-Lay, Coca Cola, Nutrasweet -

those in a position to make fortunes from GM foods. (Stauber p 20)

CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD PROPAGANDA

As the science of mass control evolved,

PR firms developed further guidelines for effective copy.

Here are some of the gems:

- dehumanize the attacked party by labeling and name calling

- speak in glittering generalities using emotionally positive words

- when covering something up,

don't use plain English;

stall for time;

distract

- get endorsements from

celebrities,

churches,

sports figures,

street people..

.anyone who has no expertise

in the subject at hand

- the 'plain folks' ruse : us billionaires are just like you

- when minimizing outrage, don't say anything memorable

- when minimizing outrage, point out the benefits of what just happened

- when minimizing outrage, avoid moral issues

Keep this list.

Start watching for these techniques.

Not hard to find -

look at today's paper or tonight's TV news.

See what they're doing; these guys are good!

SCIENCE FOR HIRE

PR firms have become very sophisticated in the preparation of news releases.

They have learned how to attach the names of famous scientists

to research that those scientists have not even looked at. (Stauber, p 201)

This is a common occurrence.

In this way the editors of newspapers and TV news shows

are often not even aware that an individual release is a total PR fabrication.

Or at least they have "deniability," right?

Stauber tells the amazing story of

how leaded gas came into the picture.

In 1922,

General Motors

discovered that adding lead to gasoline gave cars more horsepower.

When there was some concern about safety,

GM paid the Bureau of Mines

to do some fake "testing"

and publish spurious research

that 'proved' that inhalation of lead was harmless.

Charles Kettering,

founder of the world famous

Sloan-Kettering Memorial Institute for medical research,

also happened to be an executive with General Motors.

By some strange coincidence,

we soon have the Sloan Kettering institute

issuing reports stating that lead occurs naturally in the body

and that the body has a way of eliminating low level exposure.

Through its association with

The Industrial Hygiene Foundation

and

PR giant Hill & Knowlton,

Sloane Kettering

opposed

all anti-lead research

for years.

(Stauber p 92).

Without organized scientific opposition,

for the next 60 years

more and more gasoline became leaded,

until by the 1970s,

90% or our gasoline was leaded.

Finally it became too obvious to hide that

lead was a major carcinogen +

leaded gas was phased out

in the late 1980s.

But

during those 60 years,

it is estimated that

some 30 million tons of lead

were released in vapor form

onto American streets and highways.

30 million tons.

That is PR, my friends.

JUNK SCIENCE

In 1993

a guy named Peter Huber

wrote a new book and coined a new term.

The book was

Galileo's Revenge

and the term was

junk science.

Huber's shallow thesis was

that real science supports technology, industry + progress.

Anything else was suddenly junk science.

Not surprisingly,

Stauber explains how Huber's book was supported by the industry-backed Manhattan Institute.

Huber's book was generally dismissed

not only because it was so poorly written,

but because it failed to realize one fact:

true scientific research begins with no conclusions.

Real scientists are seeking the truth because they do not yet know what the truth is.

True scientific method goes like this:

1. form a hypothesis

2. make predictions for that hypothesis

3. test the predictions

4. reject or revise the hypothesis based on the research findings

Boston University scientist Dr. David Ozonoff explains that

ideas in science are themselves like "living organisms,

that must be nourished, supported + cultivated

with resources for making them grow and flourish." (Stauber p 205)

Great ideas that don't get this financial support

because the commercial angles are not immediately obvious - these ideas wither and die.

Another way you can often distinguish real science from phony is

that real science points out flaws in its own research.

Phony science pretends there were no flaws.

THE REAL JUNK SCIENCE

Contrast this with modern PR and its constant pretensions to sound science.

Corporate sponsored research,

whether it's in the area of drugs, GM foods, or chemistry

begins with predetermined conclusions.

It is the job of the scientists then

to prove that these conclusions are true,

because of the economic upside that proof will bring to the industries paying for that research.

This invidious approach to science has shifted the entire focus of research in America

during the past 50 years,

as any true scientist is likely to admit.

Stauber documents the increasing amount of corporate sponsorship of university research. (206)

This has nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge.

Scientists lament that research has become just another commodity,

something bought and sold. (Crossen)

THE TWO MAIN TARGETS OF "SOUND SCIENCE"

It is shocking when Stauber shows how the vast majority of corporate PR

today

opposes any research that seeks to protect :

Public Health and The Environment

It's a funny thing that most of the time when we see the phrase "junk science,"

it is in a context of defending something

that may threaten either the environment or our health.

This makes sense

when one realizes that

money changes hands only by selling the illusion of health and

the illusion of environmental protection.

True public health and real preservation of the earth's environment have very low market value.

Stauber thinks it ironic that

industry's self-proclaimed debunkers of junk science

are usually non-scientists themselves. (255)

Here again they can do this

because the issue is not science,

but the creation of images.

