Thus far I have touched on the Trivium and Teachability.
Next, I need to draw your attention to something that people dismiss and acknowledge at the same time. The principle of controlling human perceptions. This will be a
long, but necessary one.
I know that many have heard stories of “mind control”, “MKUltra”, and many nefarious
schemes. I would ask you to set this aside for the moment and consider advertising and
smoking. Simple and considered benign, advertising is the ideal place to start when looking at how information is shaped, why it is shaped, and methods used to achieve a predetermined outcome.
Edward Bernays (1891-1995) was known as “the father of public relations”. The nephew
Sigmund Freud. he authored may books, most notably;
Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923),
Propaganda (1928),
Public Relations (1945), and
The Engineering of Consent (1955).
Research him on your own, he was a fascinating human being. In 1929 he was hired by the American Tobacco Company to help eliminate the social taboo against women smoking. I am quoting now from the Wikipedia article on this;
“In 1929 Bernays decided to pay women to smoke their “torches of freedom” as they walked in the Easter Sunday Parade in New York. This was a shock because until that time, women were only permitted to smoke in certain places such as in the privacy of their own homes. He was very careful when picking women to march because “while they should be good looking, they should not look too model-y” and he hired his own
photographers to make sure that good pictures were taken and then published around the
world.
Feminist Ruth Hale also called for women to join in the march saying, “Women! Light
another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!” Once the footage was released, the
campaign was being talked about everywhere, the women’s walk was seen as a protest for equality and sparked discussion throughout the nation and is still known today. The targeting of women in tobacco advertising led to higher rates of smoking among women.”
A couple of things come out of this. Bernays used the movement towards emancipation of
women as an emotional hook, paid women to smoke at the parade and publicised this. It is a simple, and brilliant, example of using emotional manipulation to achieve a desired outcome.
So why spell all of this out? Because as you research, in the Grammar and Logic steps of the Trivium, you will discover an urge to ignore certain sources of information. Some of your sources will actively encourage you to ignore others. You need to be aware that manipulation of information exists and learn to recognise it.
Its purpose, I would argue, is to limit what people may come to understand.
