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Don't settle for anything less then you can be,
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make your life a masterpiece!
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This is a series about how Sigmund Freud's ideas
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about the unconscious mind
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have been used by those in power to control the masses
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in an age of democracy.
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Last week's episode showed how Freud's ideas spread throughout America
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in the 1950s.
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They were promoted by his daughter Anna, and by Freud's nephew Edward Bernays
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who invented public relations.
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He brought Freud's theories into the heart of advertising and marketing.
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A man like you!...I mean... with a car like this!...
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What they both believed is that underneath all human beings
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was a hidden irrational self
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which needed to be controlled, both for the good of the individuals
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and the stability of society.
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But the Freuds were about to be toppled from power by opponents
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who said they were wrong about human nature.
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The inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled,
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it should be encouraged to express itself.
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Out of this would come a new type of strong human being and a better society.
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But what in fact emerged from this revolution was the very opposite.
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An isolated, vulnerable and above all greedy self.
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Far more open to manipulation by both business and politics
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than anything that had gone on before.
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Those in power would now control the self not by repressing it,
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but by feeding its infinite desires.
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The Century of the Self
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Part Three There Is A Policeman Inside Our Heads. He Must Be Destroyed!
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What goes on here is the liberation of feeling..
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In other word, feelings, not just memories that have been suppressed
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for example screaming, crying, anger...
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if that person is really angry, than they're going to let it out..
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No!...No!...I could kill you!...
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I'm an old man...Listen! If I can get all that strength to do this,
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young people would get, if they get those feelings...
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In the 1950s a small group of renegade psychoanalysts
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began a new form of therapy.
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They worked in small rooms in New York City
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and encouraged their patients to express their feelings openly.
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I want help!...I do....
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It was a direct attack on the theories of the Freudian psychoanalysts
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who had become rich and powerful teaching Americans
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how to control their feelings.
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Dr. Alexander Lowen - Experimental Psychotherapist 1950s: In Freud's work you see
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they were afraid of the feelings.
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What they wanted was contained people very proper
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doing the right thing and living the proper life.
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That's what they wanted.
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And not an intense emotional life.
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Freud wasn't emotional himself, I mean he's an intellect Freud.
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I was an intellect too, I know, but I'm also more than that now.
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The leader of this group was a man hated by Freud and his family.
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He was called Wilhelm Reich.
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Reich lived an isolated life in a house he had built for himself
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in the remote mountains near the Canadian border.
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Reich originally had been a devoted disciple of Freud's in Vienna in the 1920s
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but he had challenged Freud over the fundamental basis of psychoanalysis.
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Freud argued that at human beings were still driven
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by primitive animal instincts.
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The job of society, was to repress and control these dangerous forces.
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Reich believed the complete opposite.
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The unconscious forces inside the human mind, he said, were good.
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It was their repression by society that distorted them.
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That was what made people dangerous.
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Morton Herskowitz - Student of Wilhelm Reich 1949-52: Reich and Freud had two fundamentally differing views
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about what was essential human nature.
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At its core Freud saw an uncontrolled violent war-like
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raging inferno of emotions.
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Reich said these things are not the way human beings are originally destined to be,
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they're the result of not permitting the original impulse to express itself.
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The underlying natural impulse Reich argued was the libido, sexual energy.
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If this were released than human beings would flourish.
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But this idea brought him into direct conflict not only with Sigmund Freud,
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but with Freud's daughter Anna, who believed that the sexual forces in humans
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were dangerous if not controlled.
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Lore Reich Rubin - Daughter of Wilhelm Reich: My father thought that you should liberate the libido and have freedom.
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And he developed a theory rather early that neuroses were due to
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lack of good orgasm or any orgasm.
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And Anna Freud you know was a virgin, and this was very important
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because she never had a sexual relation with a man,
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and here was this man preaching that the way to health was through orgasm,
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and here was this woman who had been analyzed by her father
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because she was masturbating.
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So here's this woman who's opposed to sexuality really
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and here's this man who's preaching sexual freedom
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and there was bound to be a clash, wasn't there?
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The conflict came to a head at a conference in 1934 in Switzerland.
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Anna Freud who had by now become the acknowledged leader
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of the psychoanalytic movement forced Wilhelm Reich out.
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She destroyed his career.
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Lore Reich Rubin - Daughter of Wilhelm Reich: She got rid of him, very definitely.
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And I guess part of what I am doing is getting rid of her.
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Can you explain? Well, I think that Anna Freud shouldn't get away
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with what she did, that it should be known.
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Maneuvering to get him kicked out of the International Psychoanalytic Association.
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So you're taking revenge? You might say so, or wronging a right
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- No, righting a wrong. You better cut that one out.
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Isn't that called a Freudian slip? Yes it is.
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Reich fled to the United States and built his home and a laboratory.
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His ideas became grandiose to the point of madness.
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He was convinced that he had discovered the source of libidinal energy.
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He called it 'orgone energy' and Reich built a giant gun
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which he said could capture this energy from the atmosphere
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and concentrate it onto clouds to produce rain.
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He also said that the gun could be used to destroy UFOs
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which threatened the future of the world.
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In 1956 Reich was arrested by the federal authorities
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for selling a device that he said used orgone energy to cure cancer.
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Reich was treated as a madman.
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He was imprisoned and all his books and papers were burned
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at the order of the court.
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A year later Reich died in prison.
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To the Freudians it seemed as if their main threat
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had been removed forever.
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But they were wrong.
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What the Freudians didn�t realize was that
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their influence in American society was also about to be challenged.
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And in a way that would lead not only to their decline
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but to the dramatic resurgence of Reich's ideas
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in America and throughout the capitalist world.
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The consumer is king.
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His whim makes or unmakes manufacturers, whole-salers and retailers,
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whoever wins his confidence , wins the game
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whoever loses his confidence is lost..
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By the late 1950s psychoanalysis had become deeply involved
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in driving consumerism in America.
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Most advertising companies employed psychoanalysts.
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And as last week's episode showed, they had created new ways
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to understand consumers' motives, above all with the focus group
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in which consumers free associated their feelings about products.
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Out of this came new ways to market products by appealing
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to the hidden unconscious desires of the consumer.
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But in the early 60's a new generation emerged who attacked this.
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They accused American business of using psychological techniques
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to manipulate people's feelings
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and turn them into ideal consumers.
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Robert Pardun - Student Activist early 1960's: Advertising was manipulation
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it was a way to get you to do something that didn't come out of you,
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it came out of somebody else.
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Somebody else said 'this year you should be wearing
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powdered pink shirts with matching powdered pink buck shoes'
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and I said Why? That's not who I am, that's who somebody else is.
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They wanted you to be somebody who would buy their stuff.
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This whole feeling of being somebody else's tool,
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I don't want to be that. I don't want to be somebody else's man.
