The People Shapers
By Vance Packard
Publisher: First Futura Publications edition 1978 (paperback edition)
This book is frightening and “mind blowing.” The content alone would make it so but what makes it much more so is it was published in 1978. The author, Vance Packard, is world renowned for his work in the study of societies and their problems. His research is thorough and well documented. This is about the research and development by various groups to reshape humanity. When one sees the vast scope of the fields of study in 1978 one has to wonder how much has this ability progressed especially in mind control over the years to the present.
Mind control has been on the serious agendas of business, law enforcement, the military and politicians for decades. After WW2 the potential of hypnosis to control people opened up the imaginations of these interests and sparked research that expanded to numerous other possible methods. Wikipedia says of hypnosis: “Modern day hypnosis, however, started in the late 18th century and was made popular by Franz Mesmer, a German physician who became known as the father of ‘modern hypnotism’. In fact, hypnosis used to be known as ‘Mesmerism’ as it was named after Mesmer.” It is where we got the word mesmerize from. Hypnosis has been around for a longer period of time than most realize as Franz Mesmer died in 1815.
In the 1950s the CIA experimented with LSD as a possible mind control agent but eventually abandoned, (or so they claim). Various approaches were looked into including surgery, programming, drugs, imprinting, subliminal imaging to name a few. This patent is just one of many such potential ways that have been developed. US6506148B2 Nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors.
The book is divided up into three sections: Techniques for Controlling Behavior, Techniques for Reshaping Man and Concerns and Countermeasures. Some of the “yummy” titles of subsections are: Mood Management, Building Brighter – or Duller – People; Keeping Track of – and Controlling – the Populace; Engineering Voter Approval; Males or Females to Order; Modifying Our Genetic Blueprints; Packaging Superior People; Second Thoughts by the Human Engineers; and On Controlling the Controllers. The first part of the book deals with mind control and in the second and in the third sections he goes into such endeavors as cloning and genetic engineering, test tube babies, and altering IQs. He also discusses potential adverse consequences and possible ways to avoid and/or counter these negative consequences. My main focus is on mind control and shaping human behavior.
In his very short introduction Packard says:
“This book suggests that we are racing toward the hair-raising worlds envisioned by two Englishmen. I refer, of course, to George Orwell’s brutish, all seeing dictatorship of 1984, and the more distant, far more sophisticated dictatorship of Aldous Huxley’s brave New World, with its human hatcheries, personality molding and enticing use of drugs.
“The people shapers is about current factual developments worldwide…….”
“A number of the innovations for manipulating behavior, however, have been, up to now, peculiarly American. These are described in the early part of this book. I refer to attempts at behavior modification by conditioning techniques, using drugs to pacify schoolchildren and prisoners, using electricity to modify our moods and personality, use of surgery to alter personality, use of hidden TV cameras and vast computers to maintain surveillance of the populace, use of subliminal stimulation to sell products, use of drugs to modify intelligence.”
(As I said the book is divided into three sections containing the chapters. The Chapters are broken up into smaller sub-sections. I have labeled them S/S. Chapter 1 comes before Section 1. Section 1 starts with Chapter 2)
CHAPTER 1: The Emerging Plastic Image of Man
“We have not yet seen what man can make of man”. –B.F. Skinner, behavioral psychologist
“B. F. Skinner’s ringing pronouncement reflects ambition as much as fact. But dramatic efforts are indeed underway to reshape people and their behavior. These efforts obviously have profound implications. And quite a few instances the implications are disquieting.
“Human engineers are at work in a variety of fields. They are increasing the capacity of relatively small number of people to control, modify, manipulate, reshape the lives of a great number of other people. And they’re functioning in many countries, especially in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Israel, Russia, Australia, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia.
“These new technologists draw primarily upon discoveries in the behavioral, biological, and computer sciences. Control is being achieved over human actions, moods, wishes, thoughts.” Page 3
“The strategies being pressed by the human engineers have caused some observers to suggest that we are hurtling toward the fictional worlds envisioned by two Englishmen. I refer to George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s brave New World, projected for six centuries from now. Actually Orwell’s Big Brother was pretty heavy-handed and simplistic compared with Huxley’s World Controller, Mustapha Mond.” Page 4
“Huxley’s controller, conceived earlier, in 1932, developed his control is by far more sophisticated scientific techniques. His controller saw that total control should start at conception. In hatcheries made possible by reproductive biology, embryos were molded to order by genetic means to become humans of certain types. The level of intelligence is controlled in part by manipulating the amount of oxygen given the fetuses. Future sewer workers, who needed few brains, were mass-produced on low levels of oxygen.
