This article will explore the term “social engineering,” also known as “manufactured consent” (thanks Noam Chomsky). Our lives are dominated by buying, selling and consuming. Many of our most intractable problems: social, personal, economic, environmental, public health, and political are intimately connected to what we call the consumer culture. When we better understand how a problem was created, we can better understand how to move beyond it. The consumer culture is a big problem. Paradigm shift is the movement towards healthy alternatives to the consumer culture for the good of people and planet.
First, a bit about the Primer. Articles here on Resilience will be the core of a book, “A Primer For Paradigm Shift.” The Primer Series here at Resilience and in audio/video form on Youtube, [search Jan Spencer paradigm shift] describes paradigm shift: a growing social, economic, political and environmental movement towards a society that fits within the boundaries of the natural world. That society would be served by an honest and accountable economic system while bringing out the best in positive human potential.
The primer contains a powerful deconstruction of capitalism but by far most of the Primer contains practical information about what people can do in their own homes, lives, neighborhoods and communities, no permission needed, to engage in paradigm shift. The Primer explains “allies and assets” found in almost any community for making common cause. Much of the Primer describes people and groups already engaged in paradigm shift that point the way in real life. That includes reducing eco-footprints, suburban permaculture, ecovillages, empowering young people, supporting local economies, pushing back on cars and much much more.
Virtually every progressive organization and movement exists to repair some kind of social, economic or ecological damage caused by capitalism and the consumer culture, such as climate change, social disequity and lost positive human potential. Therefore, they are all on the same team. When we realize and act on that common cause, the scale of paradigm shift can expand greatly. The Primer explains how nonprofits, ad hoc groups, faith groups, and organized labor can play a vital leading role for paradigm shift. The Primer also suggests the idea of a truth and reconciliation process for capitalism.
Preview
This article explores social engineering. Social engineering is when a small group of people advance their own interests by using widespread, “industrial scale” messaging that goes out to large numbers of people, with the purpose to influence and shape their thinking, beliefs, values and decision making. The success of social engineering depends on how effectively it transmits and sustains its message to its expansive and largely captive audience.
We will also take an interesting tangent to an unlikely topic, US foreign policy doctrine. The consumer culture has an enormous appetite for products and raw materials. Much on its extensive menu comes from all over the world. Economic, political, and social stability, as we will see described by Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann and others depends on a constant flow of products and messaging to keep the masses happy and distracted. An important part of that set up is the foreign policy the US presents to the rest of the world to protect the goods flowing to the US consumer. And then, there is the enormous US military establishment that exists to enforce those doctrines and protect that flow.
But first, social engineering.
Noam Chomsky uses the term “manufactured consent.” Ralph Nader used the term “growing up corporate.” Modern social influencing started generations ago. Our familiar consumer culture is the product of social engineering that started generations ago. Lots of stuff is a remarkably effective “bait” that facilitates social engineering. This is a fascinating history. We will catch some highlights.
The term “social engineering” is an important concept in the Primer. A month ago, I would have explained social engineering in a fairly simple way. I would have said, essentially, we have all lived in the consumer culture for all our lives. It’s all we know. As individuals, we have been on the receiving end of many many thousands of advertisements since we were kids. Bill boards, t-shirts, magazines, radio, television and now the internet. The consumer culture is delivered to us even more graphically with TV and movies with the promotion of big homes, big cars, celebrities with fancy lifestyles, product placement, glamour, excess and conspicuous consumption.
Of course, all that messaging is to create wants and for people to aspire to have all that stuff. Where did all that messaging come from?
Even as a critic of the consumer culture and its celebrated overconsumption, I was taken aback when digging deeper into the question for writing the Primer. I learned much more about where did all this messaging come from and why. I was vaguely aware of Noam Chomsky’s phrase manufactured consent and Ralph Nader’s term growing up corporate. I was also a big fan of the iconic book Your Money Or Your Life by Vicki Robbins and Joe Dominguez.