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I want to be me.
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In the mid 60's a protest movement began on America's campuses.
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One of the student's main targets was corporate America.
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They accused the corporations of brainwashing the American public.
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Consumerism is not just a way of making money
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it had become the means of keeping the masses docile
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while allowing the government to purse a violent and illegal war in Vietnam.
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The students' mentor was a famous writer and philosopher called Herbert Marcuse.
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Marcuse had studied psychoanalysis
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and was a fierce critic of the Freudians.
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They had he said, helped to create a world
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in which people were reduced to expressing their feelings
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and identities, through mass produced objects.
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It resulted in what he called one-dimensional man -
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conformist and repressed.
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he psychoanalysts had become the corrupt agents of those who ruled America.
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Herbert Marcuse - Interviewed 1978: It was one of the most striking phenomena
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to see to what extent the ruling power structure
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could manipulate, manage, and control not only the consciousness
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but also the subconscious and unconscious of the individuals.
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And this took place on a psychological basis
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by the controls and the manipulation of the
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unconscious primary drives which Freud stipulated.
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Think about it, the American people out there...
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They're all brainwashed, kiddies..They're all brainwashed..
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That's why they're saying right now "Kill the bum", in fact I look at you in your living room you're saying "Kill me!"
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Following the logic of Marcuse's argument, the new student left
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set out to attack this system of social control.
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It was summed up in the slogan
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'There is a policeman inside all our heads - he must be destroyed'.
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And that policeman was going to be destroyed
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by overthrowing the state and the corporations that had put him there.
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One group, "The Weatherman" began a series of attacks
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on companies that they said both controlled people's minds
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through consumer products and made the weapons being used in Vietnam.
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Bernadine Dohrn - Founder of Weatherman Revolutionary Group: There's no way to be committed to non-violence
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in the middle of the most violent society that history has ever created.
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I'm not committed to non-violence in any way.
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Linda Evans - Member of Weatherman Revolutionary Group: We want to live a life that
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isn't based on materialistic values, and yet the whole system of government
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and the economy of America is based on profit;
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on personal greed and selfishness.
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So that, in order to be human, in order to love each other
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and be equal with each other and not place each other in roles
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we have to destroy the kind of government that keeps us
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from asserting our positive values of life.
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But the American state fought back violently.
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At the democratic convention in Chicago in 1968
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the police and the national guard were unleashed to attack
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thousands of demonstrators.
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It was the start of a phase of ruthless repression
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of the new left in America.
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It culminated in the killing of four students at Kent State University
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18 months later.
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In the face of this, the left began to fall apart.
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Robert Pardun - Student Activist early 1960's: We had met the force of the state.
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It was much bigger and stronger and more powerful than we've realized.
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And at that point, what seemed to happen was that
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there was a change in tactics.
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Confronted by this violent repression, many in the new
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left, began to turn to a new idea.
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If it was impossible to get the policeman out of one's head
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by overthrowing the state instead one should find a way of getting inside
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one's own mind and remove the controls implanted there
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by the state and the corporations.
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Out of this would come a new self, and thus a new society.
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Stew Albert - Founding member of Yippie Party: People who had been politically active
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were persuaded that if they could change themselves
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and be healthy individuals
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and if a movement grew up just aimed that people changing themselves
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then at some point all that positive change going on -
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well you could say quantity would become quality -
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and there would be sort of a spontaneous transformation of society.
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But political activism was not required.
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Robert Pardun - Student Activist early 1960's: It's about making a new you.
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That if enough people changed the way they were
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that the society would change.
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So the personal would become political.
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Without changing the personal,
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you didn't stand a chance of changing the political.
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Coming up against the state power of the United States was not an option.
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They outgunned us.
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And to produce the new self, they turned to the ideas and techniques
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of Wilhelm Reich.
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Since his death a small group of psychotherapists
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had been developing techniques based on Reich's ideas.
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Their aim was to invent ways that would allow individuals
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to free themselves from the controls implanted in their minds by society.
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Their center was a tiny old motel on a remote coast of California.
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It was called the Esalen Institute.
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The dominant figure at Esalen was a psychoanalyst called Fritz Perls.
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Perls had been trained by Reich and had developed a form of group encounter
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in which he pushed individuals to publicly express the feelings inside them
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that society had said were dangerous and should be repressed.
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Fritz Pearls Workshop Esalen Institute 1960s It's a basic fear of that thing inside me, like a little demon in there...
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It doesn't come out very often..It's really hard to get it over..
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Now, put that thing inside you on that chair and talk to it!
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Michael Murphy - Founder of Esalen Institute: Perls used to call this getting on the hot seat
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in front of a group.
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If this were the hot seat and you were Perls you would guide me
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into this process of self-enactment, self revelation,
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of staying present to all the parts of yourself and noticing it
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and then taking ownership of this.
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-That's the demon? -Yes. -I can come out...I can come right out of him...
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-And I can... push him aside... -You! Say You!
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-I can push you aside.. -Yeah!
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There's a demon with each one of us... -I can make you all cry..
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I can make you all feel terrible..maybe even forever..
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I can make this mouth here do things and say things...
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I can almost destroy anyone... each one of you..if I get out...
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There isn't one of you that I would spear...
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Not even you!..
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-Yeah..How do you feel now? -I feel better, I mean, umm...
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I feel very honest.. -Yeah.. And you notice the increase of power?
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In other words, taking ownership of who you are
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and how you act and how you feel, your whole being in a world
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in other words giving you autonomy. Owning your freedom.
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I'm frightening! When I have my power, I'm frightening!
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-Say "I've frightened you with my power!" -I've frightened you with my power!
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-Now... did you feel power in your hands, in your muscles?
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Wake up!
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???
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It was not a funny movement! That's what I wanted to do and I did it!
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What Perls and other who were at Esalen believed
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was that they were creating ways that allowed individuals
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to express their true inner selves.
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I wanted them to applaud for me!
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Out of this they believed would come new autonomous beings,
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free of social conditioning.
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To the left, defeated in the wake of Chicago,
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it was an enormously attractive idea.
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These techniques could be used to unleash a new powerful self
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strong enough to overthrow the old order.
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In the late sixties and early seventies
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thousands flocked to Esalen.
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Only a few years before it had been an obscure fringe institute.
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Now it became the center of a national movement for personal transformation.
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The human potential movement.
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Michael Murphy - Founder of Esalen Institute: So it became magnetic.
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People wanted to join this stream of exploration.
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Within about seven years there were 200 hundred of these centers in America
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looking mainly to Esalen for the leadership.
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-I feel so liberated! -Really? That's fantastic!..
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And it took on a big political agenda.
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You could not separate personal transformation from social transformation.
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The two go together.
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As the movement grew the leaders of Esalen decided to try and use
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their techniques to solve social problems.
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They began with racism.
