The century of self

This fantastic documentary will show and explain how psychology has been used against you to manipulate you into a state of surrender and calm.

It will explain how you buy the things you do, why you ike the things you do and how 'the powers that be' know what the heard is doing and acts accordingly to keep the dogs at your heals.

Please take the time to watch this very important documentary.
For those of you who have seen it before, you'll know the impact of this video.

It shocked me when i first saw it... off to watch it again...

Each video is approximately 10 minutes long, and is a complete, ready made pill for the sleeping...

This is incomplete.
Go to google video and you will find the complete bbc series.

kacou

Awesome Movie Extralien.

Im going to watch the whole thing, but maybe you could do a short written summary for the people who are too lazy or dont have time to watch it.

You're so very correct, thank you very much..I totally forgot about that part..

goes to show when i last watched all hehehehe

reply to post by Skyfloating


Will do Sky..

Not a prob..

just as soon as I've had a refresher on it myself

Oh, and thank you very much

People should watch one episode a night and bring their thoughts back here in the forum.
Only then every one can discusses correctly.
You can also look for “the Power of Nightmare” which is in my opinion a sort of extension of this series.

Kacou

i think that in this day and age, there is a substancial amount of people that know when they are being manipulated. it is when the degree of manipulation reaches an intolerable level, the manipulation is no longer functional. history is replete with each generation killing off those people that engage in manipulation to the extreme. this lesson has taken thousands of years to reach the rather mundane level of todays "modern society". but as history continues to repeat itself, so does arrogance and ignorance. put simply...people are not as smart as they think they are.

Yes indeed, Adam Curtis is definitely an excellent journalist/film maker. Although this is essential viewing I would personally rate the power of nightmares as being the stronger and more shocking of the two-but thats just my opinion!
The trap is also well worth a look, if you like this sort of thing?

[edit on 12-6-2008 by the way]

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psycho analysis, introduced his nephew, Edward Bernays, to various aspects of the practice.

Bernays, in turn, used this new knowledge to his advantage so he could make some money. He became the father of 'public relations' industry. He began to use psychology in advertising to influence an increase in sales.

This idea partly came about after seeing the propaganda machine rolling during the time of war, and it seemed reasonable that the same methods could be used in peace time.

The century of self asks why do we have the lives we lead, what drives us to be a consumer and to follow everyone else with the self same attitude towards fashion and superficiality.

Businesses, and now governments too, use these techniques to garner huge popular public approval in order to get your money or your vote. The speeches are very carefully written and adverts are very carefully given extra colour, gloss and shine with carefully chosen and well placed words and slogans mixed with perfect images of smiling kids, happy families all to the tune of some repeating song you can never get out of your head.

What happened was that the businesses had more power over the people than the government did. These methods made it look like the businesses could give more to the people than any government ever could.

And consumers spent their money on things they never needed, but were made to want.

And so, todays governments employ the same psychoanalytic practices to convince you to give them your vote.

The gadgets we buy are plentiful, the money the corporations make is billions of profit every year, third world countries are growing and your jobs are being outsourced to the cheaper work forces, homes are being repossessed, families made homeless, people are still dying of starvation in Africa, wars are being fought for no reason and the planet is getting hotter because of all the goods we've been manipulated to buy for which we now have to pay extra taxes for our carbon footprint...

All because of Sigmund Freud and his greedy nephew and the corporations that Bernays took his methods to and sold.

I still had in doubt if the methods of Psychoanalysis are even effective and here you drop by with this movie.

Among the many other types of psychology they use I guess they also use Freud.

One would think people become satiated by the methods and they quit working after awhile.

Or that, if you´re aware of them, they loose their effect...?

reply to post by Skyfloating


In a way, Sky, you're correct, but also wrong

There was a psych test done on a set of dogs. Every day at the same time they would feed the dogs...exactly the same time.

The dogs became so conditioned by this that 5 or 10 minutes before the food was going to arrive, the dogs would start to salivate. This is conditioning.

It's a bit like waiting for the football match to start on TV at 10 pm every Saturday night or the 1pm news on a Sunday afternoon. It is this conditioning they rely on.

Another experiment that was done with a dog was to cure it from killing a tennis ball in the very first few minutes of it getting the ball. So they locked the dog in a cage and threw in loads of tennis balls. The dog had no idea what to do with so many balls and hence forth never shredded another ball the instant it got it.

What basically happened was 'senses overload'. The ball became just another object and not so special. A bit like having your first beer, legally, so you have ten more and the next morning swear blind you'll never touch another drop.

So a few weeks later, you've got over the initial shock of waking up in a puddle after a drunken night out and decide you need another beer, but moderately this time.

It's the cause and effect. Too much of a good thing is bad, so they change over to a bad thing (like a war) and that's all you hear for umpteen hours a day, eventually you all want to go out and spend or party just to break the doom and gloom feeling that you are being suppressed with.

Then just as the 'donations' start to dwindle for the war effort, they will suddenly proclaim 'things are looking up, economies getting better, more jobs created, which influences you all into another happy state, taking you away from the happy state you induced upon yourselves due to the depression that was set upon you.. Now they got you again, out spending and keeping the war going and feeding you happy pills all day long.