The consumer culture is not an accident. It is a manufactured condition by certain interests for bringing about certain social, economic and political outcomes by way of using certain tactics that focus on teaching people that buying, consuming and manifesting one’s vanity is a primary purpose in life.
This new understanding has given me a new perspective on social engineering and the consumer culture that can benefit and motivate others as well.
The consumer culture is social engineering made visible. Social engineering in the act. We are surrounded by overconsumption, and it’s not surprising we imitate what we are surrounded by. That is human nature and that human nature and social psychology has been exploited by social engineering. Most people participate and consent in this manufactured condition without even knowing it. The consumer culture is self-reinforcing, as long as the goods keep flowing and are affordable.
We are finding it is not sustainable ecologically and from this perspective, is not desirable for many social and even spiritual reasons as well. This social engineering depends on replacing positive human potential and social uplift with vanity and excess consumption of energy and resources. The consumer culture is ruining the planet and human potential.
It’s difficult to overemphasize the importance of understanding how the consumer came into being and how that understanding brings us to the idea of paradigm shift. Pushing back in healthy and creative ways can be more successful when we have a better idea about how social engineering and the consumer culture came into being. Who can better connect the dots of social, economic and political conditions than Noam Chomsky? The following are several paragraphs from an article Noam Chomsky wrote for Z Magazine in 1991.
Chomsky makes reference to author and intellectual, Edward Bernays, often referred to as the father of public relations. He wrote a seminal book named Propaganda in the late 1920’s. Also important in this article is Walter Lippmann, a journalist and social commentator contemporary to Bernays. Both were well known figures through the 1920’s into the 60’s and even later. Both Lippmann and Bernays shared many opinions about society, politics, economics and how to manage those concerns. The lives, values and world views of millions of people would be affected. Let’s take a closer look.
Chomsky explains how both Lippmann and Bernays define the roles of the two basic groups of society. The first group is small in number. These are the few and chosen who guide society and second, the masses who need to be guided. Chomsky’s article is information dense. I will make some comments afterwards for more clarity. Chomsky begins with a quote from Bernays:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized opinions and behavior of the masses is an important element in democratic society. It is the intelligent minorities that need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically.”
Next Chomsky comments,
“It follows that two political roles need to be clearly distinguished.”
He refers to an extended quote from Walter Lippmann.
“First there is the role of the specialized class, the insiders the responsible men who have access to information and understanding. Ideally, they should have a special education for public office and should master the criteria for solving the problems of society.”
Chomsky continues to quote Lippmann:
“The public men form opinion and take responsibility for the formation of sound public opinion. They initiate, they administer, they settle and should be protected from ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. The general public are incapable of dealing with the substance of the problems.”
Particularly important to this article, Lippmann explains, a successful government satisfies the material and cultural wants of the masses.
Note, keep this last sentence in mind about satisfying the cultural and material wants of the masses. We will refer to it in a couple of minutes. Chomsky continues to describe Lippmann’s rules of order for the general public.
Social Engineering Is A Fence
This graphic shows the fence created by social engineering that, to a large degree, diminishes the public’s participation in shaping public policy and affairs.
“It is not for the public to pass judgement on the intrinsic merits of an issue or to offer analysis or solutions. But merely on occasion to place its force at the disposal of one or another of responsible men. The public does not reason, investigate, persuade, bargain or settle.”
Lippmann continues,
“The public acts only by aligning itself as a partisan to someone who is in a position to act executively. The public must be put in its place. The public, the bewildered herd, trampling and roaring is only to be the interested spectator of action. Not to be a participant.”
That’s all I have from the article by Chomsky. Chomsky’s article is 30 years old but he makes reference to opinions and writings from Lippmann and Bernays that predate the article by half a century.
A healthy society does need a coherent set of values and goals that bring people together. But this society’s continued and directed focus on overconsumption and distractions will only make most of our current large font headline problems even worse. Paradigm shift offers a healthy and creative alternative.
The vision the Bernays and Lippmann describe is, of course, exactly what we have. It’s a remarkable arrangement of social role playing they describe and even more remarkable how the consumer culture fulfills their vision.