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They organized an encounter group for white and black radicals.
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Both groups would be encouraged to express their inner racist feelings
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which had been instilled in them by society.
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By doing this they would transcend those feelings
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and encounter each other as individuals.
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George Leonard - Encounter Group Leader Esalen Institute 1960s: I started a series of encounters called
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'racial confrontation as transcendental experience'.
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We thought that we wanted to get that kind of black/white confrontation
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so you could really get down to see what was between the two races
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not by backing off and trying to be polite
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but by going right into the belly of the beast, of this beast of racial prejudice.
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And these were extremely dramatic, these were the toughest workshops
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ever convened at Esalen Institute.
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-I'm looking at you whitie, you've got clothes on! You've got shoes on! -You're so sure, lookin' at me, huh?
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-You've got a goddamned police in the neighborhood! -Really? They're not my police!
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-You've got a governor, you've got a mayor! -Oh, really?
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-You've got the president,... you've got ambassadors! -You can vote too!
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-You've got death in Vietnam.. That's the benefits of slave labor!
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-You've got buildings, skyscrapers, that you dominate and control
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economically and politically! And tell me that it's not yours!... -It's yours too!...
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Then the blacks all got together and attacked the whites.
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And they just let us have it.
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What they called it was 'peeping somebody'.
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'Peeping somebody' means peeping into their secrets.
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Into their phoniness and so forth.
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Like the white liberal, oh they really, really got onto the white liberal.
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Don't give me no shit about I'm free. You're a goddamned liar
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you white-pink son of a bitch you!
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Yeah, I wanna know what you came down here for,
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You wanna black buck, huh! You're looking for a stud
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Huh? What did you come here for? You're sitting there with your legs
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all gap wide open, showing your drawers. Now, what did you come here for?
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The black/white encounter groups were a disaster.
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The black radicals saw it as an insidious attempt to destroy their power.
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By trying to turn them into liberated individuals,
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Esalen was removing the one thing that gave them power and confidence
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in their struggle against racism;
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their collective identity as blacks.
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-For your reason. For my reason. -For your reason. So dig this! You're reason for being here is different from my reason!
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So the human potential movement turned to another social group
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they believed would benefit from personal transformation.
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Nuns. And this time they were more successful.
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The Convent of the Immaculate Heart in Los Angeles
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was one of the largest seminaries in America.
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A group of radical psychotherapists approached the convent.
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They wanted to try out their techniques for personal liberation
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on individuals whose identities were defined by a series of external rules
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which they had deeply internalized.
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The convent, anxious to appear modern, agreed to the experiment.
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Dr. William Coulson - Nuns' Encounter Group Leader: And we did weekend encounter workshops
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for several hundred Immaculate Heart nuns.
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Nuns who were reserved, and they tended to be more reserved than
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other normal people were told: don't be so reserved, let it all out,
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you are a good person you can afford to be who you really are,
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you don't need to play the role of a nun,
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you don't need to keep downcast eyes.
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Prudence is an oversold virtue.
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Immaculate Heart novice nun - Interviewed during psychotherapy experiment: You are trying to assert yourself,
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trying to find out who you are, who you are becoming, at the same time
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you are trying to live a life of dedication of service
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and you are trying to make all of these things fit into who you are,
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and it's such a turmoil at times that you just blow a gasket
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and do silly crazy things.
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Running around the orchard and stealing oranges and
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taking Cokes out of the refrigerator, crazy things.
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Another nun: I felt like I was being a hypocrite
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and I wanted people to respect me for what I was, not for what I was wearing
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and so I'm glad for the change.
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-You feel frightened but you go on. -Oh yeah I'm scared to death but it's worth it.
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The experiment began to transform the convent.
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The nuns voted to discard their habits in favor of ordinary clothes.
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The psychotherapists had found they had awoken other forces.
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Dr. William Coulson - Nuns' Encounter Group Leader: One of the things we unleashed was sexual energy,
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the kind of thing the church had been very good at restraining
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was no longer to be restrained.
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One sister who was a member of the community
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she got the idea that she could be freer than she had been before
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and she seduced one of her classmates and then seduced
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the mistresses of novices who was an older woman very reserved
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and her program of freeing this older woman was sexual.
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She drove her to the store and when they drove back
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and when they drove into the garage
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she leaned over and gave her a big kiss on the lips
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and thereafter the sister who had perhaps never been kissed before
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was ready for more.
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The effect of the experiment on the convent was cataclysmic.
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Within a year, 300 nuns, more than half the convent,
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petitioned the Vatican to be released from their vows
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and six months later, the convent closed its doors.
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All that was left was a small group of nuns,
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but they had become radical lesbian nuns
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the rest gave up the religious life.
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-They gave up being nuns? -They did, yeah, they became persons..
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By the late 60s, the idea of self exploration
390
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was spreading rapidly in America.
391
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Encounter groups became the center of what was seen as
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a radical alternative culture based on the development of the self
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free of a corrupt capitalist culture.
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I just want to free them,.. to be ourselves.. And that's for love, for experience...
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A positive way of life...We don't say that you're wrong..
396
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We just want to be free, to be what we want to be and
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what we find ourselves to be, as we continue the search ourselves...
398
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And it was beginning to have a serious effect on corporate America
399
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because these new selves were not behaving as predictable consumers.
400
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The life insurance industry in particular
401
00:27:07,636 --> 00:27:10,404
was concerned that fewer and fewer college students were buying life insurance
402
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when they left university.
403
00:27:13,579 --> 00:27:18,332
They asked Daniel Yankelovich, America's leading market researcher to investigate.
404
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He had studied psychoanalysis.
405
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Daniel Yankelovich - Yankelovich Partners Market Research Inc: The life insurance business
406
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more than any other business at the time was built on the protestant ethic.
407
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You only bought life insurance if you were a person who sacrificed for the future.
408
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If you lived in the present you had no need for life insurance.
409
00:27:39,968 --> 00:27:46,700
So they had some sense that maybe the core values of the protestant ethic
410
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were being challenged by some of these new values that were beginning to appear.
411
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And I was really astonished at what I found.
412
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The conventional interpretation was that it had to do with political radicalism.
413
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But what was clear to us was that that was a mask, a cover.
414
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The core of it, had to do with self expressiveness...
415
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This preoccupation with the self and the inner self,
416
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that was what was so important to people, the ability to be self expressive.
417
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Wow! What a feeling!..
418
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Yankelovich began to track the growth and behavior of these new expressive selves.
419
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What he told the corporations, was that these new beings WERE consumers
420
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but they no longer wanted anything that would place them
421
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within the narrow strata of American society.
422
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Instead, what they wanted were products that would express their individuality,
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their difference in a conformist world.
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They very things that US corporations did not make.
425
00:29:00,383 --> 00:29:04,510
Daniel Yankelovich - Yankelovich Partners Market Research Inc: Products have always had an emotional meaning.
