And Now for Some Real Heretics, Part 11

Continued from Part 10:

I've always thought that Behaviorist psychology was evil and a complete crock. However, looking at it in terms of the issue of the Pre-Adamic Race versus the Adamic Race, it is still evil, but perhaps, for those without souls, it might work. Maybe Behaviorism is psychology for Organic Portals (OP's).

If you look at two of the founding fathers of twentieth century advertising and public relations, John B. Watson (1878-1958) and Edward Bernays (1891-1955), makes this clear. Watson was one of the founders of Behaviorism, the school of psychology that took the position that you can completely ignore any interiority of the subject and focus only on stimulus and response. That humans are machines that seek pleasure and avoid pain. According to one definition,

Behaviorism was a movement in psychology and philosophy that emphasized the outward behavioral aspects of thought and dismissed the inward experiential and sometimes the inner procedural aspects as well; a movement harking back to the methodological proposals of John B. Watson, who coined the name. Watson's 1912 manifesto proposed abandoning Introspectionist attempts to make consciousness a subject of experimental investigation to focus instead on behavioral manifestations of intelligence. B. F. Skinner later hardened behaviorist strictures to exclude inner physiological processes along with inward experiences as items of legitimate psychological concern.

Watson explicitly drew the connection between humans, animals and machines:

He studied the biology, physiology, and behavior of animals, inspired by the recent work of Ivan Pavlov. He began studying the behavior of children, as well, concluding that humans were simply more complicated than animals but operated on the same principles. All animals, he believed, were extremely complex machines that responded to situations according to their "wiring," or nerve pathways that were conditioned by experience. In 1913, he published an article outlining his ideas and essentially establishing a new school of psychology. It was new because Watson disagreed with Freud and found the latter's views on human behavior philosophical to the point of mysticism. He also dismissed heredity as a significant factor in shaping human behavior.

The spread of behavioral psychology in the mid-twentieth century reinforced some of the worst excesses of that century, including the arresting and torturing of dissidents, the bombing of enemy civilian population centers and cultural monuments, and the like. Aside from the fact that none of those things (bombing, torture, etc.) worked very well, the enabling of modern, mechanistic evil is clear.

Watson, interestingly, was kicked out of Johns Hopkins in 1920 for having an affair with an assistant and went into the advertising industry, becoming president of J. Walter Thompson in 1924.

Bernays was by that time already ensconced in private industry as a public relations specialist, working for, among others, that pioneer of psychologically manipulative advertising, Procter & Gamble. Bernays, unlike Watson, believed in the unconscious, bragging to everyone who would listen that he was a nephew of Sigmund Freud. He not only worked for private corporations, but took an interest in propaganda or the manufacturing of consent in modern industrial societies. He said that, "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it." His work was studied closely by the Nazis, but it is not hard to see his techniques in liberal capitalist countries. In his book, Propaganda, we find the famous quote:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. 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 are 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. ... 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 ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Now this stuff is a long way from stimulus and response. Bernays may have shown how best to manipulate those with potential souls, while behaviorism could only work well with OP's.