The Word
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Originally, I drafted this article with a preface about the story Michael Hastings recently broke on BuzzFeed about an amendment to the latest defense authorization bill that would “legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences.” However, as I worked on it this morning, our very own poet laureate and research librarian extraordinaire Elaine Magliaro cut me off at the pass with her own excellent article on the subject. So instead of repeating the points she makes which illustrate why understanding propaganda is important, I will refer you to her post “How about Some Government Propaganda for the People Paid for by the People Being Propagandized?”
Now that the kid gloves have come off regarding the governmental efforts to control your mind by controlling both your information and how you receive it, let’s discuss the nature of propaganda. Now more than ever, it is important to know the basics of how propaganda works. Since words are the basic building block of the English language, we’ll start with asking what is propaganda, look at some general history of the practice, consider the importance of meaning of words, the ideas of connotation and denotation, and the process of selecting “value loaded” words.
What is propaganda? Webster’s defines the word as follows:
propaganda \ˌprä-pə-ˈgan-də, ˌprō-\, n.,
1 capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions (ed. note: Not relevant, but interesting.)
2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect
But that’s not exactly what people feel when they hear the word, is it? Why do most people have a negative reaction to the word “propaganda”? After all, by definition, “propaganda” is much like the verb “to persuade” in meaning.
persuade \pər-ˈswād\, v., v.t.,
1: to move by argument, entreaty, or expostulation to a belief, position, or course of action
2: to plead with : urge
Etymologically speaking, the word “propaganda” is fairly new as a political science term. “Propaganda” didn’t come into common use as a political science term until World War I. Even then it was not a pejorative in use like it is today. The word originated (some would say unsurprisingly so) as shorthand referring to the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregatio de Propaganda Fide or the “congregation for propagating the faith”. This committee of cardinals was established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV to supervise foreign missions. The word “propaganda” is the feminine gerund of the Italian verb “propagando” which in turn is derived from the Latin verb prōpāgō, meaning “to propagate”.
propagate \ˈprä-pə-ˌgāt\, v., v.t.,
3a : to cause to spread out and affect a greater number or greater area : extend b : to foster growing knowledge of, familiarity with, or acceptance of (as an idea or belief) : publicize c : to transmit (as sound or light) through a medium
Clearly the largest distinction between persuasion and propaganda is that propaganda is a form of large scale persuasion. Persuasion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Changing someone’s mind is a better tactic than violence. Persuasion is at the heart of society’s pillar and replacement for self-help justice and dispute resolution, the adversarial court system. Persuasion is an alternative to coercion.
So what is propaganda? It’s a tool to change people’s minds. Like any tool, it is capable of beneficial use and horrific misuse. This makes understanding how the tool works critical if you want to recognize (and possibly work to prevent) its misuse.
If that is the case the word originally had no pejorative use, then why do most people have an automatic negative reaction to the word “propaganda”? This brings us to the ideas of connotation and denotation. Plainly put, denotation is a direct specific meaning; the literal meaning of a word and nothing more. Connotation is a “something” suggested by a word or thing; an implied meaning. I suggest the negative connotation for the word “propaganda” comes from both the negative denotation built in to the word itself (part of the definition is “for the purpose of helping or injuring” and injury carries the negative notion of harm to self and/or others) and the recent historical use of propaganda to dastardly ends culminating to create an implied negative meaning beyond the definition. The denotation of a word is not the direct province of the propagandist. They have to know what the words actually mean, but that is of limited value to them. The edge of the propagandist’s knife so to speak lies in the connotation of words. More on that topic as we move along. In the 20th Century, we have seen what truly evil injury propaganda is capable of inflicting on a society. To know how we got to today, it is important to have a bit of historical perspective.
Historically, the idea of propaganda has been around as long as there have been society and governments. For example, in ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh Ramses II claimed a great victory over the Hittites in the Battles of Kadesh (possibly the largest chariot battle in history). The two most common forms of Egyptian records of the battles are known as “The Poem” and “The Bulletin”. Both are found carved into multiple sites in Egypt, all built or expanded upon by Ramses II – one of the greatest builders of ancient Egypt. “The Bulletin” is found on seven different temples or monuments and eight total sites have “The Poem”. When you add numerous other references on papyrus and in tangentially related carvings, this makes the Battles of Kadesh one of the best recorded battles of antiquity. The tale told is of an overwhelming victory for Ramses II and Egypt.