“Once no humans were born, a variety of controls continued, from infancy on. Persons were induced to love their assigned status and the regime by the use of ‘neo-Pavlovian conditioning’techniques, by sleep teaching, and by a wondrous ‘soma’ drug. ………..”Page 5
“Today there is no all-powerful controller insight in the Western world. The coming crunch on natural resources combined with rampant over breeding in many areas of the world make it likely that we will be hearing calls for more authoritarian governments within the coming quarter century. At any rate there are already a host of technologists in a variety of fields who qualify as people controllers or people shapers. They’re becoming, willingly or not, a new elite”……… Page 5
“But the activists have not hedged in talking about what they aim to achieve. I will be using phrases encountered in their own literature when I refer to behavior control, human engineering, genetic tailoring, biomedical engineers, programming people, manipulate human behavior, shaping behavior.” Page 6
“In recent decades, scientists have come up with a number of novel images of Man. Six of them are described in highly abbreviated form in the next paragraphs………..”
[NOTE I have not quoted the paragraphs just the headings.]
“Man is a bad animal.
“Man is controlled by his genes.
“Man is shaped by primal instincts and in early childhood experiences.
“Man is captain of his fate.
“Man is a mere reactor to progress from the environment.
“Man is an adjustable, chemically controlled machine.” Pages 8,9,10
“People are raw material that needs perfecting, modifying, or at least improving, either for their own good artist to the wishes of others. Malleable people are more likely to be controllable people.
“Whereas the old believers in the perfectibility of people not primarily in moral terms, the new revolutionists want to change people physically, emotionally, mentally. Often their efforts are underwritten by the government.” Page 11
SECTION 1 Techniques for Controlling Behavior
CHAPTER 2 Pioneers in Programming Pigeons and People
“The technology of behavior control makes it possible today to exact individual conformity with greater reliability and less resistance than ever before”. – Perry London, Psychologist
“For achieving certain kinds of long-term programmed behavior the programmer need not be a scientifically trained technologist. Consider how the intense and unattractive Charles Manson horrified and fascinated millions of people a few years ago by his control methods. He had the ability to induce sustained zombielike behavior in his followers, mostly girls. They committed random murders in the Los Angeles area. What a number of his ‘slaves’ faced trial they vigorously asserted that the murders were their own idea. They want to protect Charlie, was always somewhere else when the butchery’s occurred.” Page 15
“Brainwashing is not as mysterious as it once seemed. It involves very little reliance on drugs. The so-called truth drugs even for interrogation have been overrated. They bring out fantasies as well as fact. Drugs, modest success rate darting out fax the subject is not wish to reveal, especially it is stable and highly motivated. In true brainwashing there is also relatively little use of excruciating torture, such as is still used in several dozen countries in the routine interrogation of suspects, dissidents, and the like. The brainwashing were less interested in obtaining information that obtaining converts. The latter could be used for propaganda purposes in broadcasting for writing denunciations for their homeland.” Page 16
“For the personality-Transformers a major early objective is to destroy the prisoner’s identity, disorganize his self-concept. That was also the goal of Charlie Manson………..” Page 16
“Three states of mind or body, sometimes called the Three D’s, contribute to the destruction of identity and a readiness for conversion:
[Again I have only given the name of the Three D’s and not brief description the author gave.]
“Debilitation”, “Dread”, Dependancy”. Pages 16, 17
“What the conditioners call the science of behavior control started in a Russian laboratory, with Ivan Pavlov’s discovery of the conditioned reflex. This was at the beginning of the century. As most readers know, Pavlov rigged up a tubing arrangement to measure how much a dog salivated. He could ground meat on the tongue of a harnessed dog and in the same instant rang a bell. After numerous repetitions and measurement of saliva, he began omitting the meat. The outpouring of saliva was the same as when the meat was offered. This result has become known as ‘classical conditioning.’It is conditioning based on a simple reaction to stimuli.”