THE LANGUAGE OF ATTACK

When PR firms attack legitimate environmental groups and alternative medicine people,

they again use special words which will carry an emotional punch:

outraged

sound science

junk science

sensible

scaremongering

responsible

phobia

hoax

alarmist

hysteria

The next time you are reading a newspaper article about an environmental or health issue,

note how the author shows bias by using the above terms.

This is the result of very specialized training.

Another standard PR tactic is

to use the rhetoric of the environmentalists themselves

to defend a dangerous and untested product that poses an actual threat to the environment.

This we see constantly in the PR smokescreen that surrounds genetically modified foods.

They talk about how GM foods are necessary to grow more food and to end world hunger,

when the reality is that

GM foods actually have lower yields per acre than natural crops. (Stauber p 173)

The grand design sort of comes into focus once you realize that almost all GM foods have been created

by the sellers of herbicides and pesticides

so that those plants can withstand greater amounts of herbicides and pesticides. (The Magic Bean)

THE MIRAGE OF PEER REVIEW

Publish or perish is the classic dilemma of every research scientist.

That means

whoever expects funding for the next research project

had better get the current research paper published

in the best scientific journals.

And we all know that

the best scientific journals, like JAMA, New England Journal, British Medical Journal, etc.

are peer-reviewed.

Peer review means that

any articles which actually get published,

between all those full color drug ads and pharmaceutical centerfolds,

have been reviewed and accepted by some really smart guys with a lot of credentials.

The assumption is,

if the article made it past peer review,

the data and the conclusions of the research study

have been thoroughly checked out and bear some resemblance to physical reality.

But there are a few problems with this hot little set up.

First off, money.

Even though prestigious venerable medical journals pretend to be so objective and scientific and incorruptible,

the reality is that

they face the same type of being called to account

that all glossy magazines must confront:

don't antagonize your advertisers.

Those full-page drug ads in the best journals cost millions,Jack.

How long will a pharmaceutical company pay for ad space in a magazine

that prints some very sound scientific research paper that attacks the safety of the drug in the centerfold?

Think about it.

The editors aren't that stupid.

Another problem is

the conflict of interest thing.

There's a formal requirement for all medical journals

that any financial ties between an author and a product manufacturer

be disclosed in the article.

In practice, it never happens.

A study done in 1997

of 142 medical journals

did not find even one such disclosure. (Wall St. Journal, 2 Feb 99)

A

1998

study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that

96% of peer reviewed articles

had financial ties to the drug they were studying. (Stelfox, 1998)

Big shock, huh?

Any disclosures?

Yeah, right.

This study should be pointed out

whenever somebody starts getting too pompous about the objectivity of peer review, like they often do.

Then there's the outright purchase of space.

A drug company may simply pay $100,000 to a journal to have a favorable article printed. (Stauber, p 204)

Fraud in peer review journals is nothing new.

In 1987,

the New England Journal ran an article that followed the research of R. Slutsky MD

over a seven year period.

During that time,

Dr. Slutsky had published 137 articles in a number of peer-reviewed journals.

NEJM found that in at least 60 of these 137,

there was evidence of major scientific fraud and misrepresentation, including:

* reporting data for experiments that were never done

* reporting measurements that were never made

* reporting statistical analyses that were never done.

Engler

Dean Black PhD,

describes what he the calls the Babel Effect

that results when this very common and frequently undetected

scientific fraudulent data in peer-reviewed journals

are quoted by other researchers,

who are in turn re-quoted by still others,

and so on.

Want to see something that sort of re-frames this whole discussion?

Check out the McDonald's ads

which often appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Then keep in mind

that this is the same publication that

for almost 50 years

ran cigarette ads proclaiming the health benefits of tobacco. (Robbins)

Very scientific, oh yes.

KILL YOUR TV?

Hope this chapter has given you a hint

to start reading newspaper and magazine articles a little differently,

and perhaps start watching TV news shows with a slightly different attitude

than you had before.

Always ask,

what are they selling here,

and who's selling it?

And if you actually follow up on Stauber & Rampton's book

and check out some of the other resources below,

you might even glimpse the possibility of advancing your life

one quantum

simply by ceasing to subject your brain to mass media.

That's right - no more newspapers,

no more TV news,

no more Time magazine or Newsweek.

You could actually do that.

Just think what you could do with the extra time alone.

Really feel like you need to "relax" or find out "what's going on in the world"

for a few hours every day?

Think about the news of the past couple of years for a minute.

Do you really suppose the major stories that have dominated headlines and TV news have been

"what is going on in the world?"

Do you actually think there's been nothing going on besides the contrived tech slump,

the contrived power shortages, the re-filtered accounts of foreign violence and disaster,

and all the other non-stories that the puppeteers dangle before us every day?

What about when they get a big one,

like with OJ or Monica Lewinsky or the Oklahoma city bombing?

Do we really need to know all that detail, day after day?

Do we have any way of verifying all that detail, even if we wanted to?

What is the purpose of news?

To inform the public?

Hardly.

The sole purpose of news is to keep the public in a state of fear and uncertainty

so that they'll watch again tomorrow and be subjected to the same advertising.

Oversimplification?

Of course.

That's the mark of mass media mastery - simplicity.

The invisible hand.

