New Pantheon (07) — Propaganda
The siren of our culture.
[Letter #022]
Good morning, son.
We are continuing with our appointments for you and your mother, and you both seem to be doing well. I’m doing my best to make sure that she gets all of the nutrients that she needs in addition to the occasional sugar she indulges in. What can I say though? She’s pregnant. Denying a pregnant woman anything is nigh impossible as it is. In this case, the pregnant woman happens to be your mother, so I’m already at a disadvantage in that regard.
Considering the direction the world is taking though, I honestly don’t mind spoiling her (and, by proxy, you) a little. It’s probable that I won’t be able to do so nearly to the same degree years from now, so I figure we should enjoy it while we have it. No sense in asceticism these days. I read recently that prices for coffee are set to skyrocket, so add that to the list that includes chocolate, cereal grains, beef, and — well, pretty much everything. Your mother does well enough at work that we will be able to afford food for a bit longer than an average American, but we’re by no means wealthy. Just in case, I’ve been trying to learn which native plants around here (usually just called “weeds”) are edible. Never know when that might be handy.
You know why folks call them “weeds” though? Technically, a weed is just a plant that is growing in a place where a human doesn’t want it to grow. That’s the entirety of that definition. It has a lot of presumptions built into it, doesn’t it? The idea that plants should only grow where we fire apes give our permission is pretty laughable, but there’s also the negative connotation that weeds are unwanted. I think your mother would prefer I just mowed them and called it good, but I sorta think that just comes from programming by our culture. She herself doesn’t mind the foliage as much as she thinks the neighbors will look poorly on our yard, and that social pressure is a rather pervasive one, particularly in the suburbs.
Implicit within the term “weed” is the idea that we’re the ones who get to judge where things grow and how large they get to be. It’s a particularly arrogant presumption, actually, but it’s right in line with our other presumptions about life, the universe, and everything. We take it as a human right that all the land out there is available for us to occupy, that all of the resources that we’re able to extract are freely available to us to exploit, that the loss of different species of life forms, while regrettable, is ultimately an acceptable price for the “development” of our civilization. It’s all very human-centric. That would be fine if, you know, humans actually were at the center of everything.
Where does this arrogance, this delusion, come from? Why would we think that we could rule the whole world? Who do we think we are to judge where and how plants can grow? What gives us the right to believe that we could control every aspect of every global system, to the point that people are seriously considering geoengineering today? There exists one special phenomenon that largely accounts for why we believe everything that we do in our modern society. That would be the subject of my letter today, and “that” would be a “she,” because I envision her power as that of a goddess. Her name is Propaganda, and she’s one of the most powerful deities in the pantheon. I know I say that about all of them, but she really is. Probably top three.
The daughter of the god-currently-known-as Capital, granddaughter of Money, and great granddaughter of Hierarchy, Propaganda is almost as old as her ancestors. If Hierarchy came to exist roughly around 10,000 years ago, then Propaganda would have only been a few hundred years later, at the most. Her role, and thus her supernatural power, is to control the thoughts and behaviors of humans. Her power is absolute, and no human has ever lived who has been immune to her effects. If a human has encountered her, then that human has been affected. There are levels of susceptibility, naturally, but no one — absolutely no human — is able to resist Propaganda indefinitely.
Her message is spread through all of the usual channels: television, radio, print media, the internet, billboards, buses, park benches, notification board postings, political campaigns, protest slogans, and pretty much any other source of information that obviously intends to persuade us. But, she’s had around ten millennia to practice her craft, so she’s also embedded so deeply into conventional thinking, colloquial phrases, cultural opinions and ideas, even age-old wisdom, that her message is conveyed in the overt as well as the covert.
Are diamonds, as an example, an expensive commodity? No, not really. They’re common as dirt in some parts of the world, but the diamond industry has long since fooled us into believing they were rare to command a higher price. Is the brand new TV show the next timeless classic? Probably not, as it’s inevitably going to just be a rehash of old plots and tropes with a spicy burst of computer-generated special effects.However, if Hollywood tells everyone repeatedly that it’s going to be the smash-hit event of the summer, then it will be. Is diversity in lawn grass plants a bad thing? Not at all, and in fact it’s probably a lot better for the insects and other critters that would like to live in that grass. But, the big box stores will certainly tell you that a uniform, monocrop carpet of fescue grass is what you really want. It’s all Propaganda.
Of course, her power goes far, far beyond just advertisement, although that is indeed one of her primary functions in our modern global economy. She’s also present in every national culture as well. For example, I recently read that an Iranian rapper is sentenced to execution because he was singing against the conventional directives of the nation’s elites. In this we see that there is a propagandistic influence of the status quo, and then there’s also the propagandistic message to the people of what happens to a person who violates that status quo. It’s a direct fulfillment of purpose of the gods who descend from Hierarchy: control by violence.