“At about the same time the educational psychologist Edward Thorndike in the United States was tempting cats with food at Columbia University. The cats were inside cages. As they thrashed around trying to reach the food and full site, their claws finally had a loop of string and open the cage. The cast did mentally make the cage string connection straight away. But by trial and error they did in subsequent tests clock closer and closer to the string. Soon they learn to go to it directly on the sight of food. The cats were not just reacting by salivating like Pavlov’s dogs. They were conditioned by the reward of food to take affirmative action: looking for the string each time they saw the food.” Page 18
“…..Skinner has developed a great array of ideas about changing the world of people. Many of his ideas about people are unflattering. He sees broad-scale control of people and the reconditioning of them as our best hope of saving the Western world. Otherwise, he warns, ‘some other group’ may become more proficient at controlling behavior and directing it ‘into paths we consider undesirable.’ Page 19
“Clearly he had gone beyond Pavlov, whose animals had simply reacted. Animals under Skinner acted. They had acted repeatedly in predictable patterns (just as Thorndike’s cats had). Why had they acted? They repeated their actions on cue because they remembered the consequences that had occurred in the same situation.” Page 21
S/S: SKINNER’S VISIONS OF HAPPY, CONTROLLED SOCIETIES
“In 1948, Skinner, a frustrated writer, drew upon his experiments with rats to write a novel, Walden II, about a human utopia. It was quite a leap.
“Skinner’s Walden II is a commune where everything, including work, is shared. Everyone is contented. Everyone is free of jealousy. Everyone’s behavior is substantially controlled by sound behavioral engineering principles. The founder of the commune, Frazier, is a man who talks a lot like Skinner.
“Below Frazier there are six Planners. Below them are Managers for every aspect of community life. Members are sometimes called controlees. They follow the commune’s rather austere ‘Code of Conduct.’ Midnight snacks are forbidden. Members are to be quite puritanical about sex. In regard to the outside world, the Political Manager develops a Walden ticket for local, state, and federal elections. Everyone votes for it. Founder Frazier explains: ‘And why not? . . . Remember our interests are all alike and our Political Manager is in the best position to tell us what candidates will acted those interests. Why should our members take the time – and it does take time – to inform themselves on so complex a matter?” Page 23
“By 1971 Skinner had pondered human behavior further, and had seen and encouraged a broad range of efforts to control it. Also he had developed further is thinking about freedom and so-called human dignity. Historic tract, the nonfictional Beyond Freedom and Dignity, created quite an uproar.
“In it Skinner suggests that human survival depends on deciding how people must behave in that using behavioral engineering techniques to see that they do. His basic argument is that our behavior is shaped by external influence – not by any conscious decision-making inside our heads. Implies that this affront to their concept of human dignity, so be it.” Page 24
“ ‘I believe that the day has come when we can combine sensory deprivation with drugs, hypnosis and astute manipulation of reward and punishment to gain absolute control over an individual’s behavior.’ “ Page 25
CHAPTER 3: The Behavior Shapers Take On the Public
“Today’s band of human-behavior controllers . . . can be found . . . in classrooms, kitchens, mental hospitals, rehabilitation wards, prisons, nursing homes, day care centers, factories, movie theaters, national parks, community mental-health centers, stores, recreation centers, and right next door.” Kenneth Goodall, in Psychology Today
“The thousands of experts at conditioning are now trying out their behavior-changing technology on tens of thousands of people……
“In 1975 the National Institute of Mental Health undertook to make an evaluation of the proliferating behavior-modification programs. It came up with a recommendation that more effort be made to try our behavior-modification techniques of larger numbers of persons in the general population, outside institutions.” Page 26
S/S: BEHAVIOR SHAPING IN THE CLASSROOM
“In less than a decade, the behavioral technologists have moved in a major way into our compulsory, government-operated public schools. Just one ardent behavior shapers, Charles H. Madsen, Jr., of Florida State University, has, as a consultant, taught operant-conditioning techniques to many thousands of teachers.” Page31
S/S: TAKING ON WHOLE COMMUNITIES
“While few behavior shapers working out in the real world are you ready to implement Skinner’s dream of reshaping a whole society, starts are being made in taking on whole communities. Or, as a shapers preferred put it, ‘ whole systems.’ Page 34
S/S: DOES BEHAVIOR SHAPING WORK?