426
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What was new was individuality. The idea that this product expresses me
427
00:29:13,293 --> 00:29:17,406
and whether it was a small European car,
428
00:29:18,449 --> 00:29:20,986
the particular music system,
429
00:29:23,735 --> 00:29:26,327
your presentation of self, your clothing,
430
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these become ways in which people can spend their money
431
00:29:36,736 --> 00:29:39,827
in order to say to the world who they are.
432
00:29:42,506 --> 00:29:46,417
But the manufacturers, they had no idea what was going on, really,
433
00:29:47,225 --> 00:29:50,277
with consumers and in the market of life.
434
00:29:51,852 --> 00:29:55,216
Major advertising companies set up what they called operating groups
435
00:29:55,460 --> 00:29:59,039
to try and work out how to appeal to these new individuals.
436
00:29:59,665 --> 00:30:02,508
The head of one agency sent a memo to all staff.
437
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We must conform, he told them, to the new non-conformists.
438
00:30:07,752 --> 00:30:12,108
We must listen to the music of Bobby Dylan and go to the theater more.
439
00:30:12,595 --> 00:30:15,607
But the problem was, fewer of the self expressive individuals
440
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would take part in focus groups.
441
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The advertisers were left to their own devices.
442
00:30:21,478 --> 00:30:28,232
-There's a new cereal that tastes so right! It makes you dance, it's a way out of sight!
443
00:30:28,447 --> 00:30:35,139
-It's tasty little squares of malted wheat It's crispy and it's crunchy and it tastes so neat!
444
00:30:35,447 --> 00:30:38,201
-Faster, though... That's what I'm saying, use a folk-rock,
445
00:30:38,201 --> 00:30:40,230
with more rock than folk!
446
00:30:40,545 --> 00:30:43,042
And there was an even more serious problem.
447
00:30:43,261 --> 00:30:45,848
To make more products for people who wanted to express themselves
448
00:30:45,848 --> 00:30:48,546
would mean creating variety.
449
00:30:48,546 --> 00:30:51,661
But the systems of mass production that had been developed in America
450
00:30:52,025 --> 00:30:55,823
were only profitable if they made large numbers of the same objects.
451
00:30:56,626 --> 00:31:01,483
This had fitted perfectly with the limited range of desires of a conformist society.
452
00:31:02,223 --> 00:31:05,950
The expressive self threatened this whole system of manufacturing.
453
00:31:07,517 --> 00:31:10,108
And the threat was about to grow rapidly
454
00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:17,892
because an entrepreneur had invented a way
455
00:31:17,892 --> 00:31:21,124
of mass producing this new independent self.
456
00:31:25,718 --> 00:31:27,677
He was called Werner Erhard.
457
00:31:27,816 --> 00:31:36,816
"Some of the stuff that we traditionally think of as being in your mind is actually in the world. Because you're moving to that too."
458
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Erhard had invented a system called EST - Erhard Seminar Training.
459
00:31:42,342 --> 00:31:45,109
Hundreds of people came for weekend sessions to be taught
460
00:31:45,109 --> 00:31:49,116
how to be themselves, and EST was soon copied by other groups
461
00:31:49,342 --> 00:31:51,799
like Exegesis in Britain.
462
00:31:52,735 --> 00:31:56,440
Many of Erhard's techniques came from the human potential movement.
463
00:31:56,662 --> 00:31:59,941
He criticized the movement for not having gone far enough.
464
00:32:00,518 --> 00:32:04,019
Their idea that there was a central core inside all human beings
465
00:32:04,243 --> 00:32:07,597
was he said just another limitation on human freedom.
466
00:32:08,428 --> 00:32:11,142
In reality there was no fixed self
467
00:32:11,142 --> 00:32:14,158
which meant that you could be anything that you wanted to be.
468
00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:19,127
Werner Erhard - Founder of EST: The thesis of the human potential movement
469
00:32:19,127 --> 00:32:22,331
was that there was something really good down in there
470
00:32:22,331 --> 00:32:25,427
and if you took these layers off what you were going to wind up with
471
00:32:25,644 --> 00:32:30,199
was a kernel, a something that was innately self-expressive
472
00:32:32,103 --> 00:32:35,701
that was the true self that was going to be a wonderful thing.
473
00:32:35,959 --> 00:32:41,022
In actuality we found people who had gone to the last layer
474
00:32:41,241 --> 00:32:45,919
and took off the last layer and found that, what was left was nothing.
475
00:32:46,180 --> 00:32:49,509
-Allright! Push! Move! Do it!
476
00:32:49,509 --> 00:32:52,352
The EST sessions were intense and often brutal.
477
00:32:53,148 --> 00:32:55,608
The participants signed contracts agreeing not to leave
478
00:32:55,867 --> 00:32:58,570
and to allow the trainers to do anything they thought necessary
479
00:32:58,808 --> 00:33:01,521
to break down their socially constructed identities.
480
00:33:02,023 --> 00:33:05,667
-You're gonna get sandwiched in there! Or I'm gonna win!
481
00:33:05,667 --> 00:33:08,712
If I push harder than you do, I'm gonna squash you!
482
00:33:08,712 --> 00:33:12,792
So you'd better push fast, now, hard ! Do it! That's it, do it!
483
00:33:12,993 --> 00:33:14,995
Yeah, push! Good! Good!
484
00:33:14,995 --> 00:33:19,431
Good! Again! Yes! -Aaaaaah!
485
00:33:22,870 --> 00:33:26,272
Werner Erhard - Founder of EST - The real point to the EST training
486
00:33:26,272 --> 00:33:30,154
was to go down through layer after layer after layer after layer
487
00:33:30,382 --> 00:33:34,434
until you got to the last layer and peeled it off
488
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:38,856
where the recognition was that
489
00:33:39,181 --> 00:33:43,045
it's really all meaningless and empty.
490
00:33:59,276 --> 00:34:01,798
Now, that's existentialism's end point.
491
00:34:02,184 --> 00:34:04,246
EST went a step further,
492
00:34:04,574 --> 00:34:09,120
in that people began to recognize that it was not only meaningless and empty,
493
00:34:09,884 --> 00:34:11,435
but that it was empty and meaningless
494
00:34:11,656 --> 00:34:13,495
that it was empty and meaningless,
495
00:34:13,826 --> 00:34:16,142
and in that there's an enormous freedom.
496
00:34:16,595 --> 00:34:22,217
All of the constrictions, all of the rules that you placed on yourself,
497
00:34:23,061 --> 00:34:24,218
are gone.
498
00:34:24,938 --> 00:34:27,338
And what you are left with is nothing,
499
00:34:27,904 --> 00:34:31,812
and nothing is an extraordinarily powerful place to stand
500
00:34:32,140 --> 00:34:36,332
because it is only from nothing that you can create and
501
00:34:36,592 --> 00:34:39,984
from this nothing people were able to invent a life,
502
00:34:40,281 --> 00:34:42,813
allowing them to create themselves.