Edward Bernays can take a lot of credit for the rise of the consumer culture and by extension, many of the problems we have to deal with at the present time that can easily be linked to the damage caused by our supersized consumption of resources, stuff and energy. For a little more background, let’s take a closer look at Edward Bernays.
Edward Bernays was born into a well-off family in Austria in 1891. His family moved to the US when he was just a child later in the 1890’s. His mother was Sigmund Freud’s sister and his father was Sigmund Freud’s wife’s brother. Bernays graduated with a degree in agriculture but over the ‘teens, he found his way into the commercial world of promotion and advertising. He built an impressive resume over the course of the 20’s to 60’s including public relations campaigns for Ivory Soap, popularizing serving sized ice cream containers and promoting bananas.
Bernays was best known for his book Propaganda, an early treatise on social engineering. In the 30’s he ran a campaign to popularize cigarette smoking for women on behalf of Chesterfield’s cigarettes. He also burnished and sanitized the public image for the new, at the time, strongman of Guatemala who was installed by a CIA coup in 1953.
It’s important to understand that Bernays was not a simple advertising executive. His campaigns were to shape public opinion and perceptions. He was making use of his uncle’s new theories of social behavior.
Also important, if not ironic, Bernays was not an authoritarian. He and others within his circle believed democracy called for men of means, character and intellect to be the policy and decision makers of society while the role of the masses was to behave properly and not interfere with public affairs. Bernays felt this social management was a responsibility of those with intellect and good intentions and could be benign and democratic. Better to have honest and upstanding men managing society rather than allow less altruistic men to gain position to influence society for their own agenda at the expense of the common people. Again, epic levels of irony.
So how do the masses stay happy and distracted? Recall the the line from Chomsky’s article. The criteria we apply to the success of government is that government satisfies the material and cultural wants of the people. This is important. Safe to say, not only does the successful government satisfy the wants of the masses, it also is a patron of the social engineering that defines what those wants are. Political power is based on economic power. Politics and social engineering are close partners.
Social Engineering and The Consumer Culture
This image is simply a visual image that links social engineering to overconsumption and America’s interactions with the rest of the world.
The need to keep the general public, the bewildered herd, the masses distracted converges with the need to maintain a robust, growth-based hyperactive economic system where the primary function of the masses is to produce, buy and consume. Not to decide and make policy. In other words, the consumer culture, the American Dream, Manifest Destiny, American Exceptionalism.
To add a bold underline to this assessment, let’s hear several paragraphs of quotes that clearly show the convergence between economic need, business profitability, social management and political expediency. These four quotes spread over 100 years show a real life historical consistency.
In his ground breaking book Propaganda, in 1928, Edward Bernays wrote
“Mass production can be profitable only if its rhythm can be maintained. The business can sell its product in a steady stream and increasing quantity. Today, supply must actively reach its corresponding demand and can not afford to wait for the public to ask for its product. It must continue constant touch through advertising and propaganda to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will keep its costly plant profitable.”
Victor Lebow, a 20th century economist and retail analyst remarked in 1955,
“Our enormously productive economy demands we make consumption our way of life. That we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, discarded and replaced at an ever accelerating rate.”
This quote from Stuart Ewen, a contemporary historian, author and lecturer on media and the consumer culture who interviewed Edward Bernays himself in 1990. This is how Ewen describes his conversation with Bernays:
“Throughout our conversation, Bernays conveyed his hallucination of democracy: A highly educated class of opinion-molding tacticians is continuously at work adjusting the mental scenery from which the public mind with its limited intellect derives its opinions. Throughout the interview he, Bernays, describes public relations as a response to a trans-historic concern, the requirement from those in power to shape the attitudes of the general population.
Finally, a very short quote more recently attributed to former president George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney and perhaps several others adds to the previous three remarks. The quote,
“The American Way of Life is Non-Negotiable.”