“Conditioning works best when the people to be shaped are in a controlled environment, such as a hospital, prison, or school. It works best when the desired change in behavior is specific (for instance, stay in your seat). And it works best with people who are very far advanced in learning.” Page36
“Behaviorists believe that rewards, in whatever form, are prime force in making any society operate. Others now are wondering what kind of generation will emerge if we hook the young on the expectation of being constantly rewarded for good behavior. . . “ Page 38
“Finally, it appears that the conditioners are starting to achieve some quite powerful tools for behavior modifications, especially if used with large groups. And, historically, they are just getting started. They are still learning. Let us keep in appraising eye on them.” Page 39
Chapter 4: Mood Management
“Some scientists are so confident of the manipulative powers of the new drugs that they are making startling statements. When Kenneth B. Clark gave his presidential address to the American Psychological Association in 1971 he call for research on how, chemically, to control the behavior of powerful political leaders. The goal be to curb dangerously aggressive behavior. His suggestion jolted even some of his colleagues. Powerful political figures such as a chief of state and military chiefs, might be happy to improve their control over the behavior of subordinates or the masses. But they might resist the use of controls on themselves. . . .” Page 43
S/S: TURNING ON AGGRESSIVENESS OR PACIFISM
“Findings such as theirs have caused scientists to contemplate the manipulative possibilities of chemicals that would incite or inhibit aggression in man. Military people quite likely would be more intrigued by aggression inciters, an internal police in aggression inhibitors.”
“On the other hand, the ruling powers might be interested in mass arousal of aggressiveness. During this century, most Americans were uninterested in becoming involved in foreign wars until heavy propaganda whipped a militaristic mood. Some future leader might simply trying adding aggression-inciting chemicals to drinking water, table salt, or the air. And then there are the men who must do the actual fighting. Military leaders would prefer to create gung ho fighting in rather than wavering ones. And they are also understandably curious about the cause and prevention of anxiety under stress. In United States, the Navy and Air Force have funded research on move modification by brain stimulation.” Page 47
S/S: TUNING OUT GLOOM OR HYPER-EXCITED STATES
“One true wonder drug for stabilizing the tens of millions of people in the world who tend to have exaggerated mood swings has recently emerged, but with little thanks to the drug industry. Drugmakers may have preferred to ignore it because it is so plentiful in nature, and hence unattractive as a profit maker. I refer to lithium, a natural alkali salt. For a few dollars you can buy enough sex of industrial lithium produce fifty thousand pills. . .
“Lithium’s principal effect is to calm manic-depressives while they are in the highly excited, euphoric, hyperactive stage. . .
“It has to be administered with extreme care, because toxic effects from over dosage can be severe. But it is found in much of the world’s drinking water, especially at spas. Well water in El Paso, Texas contains a high level of lithium, and admission of city residents to neuropsychiatric hospitals is extremely low.
“A biochemist at the University of Texas was impressed by the relationship between lithium levels in the drinking water of dozens of Texas cities and mental-hospital admissions from those cities. The renowned psychiatrist Nathan S. Kline of Rockland State Hospital in New York asked why we should not add lithium as well as fluorides to drinking water. . . .” Page 50
S/S: TURNING ON ECSTACY, TITILATION, OR NAUSEA
“the fact that the brain apparently has pleasure centers was discovered accidentally by the psychologist James Olds, and other pioneer in bringing programming. In experimenting with rats while he was at McGill University, he applied an electric current deep into a rats brain as it explored a maze. . . . Later, Olds invented ways that restaurant electrically stimulate themselves, if they wished, by pressing a lever. Some rats seem to delight so much in the sensation, whatever it was, that they pressed the lever eight thousand times in one hour.