There’s only one problem with that depiction.
It is most certainly a lie at worst and an exaggeration at best.
Hittite records, although not as numerous, all tell the tale of a Hittite victory. Archaeological evidence is inconclusive. One of the two parties is lying and possibly both. Most modern historians have come to the conclusion that the battle likely ended in a draw. Given that, why did Ramses II carve his non-existent victory into stone? Propaganda is the answer. Ramses II wanted the reputation as a strong military leader even if the reality wasn’t so glorious. So he fluffed the details and spread the word that “Ramses II Kicks Ass!” Unless you were at the Battles of Kadesh, who were you to argue with a Living God? Then realizing that his chances for immediate military exploits were practically nil, Ramses II did what any respectable Pharaoh would do and a secondary exercise in propaganda: he returned to the building spree he started as a young man. Some would say the greatest building spree in the history of the ancient Egypt. Just like the Romans after him, Ramses knew that impressive buildings were a kind of psychological warfare – non-verbal propaganda geared at projecting the power of the throne to the masses, but more on this at a later date. The focus here is language and the basics of propaganda.
In the beginning, there was the word. Those with the word were limited. If they could not speak directly, they were limited by how many manual physical copies they could get out to the masses and how many of the masses could read. Then came the printing press in the 15th Century. When Guttenberg invented it, one of the early adopters of the technology was the Holy Roman Empire. By the end of the Renaissance, book making was industrialized to the point that printer/binders could produce between three and four thousand pages per day: a hundred fold increase in production compared to the most prolific of scribes. Books and written material went from rare treasures to common items. As knowledge became democratized, the use of printed propaganda grew in unison: public notices, political flyers and proto-newspapers became cheap and abundant.
The 20th Century was in some ways a Golden Age for deploying propaganda. Unlike any previous age, the 20th Century was the age of mass communications. Industrial mass printing of newspapers, radio, television, telephones and the Internet radically changed the way humans communicate. The word became King and the picture became Queen. Even illiteracy wasn’t the barrier it had posed to the ancient world as the spoken word supplemented the written and the truism that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is a truism for a reason. Even physical handicap was less of a barrier to getting the message out as those blind to the printed word and picture and deaf to the spoken word now had the channel of communication created by the 19th Century invention of Braille. As propaganda is large scale persuasion, mass media provided a natural accelerant. What had previously been a candle of propaganda became a bonfire necessarily becoming a political science term in common usage. The 20th Century saw probably the most devastating use of propaganda to date on any population. Propaganda was instrumental to both the Nazi war effort and their social engineering that allowed them to industrially murder six million Jews, Roma, homosexuals and handicapped. Propaganda was key to the crimes of the Khemer Rouge. Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Castro’s rise to power in Cuba. The wrongful, misguided and likely illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq. These are a few of many examples where propaganda has been used to either garner public support for ethically wrong actions by government or obfuscate the truth to aid the guilty from being brought to justice. This point will be addressed further in a later column, but it goes a long way to explaining how a word of neutral value became a word of negative value due to recent history.
We are still left with the word. As far as the word “propaganda” proper, we know what it means. We know where it comes from. We know the goal of propaganda in general. That leaves us with word choice and the idea of “value loaded” word and how it relates to propaganda. What are words loaded with? They are loaded with implication. This is why connotation is the edge of the propagandist’s knife. Word choice is critical. As I noted earlier, the denotation of a word is not the direct province of the propagandist. The edge of the propagandist’s knife so to speak lies in the connotation of words. However, knowing the proper denotation of words – i.e. having a large vocabulary – puts one at a tactical advantage against the propagandist. If one knows the actual meaning of words, it becomes more difficult for the propagandist to use connotation against you.
For example, consider the use of media outlets like NPR that made a public and conscious decision to refrain from reporting on “torture” – a word with extremely negative denotation and connotation – and instead choosing to use the euphemistic language “enhanced interrogation”. Everyone with a conscience thinks torture is a bad thing and torturers are ethically abhorrent people. It’s not only a Federal crime, cruel and unusual punishment is specifically barred by the 8th Amendment of the Constitution. The word choice here is designed to clearly shift public attitudes from “those guys need to be prosecuted as criminals” to “maybe they aren’t so bad after all”. NPR (aided by the Bush Administration no doubt) chose words with a neutral/positive value load compared to the word “torture”. Connotation plays to your emotional response over your rational response. When the word choice becomes more subtle, the damage of connotations can be even more insidious. Compare:
- war – limited police action
- conquest – liberation
- famine – widespread hunger
- pestilence – outbreak
- death – casualties
Be aware and suspicious of word choice, certainly. Especially when dealing with adjectives as they have by their nature a great capacity to carry connotation. However, it is equally important to consider the speaker. When evaluating something you suspect is propaganda, ask these questions:
- Who is the speaker?