That’s the “why” of it — control. It’s the reason that Propaganda exists at all. Edward Bernays, the nephew of the renowned psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, literally wrote the book on Propaganda. Well, he wrote the first popular one in which she was called by that name. Bernays put it this way:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
This seems not too terribly devious yet, if one doesn’t think very hard about it, particularly if one believes in the values commonly associated with a “democratic society.” However, in the very next line, Bernays gives it away:
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
– Edward Bernays, Propaganda, pub. 1928 [emphasis mine]
And, that’s the sum of it. He spells this out in the very first paragraph of the first chapter. In order to establish control, the ruling powers are compelled to manipulate mass opinion and behavior. The true ruling power is not via some elected representative Governance (which is what is suggested by his use of “democratic society”), but rather through an “invisible government” that is largely controlled by the elites (which is what is actually meant by that verbiage). This happens in order to produce a “smoothly functioning society,” by which Bernays really just means a population that won’t cause too many headaches. For the elites to perpetuate their control, the people “must cooperate” in the way directed by the authorities. They must have no choice in the matter. He goes on:
Whatever attitude one chooses toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons — a trifling fraction of our [national population] — who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
– Edward Bernays, Propaganda, pub. 1928 [emphasis mine]
I want to clarify something though. When Bernays uses phrases like “pull the wires” and “dominated by the small number,” he’s making it sound like there is a cabal of elites who are sitting in a room around a circular table, atop which a glowing orb casts an ominous under-lighting to each participant’s sinister visage. In truth, the closest we have to that in the non-comic-book-world is probably Davos, which is a meeting of billionaires at a fancy convention center in Switzerland where they (in)famously show off their wealth, strutting about like peacocks, and backbite one another while accomplishing virtually nothing of significance. The elites of the world are controlled by Propaganda just as much as everyone else, even if they are also often the ones who proliferate much of her message.
Another fantastic book on the subject is by Jacques Ellul. His work is also entitled Propaganda, as I suppose there’s good merit in being direct and without embellishment when discussing this topic especially. He explains that it’s the prerogative of any given government to tax its citizens, and indeed it would have to in order to establish monetary policies more broadly. This influence on the individual, at least in the modern era, prompts the individual to want their concerns taken into consideration by the ruling elite when legislating. “Taxation without representation” is, of course, the phrase that springs to mind, but Ellul is saying that it’s more than just representation. Citizens want to be heard directly. They want to express how they feel, what they want, and what they fear, and they want these concerns to be acknowledged by those in charge.
On a basis of simple logistics, this isn’t feasible. The state cannot in any reasonable manner take into consideration every single individual’s concerns, and even if it were to somehow attempt to do so, it is highly likely that those concerns would have shifted to something entirely different by the time the state was able to enact any policies based on those concerns. So, if the direction of the state cannot be guided by the will of the collective individuals that constitute the citizenry, it becomes necessary for the will of the people to be shaped and directed to accept and support the decisions of the state.
If you’re the leader, you tell the people what you want them to think. Convince them that they already support whatever you do. However, it’s not just the dictatorships that do this sort of thing. Ellul explains that any government, indeed every one of them, is compelled to engage in the worship of Propaganda.
A modern state, even if it be liberal, democratic, and humanist, finds itself objectively and sociologically in a situation in which it must use propaganda as a means of governing. It cannot do otherwise.
– Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, pub. 1962
There are those who will still choose to believe that only regimes such as the former USSR, the CCP in China, or some other equally “nefarious” governments engage in propaganda, and they will fully believe that the folks who live there must be just brainwashed masses. They aren’t like us free-thinking freedom lovers of free American freedom!
Even when yielding to suggestion, he decides ‘for himself’ and thinks himself free. In fact, the more he is subjected to propaganda, the freer he thinks he is.
– Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, pub. 1962
“Freedom ain’t free,” indeed. There are a great many citizens who enjoy exercising their freedom of speech to declare that what I’ve described above is “fake news.” (They would have used the word “propaganda” if they could spell it, but it’s not nice to make fun of folks, son.) They’ll say that their team, whether red or blue, doesn’t propagandize. It simply isn’t true, they’ll say. As a matter of fact, they’ll grow rather irate if you try to convince them that it is. They’ve absorbed the actual truth, you see, and they won’t be swayed by your nonsense — your “fake news.”
One can almost postulate that those who call every idea they do not share ‘propaganda,’ are themselves almost completely products of propaganda. Their refusal to examine and question ideas other than their own is characteristic of their condition. One might go further and say that propaganda tends to give a person a “religious” personality. His psychological life is organized around an irrational, external, and collective tenet. It provides a scale of values, rules of behavior, and a principle of social integration.
– Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, pub. 1962
Yeah, have I mentioned that Ellul published that book in 1962? If you’re keeping score at home, I’m writing this in 2024. What I’m trying to say is, “There’s one born every minute,” and no one is immune to it. They weren’t back then, and they certainly aren’t today.
Propaganda controls through systemic messaging (check to see whether I have a copy of Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows). There generally isn’t a centralized “Ministry of Propaganda” (not one that calls itself that anymore anyway — her temples generally refer to themselves as “public relations” firms), but even if you were to abolish such an administration, she wouldn’t be censored. Propaganda is necessary to make the system work as it’s intended, so in every step of the economic process, at every level of management, and at every location within the economy, the individual is typically going to make the decision that will best advance their own interests — the system will collectively pressure everyone to do so. Most often, that decision will involve prayers to Propaganda. Some examples:
In this business, we are all one big family.
Our market-leading firm focuses on ground-breaking innovation and cutting edge technologies to maximize shareholder return while ensuring quality service and superb customer satisfaction.
[And, a particularly egregious throwback example]
Slavery is actually good for black people because “never before has the black race of central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved.” [This was an actual 1837 quote from John C. Calhoun]
Noam Chomsky, back before he lost his mind and/or spine and embraced full-throated support for the political system (see, I told you — no one is immune), wrote a book called Manufacturing Consent wherein he describes the various “filters” that all information goes through before it gets released to the public. This usually has to do with media, and that was indeed what he was describing in the book, but it can apply to any propagandistic material. Each filter is an effect by the system to only communicate what is beneficial to the controlling parties, whether these are political leaders, advertisers, interest groups, or wealthy elite. Other information is filtered out and drowned by the deluge of approved messaging. Chomsky even demonstrated the systemic effect on the people actually doing the communicating during a televised interview on the BBC with a news figure named Andrew Marr:
Marr: “How can you know I’m self-censoring?”
Chomsky: “I’m not saying you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you say. But what I’m saying is if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”
– Noam Chomsky, interviewed on BBC’s The Big Idea, 1996
(Incidentally, Chomsky was almost never invited to interviews on any media platform. That is, at least, until he brought his rhetoric in line with the approved messaging.)
That’s how the system perpetuates itself. People are filtered out if they don’t toe the company line, so that when folks get to the point where they’re calling shots, they not only speak in the words and phrases of Propaganda, they will think only in them as well. To go counter to the needs of the system becomes literally unthinkable. If there was a person who gained a position of power who could and did think differently, they would be immediately replaced with someone “better suited” for the job. This is why “vote the bums out” is largely pointless. Same shit, different pile. The only potential candidates are those approved by the system.
Propaganda is the goddess who Ishmael describes as “Mother Culture.” Whereas I have yet to conceive of any supernatural offspring of hers, it’s absolutely certain that she’s the mother of lies, deception, and manipulation. I will say that it’s entirely possible to pray to Propaganda for good causes also, but that’s an infinitesimal fraction of her routine mind control. Ishmael, in the book, teaches us that Mother Culture came about after humans took up a specific type of agriculture (later in the series dubbed “totalitarian agriculture”) in order to justify the lifestyle and to make humans forget what life was like before the practice. It worked perfectly, of course, and we’ve dismissed that time period, the vast majority of our species’ existence, with labels like “precivilization dark ages” and “prehistory.”
Mother Culture, Ishmael teaches us, says that humans are the species for whom the entire universe was created. The universe was created so that our galaxy could exist, and our galaxy exists to hold our solar system, and our solar system formed to spin off our little planet. This planet emerged in order to give humans solid footing to stand on. The planet did not emerge so that jellyfish could eventually form from previous lifeforms. It did not emerge so that wolves or seals or alligators would evolve into being. No, Mother Culture says that humans have always been destined to control this planet, and the planet was made just for them. In fact, she says that humans actually evolved exactly to the point that we embody now and then stopped, perfection being achieved. Of course, you don’t hear this stuff verbatim, at least not these days, but the sentiment still exists throughout our whole civilization through Propaganda’s covert messaging.
This goddess gave us what Christopher Ryan describes as the “narrative of perpetual progress” in his book, Civilized to Death. It’s the myth that comes from the Hobbesian view that humanity lived as miserable wretches in the jungles, always fighting and running from everything in nature that wants us dead. “Red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson put it. The myth is that before civilization, people barely survived, always just barely staving off starvation and hurling stones and pointy sticks to keep the sabretooth tigers at bay. They reason that humans must have lived in a constant state of fear and panic, never knowing a moment of security. That this makes zero actual sense from an evolutionary perspective perturbs them not one bit.