503
00:34:44,890 --> 00:34:47,458
-To invent themselves? -To invent themselves.
504
00:34:47,896 --> 00:34:49,488
You can be what you want to be.
505
00:34:49,878 --> 00:34:52,692
I want you to start to make that sound
506
00:34:52,692 --> 00:34:59,531
and on that sound, create in people, the world the way you want to create it
507
00:35:01,367 --> 00:35:05,250
Jesse Kornbluth - Journalist, New Times 1970s - What Erhard did was to say
508
00:35:05,250 --> 00:35:10,908
that only the individual matters, that there is no societal concern,
509
00:35:11,116 --> 00:35:14,271
that you living a fulfilled life
510
00:35:14,566 --> 00:35:16,937
is all you need to be concerned about.
511
00:35:17,705 --> 00:35:21,645
EST people came out of those trainings feeling that
512
00:35:21,645 --> 00:35:25,552
it wasn't selfish to think about yourself, it was your highest duty.
513
00:35:26,410 --> 00:35:33,737
So kiss me and smile for me Tell me that you'll wait for me
514
00:35:34,195 --> 00:35:39,462
Hold me like you'll never let me go
515
00:35:39,705 --> 00:35:42,864
John Denver - EST Graduate - The training is two weekends
516
00:35:42,864 --> 00:35:45,105
and it was quite an incredible experience in my life,
517
00:35:45,105 --> 00:35:48,680
and I'll forever be grateful for the experience. I got a great deal out of it.
518
00:35:48,680 --> 00:35:50,795
We really want to know who we are,
519
00:35:50,795 --> 00:35:53,262
there are things going on where we learn more and more about ourselves
520
00:35:53,262 --> 00:35:54,367
all the time,
521
00:35:54,605 --> 00:35:57,039
and to really find out what it is that makes us tick
522
00:35:57,039 --> 00:35:59,243
and how we are discovering ourselves.
523
00:36:02,115 --> 00:36:04,303
EST became hugely successful.
524
00:36:04,515 --> 00:36:08,100
Singers, film stars, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans
525
00:36:08,100 --> 00:36:10,497
underwent the training in the 1970s.
526
00:36:12,182 --> 00:36:15,711
But in the process the political idea that had begun the movement
527
00:36:15,711 --> 00:36:18,710
of personal transformation began to disappear.
528
00:36:19,649 --> 00:36:23,647
The original vision, that being through discovering and expressing yourself
529
00:36:24,074 --> 00:36:25,774
a new culture would be born,
530
00:36:26,270 --> 00:36:28,796
one that would challenge the power of the state.
531
00:36:32,403 --> 00:36:36,854
"We will not let them separate our culture from our politics!
532
00:36:36,854 --> 00:36:39,805
We are people, we are all together! Fuck 'em!"
533
00:36:41,493 --> 00:36:45,046
What was now emerging was the idea that people could be happy
534
00:36:45,290 --> 00:36:49,932
simply within themselves and that changing society was irrelevant.
535
00:36:51,014 --> 00:36:53,497
One of the proponents of this was Jerry Rubin.
536
00:36:53,497 --> 00:36:58,611
In 1968 Rubin, as leader of the Yippies had led the march on Chicago.
537
00:36:59,048 --> 00:37:01,258
But now he had undergone EST training.
538
00:37:02,047 --> 00:37:07,377
Jerry Rubin - Founder of Yippie Party - Interviewed 1978 - I was willing to die and I had a martyr complex
539
00:37:07,582 --> 00:37:12,341
in the sense that we all did, and I've given up that ideal, of sacrifice.
540
00:37:13,121 --> 00:37:19,799
I'm not as overwhelmingly moved by injustice as I was.
541
00:37:20,154 --> 00:37:23,027
And now we've reincarnated ourselves from within.
542
00:37:23,310 --> 00:37:25,387
Stew Albert - Founder member of Yippie Party - Basically the politics were lost
543
00:37:25,625 --> 00:37:30,081
and totally replaced by this lifestyle
544
00:37:31,002 --> 00:37:35,249
and then the desire to become deeper and deeper into the self.
545
00:37:35,812 --> 00:37:38,667
By now a grandiose sense of the self.
546
00:37:39,013 --> 00:37:44,094
And my good friend and one of the original Yippie founders Jerry Rubin
547
00:37:44,502 --> 00:37:47,342
definitely moved in that direction
548
00:37:47,625 --> 00:37:53,250
and I think he was beginning to buy into the notion that he could be happy
549
00:37:53,469 --> 00:37:56,264
and fully self-developed on his own.
550
00:37:57,459 --> 00:37:59,503
Socialism in one person.
551
00:38:03,642 --> 00:38:06,623
-Was he alone in that? -Although that of course is capitalism...
552
00:38:07,110 --> 00:38:10,345
Werner Erhard - Founder of EST - That's the whole joke.
553
00:38:11,720 --> 00:38:17,155
I think it's funny because people spend so much of their life
554
00:38:17,533 --> 00:38:21,503
being bedeviled by their past and being locked into their past,
555
00:38:21,720 --> 00:38:27,220
and being limited by their past, and there's an enormous freedom from that,
556
00:38:27,687 --> 00:38:30,094
letting people create themselves.
557
00:38:34,506 --> 00:38:38,221
EST was only the most vivid and intense expression of an ideal
558
00:38:38,221 --> 00:38:41,568
that was moving rapidly through all strata of American society.
559
00:38:42,408 --> 00:38:44,758
Books and television programs promoted the idea
560
00:38:45,006 --> 00:38:47,884
that one's first duty was to be one's self.
561
00:38:49,192 --> 00:38:52,036
And those monitoring this shift were astonished at the speed
562
00:38:52,036 --> 00:38:53,925
with which the idea was spreading.
563
00:38:54,832 --> 00:39:01,133
Daniel Yankelovich - Yankelovich Partners Market Research Inc. - In 1970 it was a small percentage of the total population,
564
00:39:01,133 --> 00:39:03,319
maybe 3 to 5 percent.
565
00:39:03,660 --> 00:39:11,885
By 1980 it had spread to the vast majority of the public up to 80 percent.
566
00:39:12,819 --> 00:39:15,287
-You asked the question: How do you get self-actualized?
567
00:39:15,287 --> 00:39:18,589
You take this day and you say: when I shave every morning
568
00:39:18,589 --> 00:39:21,037
I look in that mirror and I say to myself, I really say this, I say:
569
00:39:21,037 --> 00:39:24,913
Nobody is going to ruin this day for you, nobody!
