Pedro Alonso Lopez
26th February 2004, 15:03
A good example of the pragmatic or manipulative communicator’s awareness of the audience’s desire to collude is provided by Ernest Dichter, in his Handbook of Consumer Motivations. In a chapter appropriately called ‘Science and Magic,’ he earnestly advices his customers in the pharmaceutical industry:
One of the strongest elements of a doctor’s self-image is his perception of himself as a rational scientist. In his own eyes he shares with other scientists a respect for his own rationality. He sees himself as superior to emotional appeals. He believes himself to be detached, objective, logical...He needs to feel that the perception others hold of him is in accord with his self-image. He is particularly resentful, therefore, whenever a pharmaecuetical house makes and disguises the emotional appeal to him. He’s being considered a gullible consumer. His need to be seen as rational is being flouted...The truth lies somewhere in between. The doctor is a brilliant scientist with a high degree of rationality. He is also a human being with the same emotional processes and responses that characterize other human beings. In any communications with the doctor, pharmaceutical houses should therefore conceal emotional appeals beneath a cloak of rationality. (1964, p. 211)
I was pondering the relation of this quote in relation to active participation of individuals with regards to capitalism.
A term often used to describe people who willingly accept being fooled is partipulation, among the mass populace of modern developed society the doctor can be anybody, you, me your parents whoever. The questions I am asking is why is there such willing partipulation of the masses toward a system that systematically sets out to create a divide within society that is clearly evident upon any kind of moral inspection.
Or even in relation to everyday commodities the sense of willing manipulation by the particapant is evident, do you simply blame society, the propaganda of the state, media advertising or is it a willing particapation in something you realise to be quite evil.
Of course the general concensus is that you cannot survive unless you partake in partipulation, it is a neccessity but this reminds of Eric Veogelin's analysis of the German question as well as the German peoples active particapation in the rise of nazism. There it is called a guiltless guiltlessness or a general stupidity.
Are we all partaking in some kind of collective amnesia, sweeping under the rug the very virtues we hide dear in exchange for an easy life?
I dont know, consider this a rant.
Communication between human beings is the modus procedendi [ = manner of proceeding] through which a society exists. The fact that “The Moral Bases for Communication in a Democracy” are in question at all, and with good reason can be made the topic of a lecture, indicates the graveness of moral confusion in our time. For if we feel the urge to discuss communications in contemporary democracy, we betray our awareness that something is problematic about our procedures of communication. Moreover, with regard to the substance of society, it is supposed to be always moral
A danger of communication I guess is not the motive some may have and use language for but the way in which communication is actually done, whether there are problems at all with modern communication, never seems to arise and this comrades, worries me.
One of the strongest elements of a doctor’s self-image is his perception of himself as a rational scientist. In his own eyes he shares with other scientists a respect for his own rationality. He sees himself as superior to emotional appeals. He believes himself to be detached, objective, logical...He needs to feel that the perception others hold of him is in accord with his self-image. He is particularly resentful, therefore, whenever a pharmaecuetical house makes and disguises the emotional appeal to him. He’s being considered a gullible consumer. His need to be seen as rational is being flouted...The truth lies somewhere in between. The doctor is a brilliant scientist with a high degree of rationality. He is also a human being with the same emotional processes and responses that characterize other human beings. In any communications with the doctor, pharmaceutical houses should therefore conceal emotional appeals beneath a cloak of rationality. (1964, p. 211)
I was pondering the relation of this quote in relation to active participation of individuals with regards to capitalism.
A term often used to describe people who willingly accept being fooled is partipulation, among the mass populace of modern developed society the doctor can be anybody, you, me your parents whoever. The questions I am asking is why is there such willing partipulation of the masses toward a system that systematically sets out to create a divide within society that is clearly evident upon any kind of moral inspection.
Or even in relation to everyday commodities the sense of willing manipulation by the particapant is evident, do you simply blame society, the propaganda of the state, media advertising or is it a willing particapation in something you realise to be quite evil.
Of course the general concensus is that you cannot survive unless you partake in partipulation, it is a neccessity but this reminds of Eric Veogelin's analysis of the German question as well as the German peoples active particapation in the rise of nazism. There it is called a guiltless guiltlessness or a general stupidity.
Are we all partaking in some kind of collective amnesia, sweeping under the rug the very virtues we hide dear in exchange for an easy life?
I dont know, consider this a rant.
Communication between human beings is the modus procedendi [ = manner of proceeding] through which a society exists. The fact that “The Moral Bases for Communication in a Democracy” are in question at all, and with good reason can be made the topic of a lecture, indicates the graveness of moral confusion in our time. For if we feel the urge to discuss communications in contemporary democracy, we betray our awareness that something is problematic about our procedures of communication. Moreover, with regard to the substance of society, it is supposed to be always moral
A danger of communication I guess is not the motive some may have and use language for but the way in which communication is actually done, whether there are problems at all with modern communication, never seems to arise and this comrades, worries me.