“Humans, having more complex brains and a wider range of emotional reactions, have not matched the rats in obsessive pursuit of electrical delight. But we do have pleasure centers in the brain. In the pleasure centers involved often appears to have sexual overtones.” Page 51
S/S: CHANGING THE SOCIAL ORDER
“Would we have a more peaceable world if we could all be Elsas? [Elsa was a monkey that figured out by pressing a lever the aggression of a male monkey named Ali would be reduced. When he became aggressive to others in his cage she pushed the lever.] Less strain or imagination, think the unthinkable. If each of us had an electrode implanted in the aggression inhibiting area of his brain, and that each of us had a pushbutton, microwave pocket transmitter which we can focus at an obstreperous person in our family, our workgroup, we would have an intriguing situation. But doubts arise. Who would give the orders that would make the societies run? And an aspiring Big Brother would certainly cheat and have his own electrode removed, and those of his police as well. And his police would certainly have extra powerful transmitters that could keep everybody within half a mile in a pacific and hence submissive-mood.” Page 55
S/S: PRODUCING ROBOT LIKE BEHAVIOR
“If family bonds can indeed be disrupted electrically, conceivably other bonds can too. If so, and with further advances in brain technology, totalitarian leaders – again just conceivably – might be greatly interested in the idea of instituting some kind of broad application. A common strategy of totalitarian regimes for maintaining control is to take over child socialization from the family as early as possible, and also to try to disrupt pre-existing small group affiliations. The isolated individual is more malleable.
“Bending the mind. For thousands of years, humans have known that certain plants, peyote is one of them, contain substances that can create hallucinations, which are often exciting. They commonly have been used in religious rites in orgies. They disrupt the normal electrochemistry of the brain. In the past quarter century scientists have uncovered a host of mind altering drugs that can be synthesized. . . “ Page 57
“In the future we will undoubtedly hear much more about modifying brain function by chemicals introduced into the bloodstream than about electrical implants. Implanting is so much more expensive. Also, except in institutions where coercion or promises of release are possible, implants have to be truly voluntary, and most people find the idea of electric charges going off in their heads unattractive. On the other hand, most people have very positive attitudes towards producing change by taking pills. And they have already accepted medication via fluoridation of their drinking water. Other chemicals may in the future be added to their water without their awareness. Buckets of pacifying chemicals might be quietly ported reservoirs by the authorities in times of ugly social unrest. Inconceivably buckets of suggestibility chemicals might be added whenever the authorities were about to launch a massive propaganda campaign. Or the specific water drinkers could be pinpointed. The chemicals could be used to forestall rebellion on the campus, strikes and industry, or riots in the ghettos.” Page 58 [I will add that virtually everyone in urban areas have long since accepted chlorination of drinking water.]
CHAPTER 5: New Personalities for Old
“In the last chapter we were talking primarily about temporary or short-term changes in behavior. In this one we will discuss the ways in which a number of scientists are attempting to mold or remold basic aspects of the human personality.
“Some are focusing on very early childhood, when the potential for moldability is highest. . . . “ Page 61
“Some scientists question whether the modern family is indeed competent to have full charge of child rearing. Robert S. Morison, a distinguished neurophysicist, believes in imprinting. He contends that it is idle to talk of a complex society of equal opportunity as long as that society ‘abandons its newcomers solely to their families.’Many families, he argues, have ‘haphazard educational procedures’ for the children’s most impressionable years.” Page 64
CHAPTER 6: On Making Man More Tractable
“Perhaps the riots of recent years – on the campus, in the ghetto, and against the war in Vietnam – gave the movement to push. At any rate we have been seeing a widespread, anxious search for neat ways to control unruly people. The appealing approach is to handle such people quietly, scientifically.
“The Russians have been in the lead in using this approach, although often as a sham. They have had doctors examine outspoken dissidents and declare the mentally ill. Then the dissidents were sent off to asylums. The Russians also are reported to have devised a simple technique for permanently in feeling the brains of dissidents they have detained. . . .” Page 71
S/S: TAMING UNRULY PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILDREN CHEMICALLY
“The uproar began in Omaha. Thousands of children in the public schools were reportedly being drugged during school hours to reduce their unruliness. It was for the children’s own good, so the argument went, since they had some sort of brain malfunction. The pills helped quiet their brains so they could be better students in the early grades. And they would stop disrupting the work of other students.”