Like Edward Bernays said,

the people must be controlled without them knowing it.

Consider this:

what was really going on in the world all that time they were distracting us with all that stupid vexatious daily smokescreen?

Fear and uncertainty -- that's what keeps people coming back for more.

If this seems like a radical outlook,

let's take it one step further:

What would you lose from your life if you stopped watching TV

and stopped reading newspapers altogether?

Would your life really suffer any financial, moral, intellectual or academic loss from such a decision?

Do you really need to have your family continually absorbing the illiterate, amoral, phony, uncultivated, desperately brainless values of the people featured in the average nightly TV program?

Are these fake, programmed robots "normal"?

Do you need to have your life values constantly spoonfed to you?

Are those shows really amusing, or just a necessary distraction to keep you from looking at reality,

or trying to figure things out yourself by doing a little independent reading?

Name one example of how your life is improved by watching TV news and reading the evening paper.

What measurable gain is there for you?

PLANET OF THE APES?

There's no question that as a nation, we're getting dumber year by year.

Look at the presidents we've been choosing lately.

Ever notice the blatant grammar mistakes so ubiquitous in today's advertising and billboards?

Literacy is marginal in most American secondary schools.

Three-fourths of California high school seniors can't read well enough to pass their exit exams.

( SJ Mercury 20 Jul 01)

If you think other parts of the country are smarter, try this one:

hand any high school senior a book by Dumas or Jane Austen,

and ask them to open to any random page and just read one paragraph out loud.

Go ahead, do it.

SAT scales are arbitrarily shifted lower and lower to disguise how dumb kids are getting year by year.

(ADD: A Designer Disease)

At least 10% have documented "learning disabilities,"

which are reinforced and rewarded by special treatment and special drugs.

Ever hear of anyone failing a grade any more?

Or observe the intellectual level of the average movie

which these days may only last one or two weeks in the theatres,

especially if it has insufficient explosions, chase scenes, silicone, fake martial arts + cretinesque dialogue.

Radio?

Consider the low mental qualifications of the falsely animated corporate simians hired as DJs

-- seems like they're only allowed to have 50 thoughts, which they just repeat at random.

And at what point did popular music cease to require the study of any musical instrument or theory whatsoever,

not to mention lyric?

Perhaps we just don't understand this emerging art form, right?

The Darwinism of MTV

- apes descended from man.

Ever notice how most articles in any of the glossy magazines sound like they were all written by the same guy?

And this writer just graduated from junior college?

And yet has all the correct opinions on social issues,

no original ideas,

and that shallow, smug, homogenized corporate omniscience, to assure us that everything is going to be fine...

Yes, everything is fine.

All this is great news for the PR industry

- makes their job that much easier.

Not only are very few paying attention to the process of conditioning;

fewer are capable of understanding it even if somebody explained it to them.

TEA IN THE CAFETERIA

Let's say you're in a crowded cafeteria + you buy a cup of tea.

And as you're about to sit down you see your friend way across the room.

So you put the tea down and walk across the room and talk to your friend for a few minutes.

Now, coming back to your tea, are you just going to pick it up and drink it?

Remember, this is a crowded place and you've just left your tea unattended for several minutes.

You've given anybody in that room access to your tea.

Why should your mind be any different?

Turning on the TV, or uncritically absorbing mass publications every day

- these activities allow access to our minds by "just anyone"

- anyone who has an agenda,

anyone with the resources to create a public image via popular media.

As we've seen above, just because we read something or see something on TV

doesn't mean it's true or worth knowing.

So the idea here is,

like the tea,

the mind is also worth guarding,

worth limiting access to it.

This is the only life we get.

Time is our total capital.

Why waste it allowing our potential, our personality,

our values to be shaped, crafted + limited according to the whims of the mass panderers?

There are many truly important decisions that are crucial to our physical, mental + spiritual well-being,

decisions which require information and research.

If it's an issue where money is involved, objective data won't be so easy to obtain.

Remember, if everybody knows something, that image has been bought and paid for.

Real knowledge takes a little effort,

a little excavation down at least one level below what "everybody knows."

1

By Tim O'Shea

REFERENCES_:

Stauber & Rampton Trust Us, We're Experts Tarcher/Putnam 2001

Ewen, Stuart PR!: A Social History of Spin 1996 ISBN: 0-465-06168-0 Published by Basic Books, A Division of Harper Collins

Tye, Larry The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations Crown Publishers, Inc. 2001

King, R Medical journals rarely disclose researchers' ties Wall St. Journal, 02.Feb.1999.

Engler, R et al. Misrepresentation and Responsibility in Medical Research

New England Journal of Medicine v 317 p 1383 26 Nov 1987

Black, D PhD Health At the Crossroads Tapestry 1988.

Trevanian Shibumi 1983.

Crossen, C Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America 1996.

Robbins, J Reclaiming Our Health Kramer 1996.

Jefferson, T Writings New York Library of America, p 493; 1984.

O'Shea T The Magic Bean 2000 www.thedoctorwithin.com Alternative Medicine magazine May 2001.