- What does the speaker want from me?
- What advantage does the speaker gain from my agreement or lose from my disagreement? And vice-versa?
- Does the speaker represent other interests that may not be obvious?
- Why is the speaker giving this message now?
What is your first line of defense against propaganda?
Be aware of the meaning and choice of words. To that end, work to strengthen your vocabulary. Buy a “Word A Day” calender or download an app for your phone, use a website or download a tickler program for your computer.
Always question the message and the messenger as well as any who may have sent the messenger. Practice reading with emotional detachment and a critical eye to not only what is said, but how it is said and by whom.
Keep in mind that propaganda is a tool. It is inherently neutral. The good or evil is found in the intent of the speaker and their desired actions and/or reactions on your part.
What is your first line of defense against propaganda? You are. And that is my unhidden message to you: Wake up. Civilization calls. The world is what we make it.
The next article in this series will address methodology, strategy and tactics in deploying propaganda.
~submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
The Propaganda Series;
Propaganda 105: How to Spot a Liar
Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Streisand Effect and the Political Question
Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Sound of Silence
Propaganda 104: Magica Verba Est Scientia Et Ars Es
Propaganda 103: The Word Changes, The Word Remains The Same
Propaganda 102 Supplemental: Holly Would “Zero Dark Thirty”
Propaganda 102: Holly Would and the Power of Images
Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Child’s Play
Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Build It And They Will Come (Around)
Related articles of interest;
I brough up Cambodia (and Cuba, and the U2, and the Manhattan Project) to illustrate that “national security” is a form of propaganda aimed at US citizens with the goal of precluding oversight, and I point out that our “enemies” almost always know what’s being kept from us (i.e., the Cambodians knew full well that they were being bombed by us even thoughw e didn’t).
Michael Murray seems to understand exactly why I brought this up, and that as he said, sometimes silence is the most effect form of propaganda.
KarlVienna artist and anti-Journalist, Karl Kraus,Dredd, I can’t resist, and no, I will not read your contribution. Last time I followed your link for one reason only, I by now respond viscerally to Bernay’s name in your or similar contexts. I didn’t want to prejudge. After I read what you published, I didn’t know were to start. Full discovery, among other things I am a trained PR adviser.
Big thank you to Gene Howington to do it for me today. It feels we share the love for words. Beyond that you solved my question. Ever heard of Karl Vienna artist and anti-journalist Karl Kraus, he struggled with media, somehow it feels, he saw it all coming. Brilliant, not that other’s here are less noteworthy.
Mike Spindell 1, May 20, 2012 at 11:43 pm
Gene,
Still on the Kindle after watching my favorote shows on AMC. It’s true also that while I know my stuff, OS has me beat. I do want to comment though on MM’s thought that better educated, more intelligent people are less susceptable to propaganda. Michael many of your comments are not only quite perceptive, but also very informative. I think this one missed the mark. On the emotional level at which effective propaganda is aimed we humans are receptive to that which flatters us, moves us and/or seems in tune with our self interests. I’ve known many very intelligent and well educated Right Wingers who have bought the Kool-Aid because it hit them on all three of the emotional points I’ve raised. We all like to think ourselves as immune from propaganda, but we aren’t. Admitting our lack of immunity is a good first step towards immunization.
========================================
Specifically:
The scholar, professor, author, and activist Noam Chomsky says this:
(Discussion with Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers). The powers that be as explained by Bernays, designed much of the institutionalization of propaganda through educational systems over time.
The NAZI propaganda ministers are probably the most notorious propagandists of the 20th century, in British & American minds at least.
It is little known that the NAZI propagandists idolized the premiere propagandist of the 20th Century, Edward L. Bernays, the nephew and follower of Sigmund Freud.
He was an American who helped push WW I on the U.S. public, and who later wrote the book “Propaganda“:
(The Ways of Bernays). Bernays named his book “Propaganda” because, as Gene H pointed out, he was one of those who felt that propaganda is good for the public.