“Who diagnosed these young sufferers in Omaha? Mainly their teachers. How did the teachers learn to make these diagnoses? Many have heard talks by representatives of drug companies, or were briefed by other staff members who had heard the talks. The teachers told parents that doctors now had pills that could help their children improve their concentration and perform better in class. . .” Page 83
“The public discussion created by the report from Omaha flushed out the discovery that drugged schoolchildren were a fact of life in hundreds of American school systems. The most commonly mentioned estimate then was at least 250,000 grammar school pupils were on amphetamines or Ritalin. And the number was growing rapidly. Now the estimates range from 500,000 to 2,000,000 (the latter figure appeared in a 1976 report in Science Digest).
“There were also reports that in many school systems the proportion of pupils on stimulant drugs ran between 10 and 15 percent.” Page 84
“It is pertinent to recall at this point that in the United States, parents are required by law to send their children to school. The schools are institution of government. That being so, are the schools in general exerting, however subtly, any kind of government pressure to get children on behavior modifying drugs?” Page 86
CHAPTER 7 Building Brighter –or Duller – People
“. . . . Some scientists are predicting that IQs can be raised on the average by 20 points. . . “
“The ironic aspect of this impending capability is that brain scientists still have only the dimmest notions about how the brain produces intelligent actions. .. . “
“A man-made computer can take the information that Man programs into it on standardized forms. Later, when it is activated by Man it can produce a printout that repeats or uses the information.
“But Man’s own brain does not acquire information in any such straightforward, systematic way. It comes by way of smell, sight, sound, taste, and touch. Each person’s life involves tens of thousands of unique experiences. And each person is subjected to millions of sensory impressions that aren’t programmable on tape – a breeze blowing or a rooster crowing before dawn.” Page 92
“The evaluation of many recalled facts, often seemingly unrelated, in order to come up with a decision. This is called thinking, the most baffling of all to comprehend it is a psychological process.” {age 93
S/S TRANSPLANTING OR MANUFACTURING MEMORIES
“James V. McConnell, a colorful psychologist from the University of Michigan, came up with some discoveries about memory that seem simply unbelievable. Some of his fellow scientists were at first aghast. Memories, he reported, were not necessarily personal. They can be transferred to other individuals, at least in the animal world. Some thought that such preposterous talk would give science a bad name.
“If memory can indeed be transferred, the finding will stand as one of the most astonishing discoveries of modern neurobiology. . . . “ Page 101
NOTE MY THOUGHTS: The implications of the following should literally “blow” your minds. Keep in mind this book was written prior to 1978 when it was published. How much further along are they and what is the potential for this for abuse?
“They decided to start with the simplest creature that could be considered to have a brain, the inch-long flatworm. It’s “brain” is a network of about 400 cells. They set up a water tank with electrodes at each end. As expected, they found that when they sent a very mild shock through the tank. The worms would scrunch up. So then they began to turn on a light 2 seconds before the shock. At first the worms ignored the light. In fact, intended to relax them. But soon they began scrunching up the instant the light went on, just as Pavlov’s dogs has salivated when the bell rang. The worms were capable of learning and remembering!
“Later, when he was a psychologist at the University of Michigan, McConnell pushed onto Boulder worm experiments. In after educating worms to scrunch on the light cue he cut them in half. It seems that flatworms can be cut in half, and in a few weeks. Each half will grow a new head or tail. The tales that grew back into worms have brains, and the brains and the old memories. This astonished even McConnell. It turned out that the educated tail base worms remembered the light cue even better than educated worms that had not been cut at all! In worms, at least, it seems that memories are stored all over the body, not just in a ‘brain.’ He cutworms up into as many as five pieces, and all the pieces regenerated brains that ‘remembered.’