570
00:39:25,133 --> 00:39:28,600
That this pre-occupation with the self and the inner self,
571
00:39:28,806 --> 00:39:33,622
traveled and spread throughout the society in the 1970s.
572
00:39:33,911 --> 00:39:37,624
He helped me to stop living in the past and start building from today
573
00:39:37,624 --> 00:39:42,290
and using my experiences in the past, to be a better person today and tomorrow
574
00:39:42,710 --> 00:39:47,289
But then the problem becomes: how do you be self-expressive?
575
00:39:49,470 --> 00:39:52,512
And it was at this point that American capitalism decided
576
00:39:52,512 --> 00:39:56,542
it was going to step in and help these individuals to express themselves
577
00:39:57,367 --> 00:39:59,790
and in the process make a lot of money.
578
00:40:00,915 --> 00:40:03,795
The first thing they were going to do was to find a way of
579
00:40:03,795 --> 00:40:07,640
getting inside their heads to discover what these new beings wanted
580
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:09,874
in order to be themselves.
581
00:40:10,169 --> 00:40:14,026
This came not from Madison Avenue but from one of the most powerful
582
00:40:14,026 --> 00:40:17,541
scientific research institutes in America.
583
00:40:17,790 --> 00:40:22,508
Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in California, worked for corporations and government.
584
00:40:22,766 --> 00:40:25,414
It had done much of the early work on computers
585
00:40:25,636 --> 00:40:28,102
and was also working for the department of defense
586
00:40:28,102 --> 00:40:30,814
on what would become the "Star Wars" project.
587
00:40:33,445 --> 00:40:37,541
In 1978 a group of economists and psychologists at SRI
588
00:40:37,813 --> 00:40:42,400
decided to find a way to read, measure, and fulfill the desires
589
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:45,024
of these new unpredictable consumers.
590
00:40:46,141 --> 00:40:52,578
Jay Ogilvy - Director of Psychological Values Research, SRI 1979-88 - The idea was to create a rigorous tool
591
00:40:52,578 --> 00:40:57,920
for measuring a whole range of desires, wishes, values,
592
00:40:58,127 --> 00:41:01,731
that prior to that time had been kind of overlooked.
593
00:41:01,952 --> 00:41:05,277
They say in business, you know, 'What gets measured, gets done'.
594
00:41:06,606 --> 00:41:09,733
We were basically telling manufacturers if you are really
595
00:41:09,733 --> 00:41:15,028
going to satisfy not just the basic needs but individuated wants,
596
00:41:15,267 --> 00:41:20,831
whims and desires of more highly developed human beings
597
00:41:21,078 --> 00:41:25,203
you are going to have to segment, you are going to have to individuate.
598
00:41:25,817 --> 00:41:30,486
To do this, SRI turned for help to those who had begun the liberation of the self.
599
00:41:31,294 --> 00:41:34,028
In particular, one of the leaders of the human potential movement,
600
00:41:34,405 --> 00:41:37,204
a psychologist called Abraham Maslow.
601
00:41:37,757 --> 00:41:40,578
Through the observing the work of places like Esalen,
602
00:41:40,578 --> 00:41:44,019
Maslow had invented a new system of psychological types.
603
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:48,548
He called it the hierarchy of needs, and it described
604
00:41:48,548 --> 00:41:51,260
the different emotional stages that people had went through
605
00:41:51,485 --> 00:41:53,476
as they liberated their feelings.
606
00:41:53,476 --> 00:41:56,398
At the top was self-actualization.
607
00:41:56,604 --> 00:41:58,359
This was the point at which individuals
608
00:41:58,359 --> 00:42:01,987
became completely self-directed and free of society.
609
00:42:05,659 --> 00:42:08,758
The team at SRI thought that Maslow's hierarchy
610
00:42:08,758 --> 00:42:12,238
might form a basis for a new way to categorize society.
611
00:42:13,240 --> 00:42:17,991
Not by social class, but by different psychological desires and drives.
612
00:42:19,113 --> 00:42:22,721
To test this, they designed a huge questionnaire with hundreds of questions
613
00:42:22,923 --> 00:42:26,675
about how people saw themselves - their inner values.
614
00:42:27,242 --> 00:42:31,911
The questions were designed to see whether people fitted into Maslow's categories.
615
00:42:32,670 --> 00:42:36,084
Amina Marie Spengler - Director Psychological Values Research Program 1978-86 - We were trying to find out what people really felt like.
616
00:42:36,084 --> 00:42:40,550
So we asked these really penetrating questions and we hired a company
617
00:42:40,774 --> 00:42:43,910
that administers surveys to do them and
618
00:42:43,904 --> 00:42:46,435
they said they had never seen anything like it.
619
00:42:46,676 --> 00:42:50,404
Usually you have to send out a postcard and then in six weeks another postcard
620
00:42:50,607 --> 00:42:53,612
and then you have to call the people up, you know to get the return rates up,
621
00:42:53,841 --> 00:42:58,344
we had an 86 percent return and they only sent out a postcard.
622
00:42:58,550 --> 00:43:01,277
People loved filling out this questionnaire.
623
00:43:01,277 --> 00:43:05,202
We got several questionnaires back with a note attached saying:
624
00:43:05,202 --> 00:43:07,781
do you have any other questionnaires I can fill out?
625
00:43:07,781 --> 00:43:11,836
Because we were asking people to think about things that
626
00:43:11,836 --> 00:43:15,703
they had never thought about before and they liked thinking about them.
627
00:43:15,937 --> 00:43:22,532
Like what they felt inside, what motivated them, what was their life about,
628
00:43:23,315 --> 00:43:27,031
what was important to them. It was sort of like, wow.
629
00:43:27,766 --> 00:43:29,956
The answers were then analyzed by computer.
630
00:43:30,501 --> 00:43:34,469
It revealed there were underlying patterns in the way people felt about themselves
631
00:43:34,805 --> 00:43:36,878
which fitted Maslow's categories.
632
00:43:37,140 --> 00:43:40,251
And at the top of the hierarchy were a large and growing group
633
00:43:40,461 --> 00:43:42,877
which cut across all social classes.
634
00:43:43,221 --> 00:43:46,347
The SRI called them the inner directives.
635
00:43:46,691 --> 00:43:49,662
These were people who felt they were not defined by their place in society
636
00:43:49,973 --> 00:43:52,657
but by the choices they made themselves.
637
00:43:54,097 --> 00:43:57,784
But what SRI discovered was that these people could be defined
638
00:43:58,036 --> 00:44:02,284
by the different patterns of behavior through which they chose to express themselves.
639
00:44:03,284 --> 00:44:05,269
Self expression was not infinite,
640
00:44:05,559 --> 00:44:08,757
it fell into identifiable types.
641
00:44:10,630 --> 00:44:14,550
The SRI team invented a new term for it - lifestyles.
642
00:44:15,350 --> 00:44:17,944
They had managed to categorize the new individualism.