The only way this declaration can be interpreted is that America’s lavish excess consumption of energy and resources cannot be challenged. The level of hubris and self-interest here is off the charts. George Bush made this non-negotiable comment to the world community at the Earth Summit in 1991. That’s right, at the Earth Summit. Again, the irony is remarkable.
The comment is telling the world the US is not interested in stopping or even slowing down its extreme overconsumption of resources and energy. Even with global relations increasingly unstable thanks to the deepening effects of climate change and much more, the US is not interested in negotiating or diminishing its affluence and overconsumption. Wind power and electric cars will have minimal effect on climate change and stress on foreign relations. They are marketing ploys to perpetuate the consumer culture, a form of disaster capitalism, to take advantage of destabilizing conditions. Another story.
The Primer contends that unless American eco-footprints become far smaller there will be no solution to many of today’s most challenging problems. Social engineering that pushes the consumer culture will only make the deepening problems we are already familiar with worse.
Another enormous irony and conundrum is that overconsumption by the US drives much of the world’s economy. Global sustainability, significantly reducing US [and other affluent counties’ footprints] would put hundreds of millions of people all over the world out of work because those jobs depend on overconsumption. While the US needs to engage in paradigm shift, the rest of the world should do likewise. An accountable and effective redistribution of global wealth, unlikely of course, can address many of today’s enormous problems.
Overconsumption, cars, suburbia, the consumer culture, is the money-making fuel for America’s economic and military power. The more one consumes, the more they contribute to geopolitical and ecological stress. Economic activity produces not only products and services but also the revenue [plus a lot of borrowing] that pays much of the cost for what the government buys, from freeways to tanks.
Foreign Policy Doctrine
This map shows how several presidential doctrines have “marked” the geopolitical water hydrant by declaring their intentions to the rest of the world. These doctrines serve to warn adversaries, to protect economic interest of large businesses, to maintain the product and resource pipeline to the US consumer and therefore, maintain the protective “fence” of social engineering – keeping the masses happy and occupied while the insiders and special interests do their work.
Here is our surprising tangent. Let’s dig a bit deeper into US foreign policy doctrine. Foreign policy doctrine is basically the act of a nation expressing its interests and opinions to the wider world. For example, it did not take long after its independence for the United States to project its geopolitical positions beyond its own borders. Foreign policy is based on national security and its intimate companion, economic self-interest.
America’s geopolitical needs have changed over the past 250 years from relatively simple turf protection to current needs for importing crude oil, pharmaceuticals, computers, cars and much more adding up to about $3.8 trillion dollars in 2023. The US exported slightly over $2 trillion dollars worth of goods and services in 2023. [That’s an enormous trade deficit.]
If the insiders, tacticians and men of intellect want to maintain their benign and altruistic control of the US economic and political system, they need to have global reach to influence and safeguard global trade. If the average consuming American wants to maintain their cars, suburban homes, animal heavy food choices, fashion, flat screen TVs and much more and for it all to be cheap and affordable, global trade is required and so is their consent to the means needed to protect that access. The American Dream depends on enormous amounts of natural resources, products and energy from all over the world and a military to safeguard all those massive container ships and tankers.
Many of America’s complex interactions with the wider world have been expressed by presidential doctrines going back 200 years. These doctrines show how America has been marking the geopolitical fire hydrant for two centuries. These doctrines help tell the story of America’s overconsumption. The greater the needs, the greater the need to protect them. and the greater the need to impose on the world order. That can lead to greater global stability or instability.
A presidential doctrine describes that president’s key goals and geopolitical/economic positions. Doctrines can evolve and change over time but they do have a degree of consistency. These doctrines fit an updated version of the vision described by Bernays and his colleagues. Greater consumption calls for greater international reach to indulge that consumption. The insiders, the managers, thinkers and the men of character now operate within a global context. Here are the doctrines. A few of my own adjustments based on Wikipedia.
The Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine, expressed in 1823, proclaimed the United States’ position that European powers should no longer colonize the Americas or interfere with the affairs of sovereign nations located in the Americas, such as the United States, Mexico, Colombia and others.