McConnell had also learned that his words were cannibalistic, and that gave him another bold idea. After conditioning worms to scrunch with a light went on, he chopped them up and fed them to hungry, untrained cannibal worms. He says that after letting the cannibals have a day or so to digest their meals, we then gave them their first exposure to light shock training. To our delight, the cannibals that ate the educated victims showed much faster learning [to scrunch at the site of light] that the cannibals that ate “uneducated” or “untrained victims.”’ Paqge 102
“If it develops that memories can indeed be transferred or manufactured for humans, what with being the implications? . . . “ Page 103
CHAPTER 9: Molding Super Consumers, Super Athletes, Super Employees
S/S: SLIPPING MESSAGES INTO OUR MINDS
“In the late 1950’s. There was a hullabaloo in much of the Western world when it was discovered that hidden messages were being tucked into TV, radio, and motion picture shows. Much of the talking was being done by advertisers. The technique was called subliminal stimulation. It was based on findings by psychologists that the brain can receive quickly flashed images and whispered sounds below our level of conscious awareness.” Page 135
S/S: PUSH BUTTO BUYING IN THE LIVING ROOM
“The great dream of TV advertisers is to find a way to clinch sales immediately. Catch the prospect while he is relaxed in his own living room, perhaps with a drink in hand. Close the sale while his desire is aroused and the product is clearly in his mind. Then you won’t have to wait until some future date when he happens to be near a shop with a product or service is available.
“That is the dream. And the reality is being tested. The reality is to wait cable television. A pushbutton console sits near the TV set. Were you the listener obey the commands are appeals of the salesman on the screen. Just push three or four buttons. The machine that makes ice cubes, electric leg shaver, the mahogany backgammon set, or that can speed bike Junior is hollering for will be at your door next morning. They later.
“Cable television installations are growing rapidly in the United States. As of late 1976 there were about eleven million installations. And by law those now installed in most metropolitan areas must have two-way capability.” Page 138
CHAPTER 10 Engineering Voter Appeal
“Our presidential campaign is really going to be waged between two television consultants nobody knows.” –Nicholas Johnson, former commissioner, Federal Communications Commission”
“Mr. Johnson was perhaps being a bit dramatic in the above statement in 1972. But if he had included some other people that nobody knows, such as professional political consultants, computer experts, advertising agency representatives, demographic specialists, public relations specialists, and consultants on communications theory, he would’ve been close to the truth.” Page 147
“One area of research for shaping voter behavior that intrigues the pros is what might be called biopschopolitics. . . . “ Page 147/148
“Schwartz [Tony Schwartz former advertising agent] doesn’t waste much time explaining to the public how his candidate stands on specific issues. The big challenge, he contends, is to affect the inner feelings of the voter. . . . . . They don’t tell the viewer anything. They surface his feelings and provide a context for them to express his feelings. The real question in political advertising is, how to surround the voter with the proper auditory and visual stimuli to evoke the reaction you want from them, i.e., is voting for a specific candidate. ‘ Schwartz then summed it up:
“ ‘So it is really the voter who is packaged up, not the candidate. The voter is surrounded by media and is dependent on them in his everyday life functioning. The stimuli candidate uses on the media that surrounds the voter’. “ Page 149
“Victory in modern U.S. politics requires consummate skill in putting together winning combinations of demographic blocks. Special attention is given to ethnic and religious combinations. Nixon was so aware of this that in at least one case he personally decided what voting blocs to be represented among the little girls who would hand flowers to Mrs. Nixon.” Page 150/151
CHAPTER 11: Behavior Control by the New Hypnotechnicians
“One of the oldest mysteries of Man is being tapped today on a large scale to induce people to behave as they would not ordinarily do. I refer to hypnosis. It is being used by the police, by advertisers, by physicians, by educators, by attorneys, by athletic coaches, by psychotherapists, by military personnel. . “. . Page 159
“In the late 1700’s Fritz Mesmer, a Viennese physician began ‘mesmerizing ‘patients intentionally. He thought some sort of magnetic fluids created the hypnotic behavior. A half-century later, a Scottish physician, James Braid, dismissed magnetic fluids or currents and decided that the phenomena was an abnormal form of sleep. He called it ‘hypnosis’, the Greek word for sleep. He was wrong. Hypnotists usually tell subjects they’re going to sleep. They go into a waking trance. Their brain waves are not those of a sleeping person, but rather those of a very, very relaxed person.” Page 159
“How can people be induced to do such strange things under hypnosis? What is it? Hypnosis involves an increased susceptibility to suggestion. In its milder form a TV commercial in which an admired person repeats keywords over and over can induce some people to hasten to buy the advertised product. . S” Page 160
“Herbert Spiegal, a psychiatrist at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, has developed the Hypnotic Induction for rating a prospect’s hypnotizability. Prospects are rated from zero to five. A high-five person will be high on readiness to trust. He can suspend critical judgment. He is high intractability and has a high ability to concentrate. . .” Page 161
S/S: HYPNOSIS BY REMOTE CONTROL
“The hypnotist does not need to be in the same room with the subject in order to put him in a trance. He can in fact be miles away. One way to hypnotize by remote control is by television.
