This was my senior research paper in high school. I'm sure it's got problematic stuff in it. Because of context, though we still needed to cite 1984 and/or Brave New World in text, they were not to appear in the Bibliography. So they aren't there. After this paragraph, everything is exactly what I turned in, minus the cover page. I'll probably talk about whatever problematic stuff I put in it as a later post, unless someone wants to do it for me first, but I wanted this up so I could point to it, since there seems to be some discussion of the book going on with other bloggers I follow/talk to.
General Trigger Warning because I don't remember what all is in here but I discuss a lot of things.
You are not as free as you might
think. Within the rule of law, you have the right to do whatever you
want to. You have the right to vote however you want to. What you are
short on, however, is the ability to choose for yourself what it is
that you want without being manipulated. Every day, you are bombarded
with messages, both stated and sneaky, trying to make you think and
feel a certain way. Manipulation works as well as it does because
pain and fear drive people, because people tend to believe what they
hear, especially if it is repeated, and because everyone wants to be
as happy as possible with as little work as possible.
Manipulation Through
Fear
We live in a world of fear,
with danger around every corner. Children are taught not to talk to
strangers because people they do not know could be evil people who
want to take them away from Mommy and Daddy to hurt them. A mother
who allows a nine year old son to ride the New York subway alone is
viewed as irresponsible (Skenazy). To be unafraid is to be a
daredevil lunatic, and in her case, a bad enough mother to make
national TV over the incident. Parents are now afraid, but it is not
only parents. It is everyone, and the government wants it this way so
that doing anything besides accepting the restrictions imposed to
protect us from our fears is unpatriotic. It is letting the
terrorists win if we do not do everything in our power to catch them
and stop them.
However, a program that
would truly protect us fully is impractical. Anyone could be a
terrorist in theory, and we cannot prevent an attack that can come
from anyone to hit anywhere. Trying would only bankrupt us even more
than we already have been. The advantages, therefore, must lie with
the other side. That was our assumption (Fallows). In reality, we
have a much stronger position than any member of the government would
have us believe. To admit that the physical damage of an attack is
impossible to prevent but the true damage would come from our
reaction, which we can control, would reject the politics of fear.
Rejecting fear as a tool
may be a nice campaign idea, but it is not a way to effectively
control a population. Former President Richard Nixon admits to it.
“People react to fear, not love,” he says. “They don't teach
that in Sunday School, but it's true” (qtd in Altheide). With a
reaction to fear that will make people do whatever they can to feel
safe, but little or none to the advice of a figure using love, fear
is the tool of choice. Who takes the advice of their parents without
having something to fear should they not? Taxes, on the other hand,
get done on time because people are scared of the IRS. Fear works.
Because fear works, so does
propaganda. If the media is afraid of what could happen for promoting
anything but the government line, and people are afraid because the
government line is scary, then everyone will listen to the government
in order to be kept safe. By keeping debates off the subjects that
could make people less afraid, taking advantage of the human wish to
think the best about themselves, and keeping the media in line,
propagandists can spread any message they choose (Shah). Terror is
the way to do it, leading to the question: Are the terrorists truly
the enemy, or simply the scapegoat with which to make the herd afraid
enough to listen?
It is not as if Al-Qaeda
-Scared as soon as you read the name? If the media did its job well,
you are- can do enough damage on its own to destroy America.
According to Killcullen, the threat of Al-Qaeda comes now mainly from
our reaction to them. Much like the threat of European anarchists,
who only killed perhaps 2,000 including the Archduke Ferdinand, the
real destruction comes from the government response (Fallows). In the
case of the anarchists, the response was World War Two. In the case
of Al-Qaeda, the reaction is the “War on Terror,” which can never
end because it is against an idea, not a nation. It also allows for
an attack on any nation home to terrorists and unwilling to eradicate
them. Because we define who terrorists are, this provides a blank
check to go to war as often as deemed necessary by the government
and for as long as is beneficial. Our media, to the benefit of our
leaders, created spectacle around the attacks of September 11, making
the obvious response the one favored by policy. “Terrorists have
long constructed media spectacles of terror to promote their causes,
attack their adversaries, and gain worldwide publicity and attention”
(Kellner). We did the job for the terrorists with our constant
coverage, not even breaking for commercials. The only difference is
that the spectacle promotes our goal. This is the difference between
good and evil: Good creates fear for the good of whatever side I am
on, and people who create fear for any other cause are Evil. The
threat is also real, making the fear that Good provides completely
logical, whereas Evil makes threats of American Imperialism
spreading, which simply cannot be. This is excluding all of our
actions in the Middle East for the past 50 years, of course, which
were rarely related to the claimed goal of spreading democracy. Using
war, fear, and destruction to create regimes that are friendly to us,
then having another period of war to curb our own liberties with when
they turn unfriendly, is the real goal.