The Truman Doctrine
The 1947 Truman Doctrine was part of the United States’ political response to perceived aggression by the Soviet Union in Europe and the Middle East, illustrated through the communist movements in Iran, Turkey and Greece at that time. Under the Truman Doctrine, the United States was prepared to send money, equipment, or military force to countries that were threatened by or resisting communism.
The Eisenhower Doctrine
The Eisenhower Doctrine was announced by President Eisenhower in a message to the US Congress on January 5, 1957. Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, a country could request American economic assistance and/or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression from another state. Eisenhower singled out the Soviet threat in his doctrine by authorizing the commitment of U.S. forces
“to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism”.
The Kennedy Doctrine
In his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, President Kennedy presented the American public with a blueprint upon which the future foreign policy initiatives of his administration would later follow and come to represent. In this address, Kennedy advised the world the US would oppose the advance of communism in the Western Hemisphere. His doctrine also expressed a concern about global poverty, tyranny and disease.
The Nixon Doctrine
The Nixon Doctrine from 1969 focused on three items:
1] The US would honor all its treaty commitments
2] The US would provide a shield if a nuclear power threatens the freedom of a nation allied with the US or of a nation whose survival we consider vital to our security.
3] In cases involving other types of aggression, we shall furnish military and economic assistance when requested in accordance with our treaty commitments. But we shall look to the nation directly threatened to assume the primary responsibility of providing the manpower for its defense.
The Carter Doctrine
The Carter Doctrine was articulated by President Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980, when he stated that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interest in the Persian Gulf region. It was a warning to the USSR to stay away.
The Reagan Doctrine
From his 1985 State of the Union Address, Reagan declared,
“We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives…on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua … to defy Soviet aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth.
The Bush Doctrine
The Bush Doctrine declared that the U.S. would “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed their acts and those who harbor them”. This statement was made as a direct result of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center buildings.
Every nation has self-interests. The wealthier and more powerful the nation, the more able and likely that nation will assert itself on the global stage. These US policy doctrines show the self-interest of the US is at a global scale. This is the realm of a superpower, the interests are economic above all and mean to push back on those who pose a threat to those interests. The Soviet Union was the primary adversary to US interests until its dissolution in the early 1990’s. In recent years, Russia has significantly re-occupied the role of the Soviet Union as a primary adversary to the US and the West and is now, joined by China, fast becoming a rival superpower in its own right.
At this point, China and Russia share their concerns about the US and are moving towards greater cooperation while the US has its close allies in Europe along with Japan, South Korea and many other countries. Both factions rival each other for global influence. That rivalry becomes clearly visible in Ukraine and the South China Sea, among other places.
Ironically, the insiders and elites in every nation have an interest in stability to safeguard their own privilege and position. In many ways, the elites and tacticians of various countries have more in common with each other than their own fellow citizens. The elites competing with each other threaten that stability and privilege for all of those at the top of the pyramid.
A Short Look at the Military
This map shows the hundreds of US military bases and the location of tens of thousands of troops stationed all over the world.
The consumer culture and US foreign policy doctrine is backstopped by the military capacity, or force projection of the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Protecting those cars, tractor pulls and suburban homes is serious business. Here’s a short look at US military assets.
As of 2021, the US has over 700 military positions of varying size in about 160 countries all over the world. The US military budget is about $800 billion a year, about as much as the next 10 national militaries combined. The US has over 170,000 troops at those positions and bases. Some installations may count only a handful of soldiers while Camp Humphreys in South Korea covers nearly three and a half thousand acres and boasts about 30,000 US soldiers. There are about 34,000 US troops in Germany, 12,000 in Italy, 1,600 in Turkey, and over 2,000 in Kuwait.
Aircraft carriers are floating air bases and the flagships of battle groups made up of dozens of other ships. Aircraft carriers are perhaps the most iconic military navy vessel. Of the world’s 27 fixed wing aircraft carriers, 11 are in the US Navy and they are, overall, by tonnage and fire power, substantially larger than the carriers of other countries. Most US carriers displace 100,000 tons while most other nation’s carriers are half that size.