“The psychiatrist Herbert Spiegel demonstrated this in an experiment at Columbia. A subject known to be hypnotizable sat in a lounge chair before a TV set. Spiegel was seated before a closed-circuit TV camera for stories below. He talked to the subject, just as if the subject were the same room and put him into a trance. . .
“Spiegel suggests that televised hypnosis could have a number of uses. It could be used to group therapy and mass education. . . . . But Spiegel warns that the technique could have dangerous consequences if used in any way in public broadcasts. . . .
“The warning is in order. Several years ago a radio performer in England inadvertently hypnotize it portion of his listening audience. . . . “ Page 164
S/S: POLICE, LEGAL, MILITARY USES
“Military planners have long been intrigued by the possibility of getting warriors, via some form of hypnosis, to perform with extraordinary strength and endurance in times of battle. The American military have experimented successfully with using ‘hypnotic couriers’. The psychologist G. H. Estabrooks, a Rhodes Scholar who obtained his PhD from Harvard, and revealed that he was involved in preparing many such couriers during World War II. Comments can be broken. Captured couriers can be tortured into revealing their messages. But a hypnotized courier is virtually unbreakable.” Page 169
“For the last twenty years the CIA has been testing and using many types of behavior control. Hypnosis apparently has been included, sometimes in combination with drugs. . .” Page 170
Section II. Techniques for Reshaping Man
CHAPTER 17: The Quality Control of New Humans
S/S: IS THE HUMAN GENE POOL DETERIORATING?
“A number of well-known biologists have answered yes. They include Sir Julian Huxley, Bentley Glass, Joshua Lederberg, H. J. Muller, Leon Kass, and Theodosius Dobzhanksy.
“Among the causes, some scientists cite the advance of medicine first. We can now keep people alive many people who suffer from mental or physical genetic ailments, or who are genetic carriers, until they are able to – and do – have children.
“The number of people suffering genetic mutations, the scientists contend, is mounting. . . .” Page 246
“Some point as well to our easier lifestyle. The automobile, central heating, and packaged foods make it easier for the physically weak and defective to survive. Natural selection today is not as rigorous as people calling affect as it was a mere half-century ago.
“Dobzhanksy has predicted a ‘genetic twilight’ if present trends continue. Some of the pollution of our genetic pool more specifically. They contend that in each future century the number of defective people dependant on medical technology to survive will increase by 8 percent. If they are right, and 600 years – the same amount of time that has elapsed since A.D. 1400 – the bulk of the population will have become seriously defective genetically.
“Others make the more controversial assertion that we are also trending genetically towards duller-wittedness. Through the ages, those endowed the genes that contributed to higher mental ability had a better chance of surviving. Today, these brighter people, it is argued, are more often involved in family planning and having small families than the less-endowed mentally, who are more likely to be among those with large families.
“Some suggest that welfare policies, in the United States at least, have the effect of encouraging many of the poor to have children they might not otherwise have. In a much-argued -about article on IQ differentials published in 1969, the educational psychologist Arthur Jensen asked: ‘is there a danger that current welfare policies, unaided by eugenic foresight, could lead to the genetic enslavement of substantial segment of our population? The new U.S. government program to encourage and support fetal monitoring might be seen as “eugenic foresight’ ” but not too right-to-lifers, of course.” Page 247
S/S: WHY HUMAN BODIES WEAR OUT
“By the age of seventy, a person has lost perhaps a fourth of the tiny urinary tubes of the kidneys that carry away waste from the blood. And the seventy-year-old has lost at least half of his taste buds.
“One of the more startling discoveries about aging was made by the microbiologist Leonard Hayflick in 1961, while he was at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. Up to then, scientists had commonly believed that most body cells (except those of the brain, nerves, muscles, and kidneys) would double by division and definitely if kept in a proper culture. It turned out that the only cells with his capacity are cancer cells. . . “ Page 296
I am going to end there although there is much more of interest in the book. I wanted to end at a place that would be something most people would remember.