643
00:44:18,629 --> 00:44:23,579
They called their system "Values and Lifestyles", VALs for short.
644
00:44:25,336 --> 00:44:28,322
At the forefront of this change are three new VALs groups,
645
00:44:28,586 --> 00:44:30,715
groups we call inner directed.
646
00:44:30,715 --> 00:44:33,802
These are people for whom personal satisfaction is more important
647
00:44:33,802 --> 00:44:35,411
than status or money.
648
00:44:35,411 --> 00:44:39,104
They tend to be self expressive, complex, and individualistic.
649
00:44:43,930 --> 00:44:48,288
Rob is an I-am-me. I am me's are searching for new values,
650
00:44:48,495 --> 00:44:51,762
breaking away from traditions and inventing their own standards.
651
00:44:51,762 --> 00:44:55,071
Rob even invented his own name - Rob Noxious.
652
00:44:55,538 --> 00:44:59,761
Jody is an Experiential. This is a group seeking inner growth
653
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:01,999
through direct experience.
654
00:45:01,999 --> 00:45:05,663
Experientials are in one place much, this is the try-anything-once crowd,
655
00:45:05,663 --> 00:45:08,353
and all that activity takes goods and services.
656
00:45:08,353 --> 00:45:11,404
Their hobbies are hands-on and their possessions are simple
657
00:45:11,404 --> 00:45:13,512
but not always simply priced.
658
00:45:16,039 --> 00:45:18,853
Societally Conscious - I'm a bookseller, I sell books,
659
00:45:19,980 --> 00:45:25,917
I'm a businessman, but that doesn't necessarily mean that
660
00:45:25,917 --> 00:45:29,436
I believe in capitalism, it just happens to be what I am doing now.
661
00:45:30,751 --> 00:45:34,915
SRI created a simplified questionnaire with just 30 key questions.
662
00:45:35,290 --> 00:45:37,680
Anyone who answered them could be immediately be fitted
663
00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:40,531
into a dozen or so, of these groups.
664
00:45:41,858 --> 00:45:44,776
It allowed businesses to identify which groups were buying their products
665
00:45:45,093 --> 00:45:47,273
and from that how the goods could be marketed
666
00:45:47,503 --> 00:45:51,906
so they became powerful emblems of those groups inner values and lifestyles.
667
00:45:52,391 --> 00:45:54,356
It was the beginning of lifestyle marketing.
668
00:45:55,620 --> 00:46:00,199
Amina Marie Spengler - Director Psychological Values Research Program 1978-86 - So it allowed people not just to look at people as demographics
669
00:46:00,199 --> 00:46:03,981
groups of age and income or whatever, but to really understand
670
00:46:03,981 --> 00:46:06,202
the underlying motivations.
671
00:46:06,202 --> 00:46:09,606
I mean most of marketing was looking at people's actions
672
00:46:09,818 --> 00:46:13,027
and trying to figure out what to do, but what we were doing was
673
00:46:13,027 --> 00:46:16,168
we were trying to look at people's underlying values
674
00:46:16,168 --> 00:46:19,108
so that we could predict what is their lifestyle,
675
00:46:19,340 --> 00:46:22,577
what kind of house did they live in, what kind of car did they drive.
676
00:46:22,781 --> 00:46:26,601
So the corporations were then able to sell things to them
677
00:46:26,851 --> 00:46:31,565
by understanding them, by having labels, by knowing what people looked like,
678
00:46:31,565 --> 00:46:33,798
by where they lived, by what their lifestyles are.
679
00:46:34,470 --> 00:46:38,862
If a new product expressed a particular group's values, it would be bought them.
680
00:46:39,335 --> 00:46:42,205
This is what made the Values and Lifestyles system so powerful.
681
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:46,897
It's ability to predict what new products, self-actualizers would choose.
682
00:46:47,962 --> 00:46:50,584
This power was about to be demonstrated dramatically.
683
00:46:50,963 --> 00:46:54,012
VALs was about to show not just what products they would buy,
684
00:46:54,276 --> 00:46:57,677
but the politicians they were going to choose to elect.
685
00:46:58,848 --> 00:47:05,022
Ladies and gentleman, the next president of the USA - Ronald Reagan!
686
00:47:05,365 --> 00:47:07,991
In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran for president.
687
00:47:08,379 --> 00:47:11,365
He and his advisors were convinced they could win on a program
688
00:47:11,365 --> 00:47:13,418
of a new individualism.
689
00:47:13,418 --> 00:47:17,568
It would be an attack on 50 years of government interference in people's lives.
690
00:47:21,211 --> 00:47:26,056
Jeffery Bell - Speech writer for Ronald Reagan 1976-81 - I wrote a speech about let the people make the basic decisions,
691
00:47:26,056 --> 00:47:29,076
get judges out of the way, get bureaucrats out of the way,
692
00:47:29,076 --> 00:47:31,329
get centralized government out of the way.
693
00:47:31,329 --> 00:47:34,213
I gave Reagan a choice of several titles for the speech,
694
00:47:34,213 --> 00:47:39,274
and the one he picked was Let the People Rule, Let the People Regain Rule,
695
00:47:39,274 --> 00:47:41,590
regain control over their own destiny
696
00:47:41,590 --> 00:47:45,120
away from a remote elite in Washington.
697
00:47:45,994 --> 00:47:51,026
I would like to think that the kind of leadership that I would exercise in Washington
698
00:47:51,306 --> 00:47:53,882
is not the kind of leadership that I would pretend
699
00:47:53,882 --> 00:47:56,868
that I can solve all the problems I've been discussing here
700
00:47:57,369 --> 00:48:00,026
but that together, you and I can...
701
00:48:00,026 --> 00:48:02,809
I would like to be, to take the lead
702
00:48:02,809 --> 00:48:05,967
in taking government off the backs of the American people
703
00:48:06,135 --> 00:48:08,107
and turning you loose...
704
00:48:10,069 --> 00:48:11,649
It was radical.
705
00:48:11,928 --> 00:48:16,868
Modern Republicans thought it was suicide, Jimmy Carter called it ridiculous,
706
00:48:17,070 --> 00:48:21,118
the press was extremely negative, but the odd thing was that
707
00:48:21,118 --> 00:48:25,966
it polled it very well in New Hampshire, the first primary state that we had to win.
708
00:48:26,765 --> 00:48:31,383
What was odd was there seemed to be a strange mosaic of support for Reagan's policies.
709
00:48:32,343 --> 00:48:35,118
The traditional pollsters could see no coherent pattern
710
00:48:35,369 --> 00:48:37,775
across class, age or gender.
711
00:48:39,207 --> 00:48:41,780
But those who had designed the Values and Lifestyles system
712
00:48:42,032 --> 00:48:44,026
believed that they knew why.