Push and Pull yes. *sigh*

...but I´d hazard a guess you and many other alike dont fall for it anymore all the time.

reply to post by Skyfloating


That's right, I don't.. i see these things coming.

It's like having the best DVD player but only one film. It's all you got so you watch it constantly. You know when the good bits are coming, you know when the sad and bad bits are coming. So you filter out what you want and what you dont want.

But it leaves you in a kind of limbo.

You're not adding to anything and you're not taking anything away either. You're in another 'set' group that is expected to occur. They already know exactly how many people will do all the work they can to get another DVD film, they know there will be those who can just go out and buy 5 more immediately and they know there are those who will sit around and wait patiently for the same set of films to be shown on TV for you to record or get free on the front page of the Sunday morning news papers.

But in a way, that suits them just fine. Where you're not spending on DVD films, you're spending on the internet typing out conspiracy theories for some web site.

I used to live in the UK, and almost every day I would hear someone complain about something and never do anything about it. I too, was just as annoyed about the things people were complaining about and I also got annoyed with the complaining..so I quit..got out.. walked away.

We have a choice. They don't want you to realise that getting up and walking away is the easiest thing to do. You are alive and healthy. You have friends, wherever you lay your hat can be your home. Work and food comes to us all in one manner and in many ways. Opportunities exist.

What more do you want?

Supporting and being a part of their continuous looping Black and white 1950's B movie is one of the worst situations I can think of for anyone to ever be in.

I did some work on someones house. I was working as a builders mate for a while. Doing this third floor extension. The house had 2 bathrooms, 5 bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. The owner worked in computers somewhere.

He had paid a vast amount of money for this house... for him and his wife...
The rear garden wasn't big enough to let a pet rabbit chew the grass.
He was always out all day every day working. We would arrive at 9am, and by the time we'd leave at around 5 or 6 pm, he still hadn't been home. Apparently he didn't get home till 11pm usually.

Job done, and we're all in the garden having a few drinks and getting the 'thank yous'... we were talking 'house' and he mentioned to my boss how much it cost him...

Me and my big mouth, jumped in and said, 'all that money and all that time working for a house you're hardly ever in'.

He looked at me in stunned shock. He knew exactly what I was getting at and he realised i was right. Could see it written all over his face. Anyway, got another beer after that..

Originally posted by Extralien

He had paid a vast amount of money for this house... for him and his wife...
The rear garden wasn't big enough to let a pet rabbit chew the grass.
He was always out all day every day working. We would arrive at 9am, and by the time we'd leave at around 5 or 6 pm, he still hadn't been home. Apparently he didn't get home till 11pm usually.

Job done, and we're all in the garden having a few drinks and getting the 'thank yous'... we were talking 'house' and he mentioned to my boss how much it cost him...

Me and my big mouth, jumped in and said, 'all that money and all that time working for a house you're hardly ever in'.

He looked at me in stunned shock. He knew exactly what I was getting at and he realised i was right. Could see it written all over his face. Anyway, got another beer after that..

Suburban 9-to-5 Treadmill Tick-Tock World.

My favourite movie is "Groundhog Day" which beautifully shows the ability to choose and decide differently than conditioning dictates.

reply to post by Skyfloating


Groundhog day is a superb example.

Can you imagine the total and utter devastation you would go through, then the realisation you can do anything you want over and over.

The psychological effects of that would take different people different amounts of time to overcome and adapt to. The main character in the film may (as stated in IMDB) have been there 10,000 years but most probably only 10years ....... of the same day, over and over....

It shows that we do have a choice, you can do something about it. But you've first got to wake up to and recognise your problems before you can act accordingly to rectify the situation.

The film is very good in lots of ways, but it has a lot of areas to cover and could have gone a lot deeper into the trials and tribulations that would have been experienced.

In other films, such as I am legend the main character is, basically, totally alone.
Despair would be a real problem combined with loneliness, lack of other human contact and thoughts of suicide would have played greatly on the mind. It takes a strong sense of character to handle such a situation.

In my mind, this compares greatly with people who are taking anti depressants. In my opinion, the drug itself only masks the issue until the body and mind have time to work things out and come to a solution. Unfortunately for some, they get into a set mind that they are constantly depressed and their reliance on the drug becomes overwhelming to the point where they can't function without it.

Realising you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Discovering what's wrong is the next step to a cure.

Thank you for posting this! Very insightful. It's provocative, and touches some ideas that I have been pondering myself.

Really a fantastic documentary.

Maybe thats why I and so many others are fascinated by movies like "I am legend" and similar "I am all alone in the world in damn tough circumstances".

Its like those movies allow us to process some type of fear and practice a type of "toughness" as if we were the lone hero in that mean world.

Psychoanalysis might be able to be debated against in its effectiveness in counseling but I believe that the insights the psychoanalytic theorys have given mankind has been thoroughly successful in propaganda and advertising.

For another look at coroporate advertising check out the book: NO LOGO by naomi klein it is pretty interesting.

I am way too busy checking myself out in the mirror to have time to watch all of those vids.

Is my name mentioned in any of them?

This is a really great movie and I highly recommend people watch it. People post flicks all the time on ATS but I usually don't watch. However I did watch this one a few months ago and it is very, very informative. Do yourselves the favor!