He invented, among a zillion other things, the notion of the press conference, an excellent propaganda device.
Bernays instilled in both American government, and American business, the practice of deceiving the public “for their own good”:
(ibid, quoting Chomsky). The exercise for one who does not want to have propaganda deep within, is to extract the deceit over time.
Denial, based on the parent / child subconscious relationship to government which militates against thinking that the superior would do anything wrong to the inferior, is the first layer of the onion that must go.
MM,
Oooo. I see your bag of pomposity was again opened up while I composed a response to your earlier drivel. Sorry! I know as much about the English language as anyone and more than most – including you – so your attempts to impugn me directly (after posing more straw men) has absolutely no effect at all. That is, however, another favorite tactic of the propagandist.
You should really stick to writing your bad poetry.
I’ll write my own pieces for this blog.
Good luck on that poetry thing.
You’re going to need it.
MM,
Thank you for once again illustrating that you have a great love of straw men as well as some sort of reading comprehension problem.
Did you experience brain lock when you read the word “Cambodia”? It was followed by the words “Pol Pot” and “Khmer Rouge”, not “covert American carpet bombing”. This marks the second time you have put words in my mouth that were not mine. Now as then, I don’t suffer that kind of foolishness.
What I was referring to was the Khmer tactic of demonizing the educated in their campaign to institute Pol Pot’s retrograde polices. Polices that went so far as to execute those who looked like they were an intellectual by committing the heinous crime of needing to wear glasses. I did not mention American action in Cambodia at all.
Commentator Indigo Jones did mention American action in Cambodia in passing and in proper context: namely U.S. propaganda that prevented most Americans from even being aware of those operations until well afterward. I am not, however, Indigo Jones. Coincidentally, I do admire his avatar.
As to what you think Americans will learn or not learn from this and forthcoming exercises in propaganda education? That is your opinion and you are entitled to it. That has no impact whatsoever on my plans.
I will say this: your “personal experience” with propaganda may or may not have immunized you from its effects, but it has apparently made you love the sound of your own voice and seemingly to the exclusion of all others since you insist on relying on your misrepresentations of others positions.
As you say, sometimes silence can be a form of propaganda, but that isn’t the same thing as saying more with less. What is funny is that using straw men is indeed a favorite tactic among propagandists and will be discussed at a later date. I guess that personal experience of yours has also demonstrated that old habits die hard for some.
I just couldn’t let this one pass, Gene:
“Secondly, try telling the well-educated Cambodians that were around before Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge that they “need not worry about” propaganda. Oh, that’s right. Them being dead and all on the Killing Fields sure puts a damper on their response time.”
As you would know if you knew anything about America’s devastation of Cambodia — which you don’t — the savage American carpet bombing over many years decimated so much of the adult population of Cambodia that armies of aimless, unguided youth emerged from their battered, impoverished countryside to terrorize what little remained of their society. A real-life Lord of the Flies, courtesy of the American Air Force. I saw a whole lot of that right next door in South Vietnam.
Those well-educated Americans who could separate reality from propaganda — like Five Deferment Dick Cheney and most middle-class kids of my generation — managed to easily avoid conscription or any other nuisance interruption of their “other priorities” in life. My comments about the well-educated pertained to them, which you would have understood had you any relevant experience in these matters. You have certainly swallowed somebody’s propaganda, which fact, I suggest, should cause you to revisit your subject for clues as to how this could have happened.
Those of us Americans who could not avoid conscription, or prison, or exile except by enlisting in the military when otherwise we would never have done so, just had to make the best of things. We never believed any trumped-up propaganda about Vietnamese, Cambodians, or Laotians, but we still had to somehow survive the madness inflicted upon us by our own government and heavily propagandized fellow citizens. My comments about the immunity to propaganda on the part of well-placed and well-educated Americans stem from my own personal experience at their self-interested hands. I know from whence I speak, and your clumsy attempts to make it sound like the American government somehow aimed its propaganda at well-educated Cambodians instead of sub-educated Americans betrays your infirm hold on a history you missed in more ways than one.
Better stick to grappling with denotation and connotation. You have enough trouble with those linguistic concepts — although a close reading of S. I. Hayakawa’s Language in Thought and Action — particularly Chapter Four: “Contexts” — should help clear things up for you. Pay particular attention to the cartoon illustrations of “pointing at” versus “thinking something about.” Good luck with your research into this important, but not-widely understood topic.