Many capable writers and researchers have penned volumes about US foreign policy and US military force projection, both critical and in support. The Primer does not need to duplicate those efforts but the Primer does offer a tangent of interest to this discussion and that is, what is the relationship between US foreign policy and its military in regard to the consumer culture, paradigm shift and permaculture.
The Take Home Message
This is the take home message. A brief overview of the article.
Can Edward Bernays take credit for the socially engineered consumer culture and the 800 billion dollar military budget to protect it? Maybe, who knows? But Bernays and his associates were prophets at the very least.
The important message from this article and the Primer is that our society, our individual lives and every day reality has been remarkably shaped to fit the needs of political and economic interests that are often at odds with our own. That reality comes to us most visibly as the consumer culture and its near infinite shallow distractions and immense ecological footprints. The incessant full court press of commercial/lifestyle/world view messaging teaches us buying, consuming and vanity are the primary goals in life.
The consumer culture requires levels of resource and energy consumption that is causing severe damage to the natural world, each of us as individuals and social well being. Climate change, water, air and soil pollution and many other severe forms of damage to the environment are a direct result of humans simply consuming too much stuff. Just as important, the consumer culture and its growth-based economic system distract and degrade positive human potential and our capacity to act in our own best interests. We are referred to and see ourselves as consumers rather than citizens and human beings, each of us with our own unique and positive potentials and capacity to make common cause with others for the good of people and planet.
Do I believe there is a small group of wealthy men holding weekly meetings to choreograph the global consumer culture? Do I think conventional politics can solve these problems? No to both questions. Capitalism has a self-guiding logic with no meaningful brakes and the political system exists to serve it [sanding off the rough edges at times] and the consumer culture has enormous momentum. The System’s intent is to distract and dumb people down and leave the decision making to the insiders and tacticians. We do not have to submit.
We do need stores, transportation, places to live, meaningful employment, opportunity, schools, culture, recreation and security. There is little chance to reform the current social/economic/political System but critical to know, that same System has provided us with enormous assets and tools to make use of for creating a preferred future. Our best hope is to build healthy alternatives, make common cause with others, grow that movement and increase its scale so it peacefully replaces the current System.
Do we have time for that? Could all that dreaming really happen? Who knows but the more people engaged in paradigm shift and sharing what they are learning with the wider world, the sooner the better, no matter what.
The Primer and related sources exist to point the way to taking care of healthy human needs in ways that fit within the boundaries of the natural world and help bring out the best in positive human potential. The Primer not only identifies the problems of the consumer culture and capitalism, but more importantly, it describes real life examples of people and groups already creating healthy alternatives friendly to people and planet.
Paradigm Shift In Real Life
This image shows just a few examples of paradigm shift. They are social, economic, land use and much more. The Primer describes these and many other examples of paradigm shift taking place on the ground, in the real world.
Untold numbers of people are pushing back on the consumer culture. Paradigm shift is found all over the country whether those making it happen identify with the term paradigm shift or not. People are building civic culture, investing local, reducing eco-footprints, transforming the [sub]urban landscape and restoring soil and water. There are thousands of nonprofits large and small and their millions of members who could push their thinking just a bit more and help manifest an unprecedented mass social movement for the good of people and planet.
We have never had more need for those pioneering individual, groups and initiatives to share what they are learning with the wider world and to make common cause with each other for moving towards a preferred future. Paradigm shift does not require permission. We can enjoy many of the benefits of paradigm shift as soon as we choose to. The Primer is here to help and goes into more detail on all the topics mentioned in this article.
You can find the entire Primer series at Resilience. Search Jan Spencer, Primer For Paradigm Shift. You can also find the Primer on Youtube with many photos, graphics and audio. Search “Jan Spencer, Paradigm Shift.” Feel free to contact me via my website, suburbanpermaculture.org.
