Essay: THE WRITING EFFECT, Page 2

  **Elements of the Cognitive Construct.

  (Shaping minds in modern times)

  While researching the constructs of our collective mind I stumbled across the nephew of Sigmund Freud. He worked with Procter & Gamble, CBS, the American Tobacco Company, General Electric, Dodge Motors, the Public Health Service, and dozens of others entities. Edward Bernays helped Woodrow Wilson frame a world war as a noble effort to “bring democracy to the world.” He also advised the White House on facilitating the overthrow of democratically elected president Guzman, of Guatemala. By the time the war on terror came along, mass mind control was a science.

  Bernays changed the word propaganda to public relations. He tested his theories at the Easter parade in New York City during a time when smoking was un-lady like. Big tobacco went with Ed’s advice and hired models holding Lucky Strikes for the parade. They called the cigarettes Torches of Freedom and concurrently hit the public with a propaganda maelstrom. It totally worked. Society was forever changed. While women gleefully sucked Torches of Freedom, Big Tobacco raked in record profits from their ashes.

  Bernays taught big business to use third party authorities to manipulate public opinion. He said, "If you can influence the leaders… you automatically influence the group they sway." Corporate America ate up uncle Sigmund’s ideas reworked and developed by Bernays. The emerging order didn’t believe in democracy by the people. The industrial elite were greasing up their big idea to control politicians, media, and the public mind.

  In Manipulating Public Opinion, Bernays wrote, "This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas."

  In his book Propaganda, Bernays argued for the manipulation of public opinion: 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. ...We are governed, our minds are 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 daily 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 which control the public mind.

  Bernays sat on the U.S. Committee on Public Information. He pioneered industry's use of psychology to design public persuasion campaigns. "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?” He called this scientific technique the ‘engineering of consent’.

  Bernays helped leaders use Freudian Theory to create public enemies. He taught them how to promote fear and sway public emotion. The key ingredient was emotion. The job was attaching it to propaganda. The supporting cast was propped up leaders, expert panels, real events, and catchy slogans. These concepts were what he called the tie-in. It became the science of public mind control. The tie-in is when one opportunity for promoting an idea is linked to another to create a web that seems three dimensional. Today it’s common practice to link network news to talk shows, and expert panels. The more you can link together with emotional events, the more real your propaganda feels to the public.

  September eleventh was a case study in using a tailor made event to escalate fear against an unrelated leader with nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. The corporate-media-politico complex convinced the public to start a war and thereby secure business interests.

  Our right to free speech was snatched away by ironically named, Patriot Act. George Washington said, “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”