With fear defining the
wartime attitude and wartime infinitely extendable, pushing through
legislation that supposedly trades liberty for security is always
possible. The Patriot Act, for example, passed during the shock-based
fear after the attacks of September 11, 2001, takes away many levels
of privacy. By framing the Patriot Act as an attack upon the agents
of terror, the Bush Administration successfully played upon the
politics of fear. It finds a target that we are afraid of, assumes
that further attacks will come from it, makes an attack upon it, and
kills dissent as against what we need. Fear will call you unpatriotic
for being against the safety reforms that take away from out
liberties (Altheide). Being unpatriotic is equivalent to being one of
the terrorists is Bush's with or against philosophy, so no one wants
to be the one to stand up and say that the curbing of liberty is
wrong in all circumstances, or that perhaps trading liberty for
security is not worth the cost.
An extreme case of trading
liberty for security shows up in George Orwell's 1984,
commonly used as a warning of what communism can look like whenever a
“socialist” reform is proposed. Communism is totalitarian, and
therefore socialism must be too. This makes anything good for the
workers, from rights for unions to universal healthcare, attackable
with references to 1984.
This is yet another use of fear to destroy rational thought and make
everyone hold the official sanctioned opinion. Referencing 1984
and communism to turn people against a reform that has socialist
tendencies is in fact more like the manipulation in 1984
than allowing many of these reforms would be. Calling the option that
we are not currently using evil simply because it is not exactly the
same and preventing a true understanding is the exact method of all
three world powers, all using nearly the same philosophies
to control their populaces.
In fact, the warning of a 1984-type
world is most appropriate when understanding of the opposing view is
prevented, when surveillance is increased, or when liberties are
curtailed. Providing healthcare to people who need it is not the
thing to attack with a reference to the world of Winston, though it
has been used along with the death-panel panic.
Opponents
to reforms and proponents of security bills are not alone in using
fear as a tactic. Despite campaign rejections of the politics of
fear, President Obama has used fear for his agenda too. The
difference? He pushes healthcare instead of war. Fear is still the
tool because fear is known to work. There are three main things for
the middle class American to fear as far as his arguments go: “They
(Fear No. 1) lose their job or income, then (Fear No. 2) fall
seriously ill and then (Fear No. 3) receive the health care they
need, but lose valued assets” (Saunders). I would expect something
as useful as universal healthcare to be passable without the use of
fear to manage opinion, but seemingly even this requires control
through terror.
Changing
the thoughts of the people to the thoughts of those in charge may
seem like a difficult task. However, people who are afraid are not
thinking rationally. Rational thought is the enemy of those who wish
to control public opinion, and therefore killing it with fear is a
the method of choice for government agencies needing to garner votes
for a change they hope to make.
Manipulation
Through Repetition and the Tendency to Trust
Our
codes of right and wrong may seem obvious, but what would happen if
the rules repeated so often in youth were drastically different from
the ones we hear today? Hear something enough times, or be forced to
take it as a given in order for a conversation to make sense, and
eventually you will accept it as true. Daily relationships could not
function if people could not believe what they were told, so the
default assumption is that we are being told the truth. By taking
advantage of this trust, and by making sure that the intended message
can be recalled effortlessly through repetition, opinions of entire
populations can change in time frames shorter than we might like to
believe.