It’s the lie that modern day hacks, priests of the Church of Propaganda, like Stephen Pinker and Jordan Peterson subscribe to when they go on about how the world is better today than it’s ever been for “us” before. How we have risen from the mud, clawed our way through the misery of slavery and of feudalism, beaten back diseases at every turn, embraced liberty and representative government, sent humans to the moon, harvested the power of the sun, and designed perfect recliner chairs for the living room. It’s about how we are destined to win the fight against climate change, end all wars forever, transition to clean and limitless energy, eliminate hunger worldwide, and eventually explore the depths of the universe as a space-faring species. The trajectory is always up, up, up!
It would be pretty excellent if the stories were true. That doesn’t stop people, including many of her priests, from believing that her stories actually are true. Hell, I concede that parts of them are. Humans did design a pretty cozy recliner chair after all.
But, the stories aren’t true. Or rather, the truth is occasionally employed but only in service of the intended public opinion. These “narratives” are formed to benefit those in power. I could go through each and every headline in the news today and point out where I see Propaganda, but we’d be at it all day, and I’m certain that I would still miss some. The best practice is to simply assume that everything that comes from the elites, the media, the business community — anyone with power — is either an outright falsification or, at the minimum, a tactically deployed partial truth only provided to perpetuate the power structure.
Modern humans have existed for 300,000 years, or thereabouts. We held closely to fairly reasonable populations as we spread across the planet. We found ways to live with our ecosystem, many different styles and forms of culture, and we managed to practice them sustainably. We know this because we’re still here. If we were unsustainable, we would have gone extinct during the millions of years of our evolution into our present form. But, we’re still here, so that proves that we had a good understanding of how to live on this planet.
At least, we did until one particular culture created this pantheon. Once they, our cultural ancestors, began to worship these gods, everything changed. Just one group of people in one part of the world took up this style of living, and they set off a chain of events that had never happened before. Had the lifestyle remained there where it was established, while the rest of the world carried on, it would simply be an interesting anomaly of human nature — an anomaly that other human cultures would probably see would not last forever. But, it couldn’t do that. This lifestyle required that it spread, conquer, dominate, exploit, and extract. This lifestyle required that every human live the same way, under the same hierarchical system, and contribute to this system.
Propaganda is the means by which this lifestyle, this culture, this civilization justifies itself. Her control, her message, is the justification. She is the message. Her role, compulsory and critical to the success of the system, is to command the thoughts and opinions of the people. The masses must have no thought that was not originally manufactured for them by the powerful. The powerful must always believe that it is their right to hold power, and they must do whatever is necessary in order to acquire and retain it. Civilization must believe that it is destined to claim, conquer, and control all of the land and resources of the planet, pursuing full ownership and the right to do whatever it wishes, regardless of ecological boundaries.
This message is what drives the system of totalitarian agriculture, of kings, of slaves, and of wars. Such a system requires infinite growth, an impossibility within constraints. Thus, the system requires justification for its objectives, and Propaganda provides it consistently. All of the credit for any development, invention, or work of art, she sings, is due to the presence and continuation of human civilization. Not to humanity, but to our “great” culture.
If enough people were to hear and take to heart the unvarnished truth behind the fabrications, if people were to learn that they don’t need to work themselves to the bone every single day to survive, if people understood that an oppressive economic system isn’t necessary for humans to create value, if people would only believe that we don’t need rulers to run our lives nor cops to beat us into submitting — well, the whole rickety complex might collapse. Of course, collapse is going to happen whether they hear the truth or die screaming about the shiny, destined future for humanity, and even the siren song of Propaganda can’t stop the inevitability of civilizational and/or climate collapse.
Either way, Our Lady of Perpetual Deception is the force who has kept this experiment in civilization on its course for the past ten millennia. She’s the Queen of Commercials, the Archon of Advertisement, the goddess of every marketing firm director and every charlatan sleazeball on the sales floor. She speaks through priests and imams, politicians and celebrities. She is in everything that humans of our culture have touched, as everything associated with us perpetuates our “right” to be here, to live this way, and to spread her message.
Without her, none of this would have worked. The people would have simply not gone along with it. They’d have seen the bullshit for what it was, and they’d have done away with the bullshitters. But, that’s not what happened, of course.
Anyway, I’ve looked at this letter for far too long. I’m going to end it there. Check out the reading that I mentioned above. Those folks know far more about this stuff than I do.
Just know that I love you very, very much. I’m proud of you, son.
Your father,
Papa Bear
[Author’s note: This is a series of letters that I intend to print to paper and deliver to my son, probably around the year 2040. You are more than welcome to read along. The links in the article are only for you, the reader, and will include citations, jokes, asides, and links to books or other items. If you happen to purchase anything through such a link, I’ll get a small commission. Every little bit helps, right?]