As promised (or threatened):
Certain comments above regarding America’s (secret to Americans) bombing of Cambodia (over a period of eleven years), although a digression from the topic of how to analyze linguistic propaganda, do provide an opportunity to introduce another source of immunity from propaganda: namely, personal experience with the subject matter. I, for one, never believed a single thing that the American government ever said about Cambodia once newspaper reports forced President Nixon to finally admit to Americans what most Cambodians — and a great many Americans serving in Vietnam — already knew: namely, that America had blasted the living shit out of that poor country for nearly eleven years, decimating the adult population and leaving behind a Lord-of-the-Flies generation of enraged orphan teenagers — all without bothering to inform the American Congress or people. Complete silence, in other words, can sometimes constitute the most effective form of propaganda imaginable. As American government propagandists figure it: What Americans don’t know won’t hurt many American officials, and if what Americans don’t know hurts millions of foreigners, well, who cares?
I served in South Vietnam for a period of eighteen months from July of 1970 to January of 1972, over a year of that time spent as an interpreter/translator at a remote ATSB on the banks of a dirty brown river surrounded by defoliated jungle and craters still visible from devastating B-52 bombing runs years before. Early in my tour at Solid Anchor, I had to translate during a base transfer of command from us Americans to the South Vietnamese navy. While I spoke words unnecessary in either language, our American commander showed the new Vietnamese commander film of what the area had looked like before the Tet Offensive of early 1968 — when we classified the local villagers (a mix of Vietnamese and Cambodians) as “friendly” — and what the same area looked like afterwards — when we changed our classification of the identical villagers to “hostile.” The place looked like the surface of the moon, and just as uninhabitable. So I realize perfectly well what a simple substitution of one word for another — in English aimed at Americans — can mean to the unlucky inhabitants of some far-away place that Americans back home — where the official propaganda has its principal target — have never visited or even thought about.
When I finally returned home from Vietnam in early 1972, however, I found an American population still mesmerized by one enormous lie after another — aimed at them in the form of moving pictures accompanied by English-language soundtracks. Just like today. Relatively few Americans actually served in Vietnam or Cambodia and even fewer serve in the U.S. military today, so personal inexperience with war — like declining literacy rates — consigns those persons immune-by-experience to even fewer numbers than those educated to simply analyze defective, shit-smelling propaganda from the get-go. It really should not have required personal experience in-or-near Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos or Iraq for Americans to realize that no Cambodians, Vietnamese, Laotians, or Iraqis had ever bombed America, and that therefore no American ever had any reason to bomb Cambodians, Vietnamese, Laotians, or Iraqis. Yet nothing even as simple and logical as this reasonable proposition ever penetrated the heavily propagandized American people. Not forty years ago. Not today.
I introduce this subject of personal-experience-with-the-subject-matter as an antidote to propaganda not because I think many Americans will want to experience war just so that they will understand its hideous reality and therefore want nothing to do with it, but just as a passing thought — a true one, but not demographically significant. Experience with war has made me its obdurate and enduring enemy, and no amount of government propaganda, in any form whatsoever, can ever make me support it for one more instant of what little time remains to me on this earth. Now, back to those who, lacking experience in these matters, must rely for their sanity on education in the methods of linguistic analysis and simple common sense.
Gene H,
Thank you for your response. I will attempt to further clarify what I thought I had made perfectly clear: a point which you implicitly acknowledge when you propose that people (i.e, Americans) further educate themselves on the nature of linguistic propaganda (aimed at them in English) so that these Americans might achieve some immunity from propaganda’s insidious blandishments. I thought that I made it perfectly clear that persons so educated would possess a healthy degree of immunity to propaganda such as you claim to wish for them — except that your response indicates that you find that prospect of immunity “utter nonsense.” I think that you need to make up your mind whether or not you consider a literate education (in English) worth the effort (for Americans). Either you do or you don’t. I, for one, do.
