Thank you all for creating a place where #hypernormalization doesn't hold sway.

#mastodon

Living through history & having to get up in the morning to go to work sucks ass.

Thanks #Hypernormalization 🙄

#CurrentMood #TTJ #History

“This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy”*…

A hundred years ago a new theory about human nature was put forth by Sigmund Freud. He had discovered he said, primitive and sexual and aggressive forces hidden deep inside the minds of all human beings. Forces which if not controlled led individuals and societies to chaos and destruction.

This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.

But the heart of the series is not just Sigmund Freud but other members of the Freud family.

This episode is about Freud’s American nephew Edward Bernays. [See here.]

Bernays is almost completely unknown today but his influence on the 20th century was nearly as great as his uncles. Because Bernays was the first person to take Freud’s ideas about human beings and use them to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations for the first time how to they could make people want things they didn’t need by linking mass produced goods to their unconscious desires.

Out of this would come a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying people’s inner selfish desires one made them happy and thus docile. It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate our world today…

From the introduction to Adam Curtis‘ remarkable 2002 BBC documentary series, Century of Self, all-too-relevant today– how propaganda, marketing and advertising, political messaging, management techniques all “flowered” from Freud’s seed.

Here is a complete transcript of the series.

Readers can find the (riveting) documentaries themselves at:

Episode One

Episode Two

Episode Three

Episode Four

Hypernormalization, Curtis’ 2016 BBC (sort of) sequel is here.

And keep an eye peeled for What Is It That’s Coming, a (tentatively-titled series, projected at nine parts) on which he’s currently at work.

* Adam Curtis

###

As we sort signal from noise, we might consider just how far we have– and haven’t– come, as it was on this date in 1859 that Charles Darwin published The Origin of the Species.  Actually, on that day he published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life; the title was shortened to the one we know with the sixth edition in 1872.

 Title page of the 1859 edition

#adamCurtis #advertising #centuryOfSelf #darwin #evolution #history #hypernormalization #marketing #originOfTheSpecies #politicalScience #propaganda #science #socialPsychology #sociology

Cop30

More than 300 big agriculture lobbyists took part in Cop30, investigation finds

Lobbyists representing industry responsible for a quarter to a third of global emissions participated in key talks at the UN climate summit

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/18/big-agriculture-lobbyists-cop30-climate-summit

Hyper normalisation in optima forma:

Have a (re)watch at this documentary from 2016, you'd be surprised how fitting it is in these times of Trumps & Putin's & techno sphere :

https://archive.org/details/hyper-normalisation-2016-subs-by-adam-curtis-a-different-experience-of-realit

#cop30 #climate #ClimateChange #ClimateChaos #collapse #Hypernormalization #capitalism

I would like to highly recommend the 2016 film "#Hypernormalization" by Adam Curtis.

We are seeing that a lot now, as institutions like the LA Times, NY Times, and Washington Post adopt a "both sides" format which doesn't sufficiently challenge the truth or integrity of statements, and increasingly follow story lines put forward by fascist agitators, like the nytimes non-story about the race of NYC Mayoral candidate #Mamdani who is of Indian ethnicity but born in Uganda

https://www.newsweek.com/new-york-times-mamdani-article-healy-responds-2094926

Is this the #hypernormalization of infrastructure failure, or is it just me? ("Anker PowerSOS Challenge!(tm)" advertising.)

I rather like their inverters, power banks and chargers, but this just leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth for some reason.