In
today's political debate, key phrases, get used again and again in
order to hammer the message in. In healthcare reform, the mere
suggestion of a new bill sparks outcries: “Government bureaucrats
will choose your doctor and prescribe your treatments”
(Hertzberg). Both sides used key words that sounded good to pull
opinion in their favor- Democrats using the “public option” and
“universal coverage” to improve the the image of the reforms,
preferring to gloss over bureaucratic inability to make anything
cheaper, while Republican cite imaginary “death panels” and
repeat “your doctor, your plan” against reforms that offer an
additional option for what “your plan” could be (Hertzberg.)
Neither side is unbiased, and both use their key terms to try to sway
opinion.
Historically,
repeating slogans has been shown effective in bringing the young to
the side of the better slogan-writers, typically in the pay of either
the richest person or the one with the largest army. Nazi Germany's
Hitler Youth joined for the parades and the marching, but quickly
swallowed the whole philosophy and began to turn in their parents.
The deadly success of indoctrinating the Hitler Youth lends credence
to the young heroes of 1984,
turning in their parents for any sign of unorthodoxy. Bringing the
children into the Spies at the age of five, teaching them to listen
at keyholes, and feeding them the thoughts of the Party creates a
human incapable of thinking anything other than pure Party doctrine
and with no reasoning against turning family in (Orwell.) With a
doctrine repeated infinitely from an age when children are often
unaware of the possibility of lying and therefore completely
trusting, the government chooses what the people think before they
have the language skills to argue. By the time these skills are
acquired (if ever- the point of 1984's
Newspeak is that this never happens), thoughts against the official
doctrine are impossible. In Huxley's Brave
New World,
this repetition begins even earlier and makes rebellion similarly
unlikely. Conditioning begins in the test tube at the same time that
life does, with associations made between cold and discomfort for
those who will live in the heat. It then continues by putting books
with pain for low-caste workers who do not need to read, and ice
cream with death to desensitize. As soon as verbal skills are
acquired, hypnopaedia, moral education in sleep, begins (Huxley.) By
forming associations that circumvent rational thought and feeding
lines that become familiar and can be regurgitated whole, the mind is
filled with the ideas of the ruling class without anyone needing to
think about these ideas. The familiarity is intentional- people are
more comfortable with what they know (“Rhetoric.”) By making sure
people hear the same ideas over and over again, knowledge and comfort
are enforced both in the distopias of fiction and in modern politics.
Then only the inevitable acceptance is required, with little to no
rational thought.
The
lack of thought needed for swallowing these ideas is purposeful.
According to Noam Chomsky, “a
principle familiar to propagandists is that the doctrine to be
instilled in the target audience should not be articulated... The
proper procedure is to drill them home by constantly presupposing
them, so that they become the very condition for discourse” (qtd in
Shah.) This too is used to great effect in Orwell's 1984
in the use of Newspeak. The assumptions needed for communication
include Big Brother being good and all foreigners being bad. To say,
“Ingsoc is ungood” would be possible, but it implies the
contradiction because good is part of Ingsoc, or English Socialism
(Orwell.) Cognitive dissonance is extremely uncomfortable and needs
resolution as quickly as is reasonably possible, so the easy way out
is not to say or think things which go against the presuppositions
used in everyday function.
With
following the ideas of the ruling class unavoidable to the properly
conditioned, the idea of absolute truth, other than whatever this
ruling class thinks, must fall. There lies totalitarianism, which is
ideal for those who no longer hold their distinction between what is
true and what is not (Elshtain.) In Oceania, this distinction has
fallen. History is alterable and has therefore never been altered
(Orwell.) The alteration always includes the removal of itself from
the timeline of the world, so that everything stated by Big Brother
is always correct. There is no such thing as universal truth, and
therefore only the accepted truth matters. Have the right people say
it and it is true.
Say
it the right way, say it often, start it young, and have the right
people take up the statements. Eventually, everyone must believe
because the human tendency is to trust.
Manipulation
and the Pursuit of Happiness
Happiness
is a universal desire with the right to pursue it stated in our
country's Declaration of Independence, but what if following
happiness were just another way of letting someone control you?
Religions preach the way to eternal joy, that holy grail of
happiness. Few deny the influence of the church in history, and
though looking at how the people were made to fall in line may seem
trivial, it is worth examining the methods behind any organizations
as potent as the church. The typical analogy of carrots (eternal joy
in heaven) and sticks (eternal damnation in hell) shows the
methodology well enough. It worked and continues to work because of
the avoidance of pain and the draw of pleasure.