I have no idea where your references to Cambodia come from, and normally I would simply ignore this attempted digression from the topic of language and propaganda. After all, Americans and Cambodians speak mutually unintelligible languages and, therefore, whatever propaganda the Cambodians have to put up with from their own government (in Cambodian) concerns them and not English-speaking Americans who have more than enough shit on their own plates, so to speak. Somehow, you seem to have confused propaganda, or the linguistic manipulation of mass opinion, with B-52 saturation bombing campaigns, which aim to eliminate human populations, not simply persuade them to voluntarily alter their behavior through carefully crafted exposure to visual and auditory language. Here I think you have succumbed to the Fallacy of Confusing Cause and Effect. From T. Edward Damer’s Attacking Faulty Reasoning: a guide to fallacy-free arguments:
Confusing propaganda (a cause) with saturation bombing (one effect of propaganda) does not help us analyze propaganda itself, especially since the propaganda (the cause) concerns Americans while the saturation bombing (one effect of propaganda aimed at Americans) concerns Cambodians.
As Voltaire said: “Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities,” and so, yes, American believers in absurd American propaganda rather often cause the deaths and displacement of millions of foreigners without an ounce of regret or remorse, just as the Nazi Germans and Imperial Japanese did seventy years ago. However, if inoculating Americans against their own government’s propaganda will not serve to keep Americans from acting like homicidal maniacs, then nothing else — short of the World eliminating Americans first — will do so either. Americans cannot cure the world of all the world’s problems, certainly not with America’s behemoth, blundering military. Nonetheless, Americans could — if they so desired — cure themselves of succumbing blindly to their own government’s propaganda, thereby saving the World from its unnecessary and unrequested America Problem.
Finally, I repeat that Americans will not likely find many useful lessons about how to analyze English-language propaganda in the (largely secret from Americans) bombing of Cambodia. However, your comments about America’s (ostensibly “covert”) bombing of Cambodia do raise another issue in regard to developing an immunity to propaganda: namely, personal experience with the subject matter. That discussion, though, will have to come later.
Gene,
A series!! I’m hooked already.
Please don’t forget Shakespeare’s history plays as tools for political propaganda and how easily these plays have been adapted to fit the propaganda needs of most any time. ( the hero king and the ultimate villain .. Richard III, of course, as a way of propping up the Tudors and Henry V down through history being set and adapted to fit various propaganda needs)
Mike, it does not really matter if you think you are immune or not. No one is completely free of suggestibility. No one. Suggestions can be verbal or non-verbal. I have had a lot of fun with the handshake technique which can leave the subject (or victim if you prefer) with a frozen catatonic arm, and not say a word to them other than to ask their name or just say hello.
About 20% of the general population are really suggestible on formal suggestibility tests. About 20% on the other end of the spectrum are very difficult to hypnotize, and a few are so guarded it is a waste of time to try and work with them. Being a good subject has nothing to do with political persuasion, age, IQ or education. One of my best subjects is a lawyer who got all the way to doing his dissertation in psychology when he decided to switch majors and go to law school instead. He is a former F-4 Phantom fighter pilot. Despite all that, he is an excellent hypnotic subject for demonstrations in class.
OS, when I was in college, we used to be able to earn money by participating in psych experiments, and it could be from $2 to $5, which was pretty good then, when I made 75 cents an hour in the snack-bar. So I showed up for a great experiment paying $5 but they ruled me out because they gave everyone a five-minute test to see if we could be hypnotized and I failed it! Never forgot that, still wish I had that $5.
But years later, my mother was one of the first people in Columbia Presbyterian in NY to get into a cancer study of adjunct chemotherapy and there she was, early chemo, quite barbaric, and she had already had a leg amputated and was having phantom pain. None of the highly qualified staff could get anything done that would work for either the phantom pain or side effects of chemo and the thing was hellish. I started pestering folks and insisted on a psych consult. In that time period, they believed psychiatrists were only there to treat schizophrenics. Finally, however, I made some headway and although I can’t remember how, I got a psychiatrist in there who was board certified not just in psychiatry but also in anesthesia!
He taught her self-hypnotism in three lessons! And it worked! I was a fan! and years later, I realized that it’s just what we do, and we can all do it, but we can’t all do it the same. I actually have never gone back to try to learn self-hypnotism, maybe because nobody will give me $5 to do it.
Hypnotism by someone else, though — there’s the rub!
Gene, ask away. I have been a student of Milton Erickson for a long time and have all his works, including some cassette tapes of him doing lectures and demonstrations.
OS,
As I work on the next part(s) of the series, I may be contacting both you and Mike offline for your professionally informed feedback. I’ll look in to Erickson though. His work is unfamiliar.