In
raising the generation where everyone gets a prize, those in charge
are aware that self-esteem is one factor recognized in why people are
happy or unhappy. People want to think well of themselves. A good
opinion of their home country does not hurt either. Both of these
factors in well-being can be taken advantage of by skilled diplomats,
politicians, and propagandists (Shah.) This is how bandwagon-based
advertising gets its effectiveness. If all the cool people are buying
this cool new car, then I want one too so that I can be cool, right?
However, there is a very good chance that the cool people are not
buying the car yet when the advertisement comes out. They begin to
buy when they know the other cool people are, which they know from
the ad that convinces them that this is the case.
In
diplomacy, there is also such positiveness. Rather than uniting
against a common enemy, which lasts as long as the enemy is common, a
goal that both groups share can be established. By respecting others
values and the communication of those values, a diplomatic resolution
can often be reached (“Rhetoric.”) By keeping in mind that the
others are human and want to think the best of their homeland and
themselves, how to phrase things in order to meet the goals of
diplomacy becomes clearer. Now look at the relationship between a
government and the people as a diplomatic one. The ruling group knows
how to phrase arguments such that disagreeing would appear to go
against basic cultural values, especially if they have previously
manipulated those values to meet their goals, as is the case in both
China in the Cultural Revolution and Brave
New World
.
In
China's Cultural Revolution, the adults had to either be re-educated,
scared into obeying, or taken out of the picture. Youth, however,
could have their original values brought into agreement with those
the government needed them to have. The already extant obedience to
authority, especially elders, which comes from the Confucian
tradition of China, needed only the modification of the highest
obedience to Mao Zedong and the Communist Party. Just as in the ideas
Confucius put in his Analects, the job of the government bureaucrats
is to be looking out for the best interests of the people and the job
of the people is to obey the leaders. Even though the best interests
part was questionable during the Revolution, when people starved in
re-education camps, everyone had their little red book, and children
were taught that Mao knows better than Mother and Father, the idea
that obedience to the authorities who are looking out for the peoples
best interest brings happiness kept the masses in line.
In
Brave
New World,
the values are very different from those of China in the Cultural
Revolution, but the obedience is the same. Rather than saying that
the World Controllers know better than Mother and Father, the idea of
parents is simply abolished. Consumption, everyone belonging to
everyone, and drug use are hammered in through the endless repetition
of hypnopaedia, then used to keep the masses happy and obedient
(Huxley.) People who are convinced that consumption will make them
happy are pleased to consume all the products of industry, which is
needed so the products do not build up forever. With everyone
belonging to everyone, sexual desires are quickly given into and met,
so there lies a source of physical pleasure and a lack of angst.
Should even that fail, there is always the perfect drug, soma. This
hallucinogen brings pleasure outside of time for as long as the
effects last and has no hangover afterwards. Because everyone wants
their happy pills and the government controlls the supply, the chase
for happiness forces obedience to the World Controllers whims, always
directed towards keeping power.
Conclusion
Pain
and its fear, familiarity from repetition, and the desire for joy are
all used every day to bring the masses ideas in keeping with those of
the people with power. “The object of power is power,” O'Brian
reveals while breaking Winston down (Orwell 217.) The object of
manipulation is also power: power over peoples actions, thoughts, and
feelings. If the ability to manipulate on a massive scale were as
refined as it is in 1984
or Brave
New World,
it would surely be used to the same extent. While this point has not
yet been reached, a hard look at history shows that we are closer
than we might like to admit. Guard your freedom well, what of it you
have left. With the ability to manipulate how you think and feel,
there is less freedom left than you might think.
"Rhetoric."
DIPLO | Online Courses
in Diplomacy | Research on Contemporary Diplomacy | Internet
Governance. Web. 15
Apr. 2010.
Hertzberg,
Hendrik. "Lies." The
New Yorker. The New
Yorker, 21 Sept. 2009. Web. 15 Apr. 2010.
Skenazy,
Lenore. "Is It Just Me: Let's Stop Scaring Our Kids."
Readers Digest
Oct. 2008. Readers Digest. Web. 19 Apr. 2010.