Gene,
Anyone who wants to truly understand the power of indirect suggestion should become familiar with the work of Milton Erickson. He revived hypnosis as a means of therapy after it fell dormant for a long time. Freud was a lousy hypnotist, and when he could not get it to work for him, he pronounced it as being useless. That left hypnosis an open field for quacks and entertainers for decades until Erickson came along. He spent a lifetime analyzing and using indirect suggestion. He was a master storyteller, but his stories always had a direction with many embedded suggestions in them. His skill would make the most sophisticated ad writer green with envy.
This is powerful stuff and psychologically explosive in the hands of the unethical.
A simple example of an indirect suggestion could be a gesture as simple as making a comment at the dinner table that I do not see the salt. You would pick up the salt shaker and hand it to me just as if I asked you directly to pass the salt.
To the other commentators,
Thank you for your kind words and I hope you find this series to be of utility. As with all the guest bloggers, one lives to be of service.
P.S. As always, I look forward to hearing your Gestalt informed further thoughts on this matter once you are away from the Kindle, Mike.
Gene,
Still on the Kindle after watching my favorote shows on AMC. It’s true also that while I know my stuff, OS has me beat. I do want to comment though on MM’s thought that better educated, more intelligent people are less susceptable to propaganda. Michael many of your comments are not only quite perceptive, but also very informative. I think this one missed the mark. On the emotional level at which effective propaganda is aimed we humans are receptive to that which flatters us, moves us and/or seems in tune with our self interests. I’ve known many very intelligent and well educated Right Wingers who have bought the Kool-Aid because it hit them on all three of the emotional points I’ve raised. We all like to think ourselves as immune from propaganda, but we aren’t. Admitting our lack of immunity is a good first step towards immunization.
MM,
“Effective propaganda depends far more on carefully crafted imagery and tone of voice than on the analysis of spoken or written words in relation to each other and to the real world — unfortunately.”
A topic to be addressed at a later date.
“Of course, propaganda aimed at a literate audience of readers requires a much more sophisticated understanding of language — especially rhetoric — but since that audience already knows how to ignore propaganda and/or cynically fashion it for the manipulation of others, the well-educated need not worry about it other than as a means of personal and professional aggrandizement.”
Really. Education helps certainly, hence the admonishment to start the inoculation to propaganda by educating one’s self on the rudiments of language starting with vocabulary. However, the assertion that “the well-educated need not worry about it other than as a means of personal and professional aggrandizement” is utter nonsense.
Firstly, it is a rare individual who is perfectly immune to suggestion. Almost everyone has a blind or weak spot, be it a form of message, a specific set of emotional and/or rational appeals or a preference for a messenger. Perfect immunity is a rare gift. It exists. Education helps. Immunity still remains a black pearl. In my experience, there are certain personality types that are naturally more resistant to suggestion than others. Innate intelligence and a large knowledge base are important, but no less important than an inquisitive, slightly rebellious and skeptical nature (perhaps even cut with a dash of cynicism). However, that being said, I know very well educated people – even some holders of graduate degrees – who are enormously susceptible to suggestion because they posses none of these other ancillary character traits. Well-educated is only a part of the puzzle.
Secondly, try telling the well-educated Cambodians that were around before Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge that they “need not worry about” propaganda. Oh, that’s right. Them being dead and all on the Killing Fields sure puts a damper on their response time. The same can be said of the well educated Jews in pre-WWII Germany or the Americans of Japanese descent wrongfully sent to camps in that war. Propaganda need not be aimed directly for your consumption to be aimed squarely at your heart. When others are manipulating others, it should be a concern of everyone concerned about the health and well being of a society so that manipulation is not played to bad ends – especially in a democracy. Like any potential problem, the key to remedy, mitigation or counterstrike lies in being able to perceive the full nature of the issue, assess the level of threat and formulating an appropriate strategic and/or tactical response.
the only problem is one persons propaganda is another persons public service announcement.
From the opening two paragraphs of Democracy Incorporated, Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, by Sheldon S. Wolin:
Effective propaganda depends far more on carefully crafted imagery and tone of voice than on the analysis of spoken or written words in relation to each other and to the real world — unfortunately. Of course, propaganda aimed at a literate audience of readers requires a much more sophisticated understanding of language — especially rhetoric — but since that audience already knows how to ignore propaganda and/or cynically fashion it for the manipulation of others, the well-educated need not worry about it other than as a means of personal and professional aggrandizement.