713
00:48:44,496 --> 00:48:47,244
They were testing their system in both America and Britain
714
00:48:47,496 --> 00:48:50,839
and they were convinced that both Reagan's and Thatcher's message
715
00:48:50,839 --> 00:48:55,203
about individual freedom would appeal to the group at the top of their hierarchy,
716
00:48:55,668 --> 00:49:00,370
the inner directeds, because it fitted with the way they saw themselves.
717
00:49:00,686 --> 00:49:04,546
Christine MacNulty - Program Manager - SRI Values and Lifestyles Team 1978-81 - They were really concerned about being individuals,
718
00:49:04,546 --> 00:49:07,020
about being individualistic,
719
00:49:07,229 --> 00:49:11,395
and so in the early stages when we were looking at the messages
720
00:49:11,395 --> 00:49:14,654
that both Thatcher and Reagan were putting across
721
00:49:14,967 --> 00:49:20,429
we said they are using words that will really appeal to a lot of younger people
722
00:49:20,429 --> 00:49:25,433
and particularly to the people who are moving towards self-actualization.
723
00:49:25,638 --> 00:49:28,019
We called them the inner directed people.
724
00:49:28,247 --> 00:49:32,467
A lot of our colleagues said that's absolutely ridiculous
725
00:49:32,467 --> 00:49:37,138
because inner directeds are very socially aware, very socially concerned,
726
00:49:37,598 --> 00:49:43,285
they'll never vote conservative, or they'll never vote for the Republicans,
727
00:49:43,867 --> 00:49:48,938
but we said if Thatcher and Reagan continue to appeal to them in this way
728
00:49:48,938 --> 00:49:50,471
they really will.
729
00:50:00,641 --> 00:50:03,534
The idea that the new self actualizing individuals
730
00:50:03,534 --> 00:50:07,655
would choose a politician from the right, not the left, seemed extraordinary.
731
00:50:08,751 --> 00:50:11,578
To test their prediction the values and lifestyles team
732
00:50:11,869 --> 00:50:15,112
did a survey of voting intentions and they correlated it
733
00:50:15,379 --> 00:50:17,659
with their new psychological categories.
734
00:50:18,378 --> 00:50:21,627
Christine MacNulty - Program Manager - SRI Values and Lifestyles Team 1978-81 - When we said in our surveys
735
00:50:21,627 --> 00:50:25,347
who are you going to vote for, sure enough it was the inner directeds
736
00:50:25,347 --> 00:50:28,150
that said they were going to vote for Thatcher and for Reagan.
737
00:50:28,150 --> 00:50:33,118
And they made the difference in those elections. because of their voting for Thatcher and Reagan..
738
00:50:34,118 --> 00:50:36,711
And it really surprised my colleagues even within my own organization.
739
00:50:38,489 --> 00:50:40,629
It really showed the power of this approach
740
00:50:40,877 --> 00:50:45,373
because it's very difficult to identify inner directed on the street.
741
00:50:47,092 --> 00:50:50,487
These people who voted for Thatcher and Reagan, these inner directeds,
742
00:50:50,689 --> 00:50:52,980
came from any walk of life.
743
00:50:52,980 --> 00:50:56,288
It's really hardly correlated in social class at all.
744
00:50:57,430 --> 00:51:00,777
I mean if you just go along and look at age, sex, and social class,
745
00:51:01,714 --> 00:51:03,473
you would never pick them up.
746
00:51:03,943 --> 00:51:07,743
But if you really go along with a questionnaire that gets at their values
747
00:51:07,944 --> 00:51:13,697
then you can identify them very easily, and that was completely new.
748
00:51:15,356 --> 00:51:19,757
At the beginning of 1981, Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president.
749
00:51:20,288 --> 00:51:23,896
But he took charge of a country that was facing economic disaster.
750
00:51:24,786 --> 00:51:26,726
The terrible inflation of the 1970s
751
00:51:26,982 --> 00:51:29,853
destroyed much of America's traditional heavy industries.
752
00:51:30,164 --> 00:51:32,573
Millions were unemployed.
753
00:51:32,816 --> 00:51:35,710
But true to his campaign promises, Reagan told the country
754
00:51:35,946 --> 00:51:40,042
he would not step into help as all previous governments had since the war.
755
00:51:40,915 --> 00:51:46,762
These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions.
756
00:51:47,539 --> 00:51:51,218
We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations
757
00:51:51,218 --> 00:51:53,105
in our national history.
758
00:51:53,372 --> 00:51:56,648
Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment,
759
00:51:56,648 --> 00:51:59,731
human misery, and personal indignity.
760
00:51:59,731 --> 00:52:04,762
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem;
761
00:52:05,449 --> 00:52:07,963
government is the problem.
762
00:52:08,821 --> 00:52:12,744
But America's ailing economy was about to be rescued not by government,
763
00:52:12,744 --> 00:52:16,127
but by the new groups market researchers had identified,
764
00:52:16,512 --> 00:52:18,951
the self actualizing individuals.
765
00:52:19,282 --> 00:52:23,233
They were about to become the motor for what would be called the new economy.
766
00:52:24,824 --> 00:52:27,972
You can be what you wanna be!
767
00:52:28,494 --> 00:52:34,434
-So, ..., what do you really want? -A tasty product that's good for me...
768
00:52:34,724 --> 00:52:36,444
-What do you want that for?
769
00:52:36,951 --> 00:52:39,387
Renee M. Love Chairman and CEO Omega Group Inc. - One technique is that we ask people the same question
770
00:52:39,387 --> 00:52:40,871
over and over again.
771
00:52:40,871 --> 00:52:44,127
We say what do you want, what do you really want, what do you want that for
772
00:52:44,127 --> 00:52:48,534
and they start to talk about it and they kind of get intimate with what's going on.
773
00:52:48,797 --> 00:52:51,826
What we're doing with that technique is unpeeling the onion.
774
00:52:52,419 --> 00:52:54,374
If you want to think of a person as having
775
00:52:54,374 --> 00:52:57,784
layers and layers and layers of protection, thoughts and belief,
776
00:52:57,784 --> 00:52:59,740
we want to get to the center core.
777
00:52:59,740 --> 00:53:02,536
In the wake of the invention of Values and Lifestyles
778
00:53:02,873 --> 00:53:05,889
a vast industry of psychological market research grew out.
779
00:53:07,379 --> 00:53:11,036
And the old technique of the focus group invented by the Freudian psychoanalysts
780
00:53:11,036 --> 00:53:14,349
of the 50s, was used in a new and powerful way.
781
00:53:15,562 --> 00:53:18,553
The original aim of the focus group had been to find ways
782
00:53:18,553 --> 00:53:22,505
to entice people to buy a limited range of mass-produced goods.
783
00:53:23,297 --> 00:53:25,578
But now focus groups were used in a different way,
784
00:53:25,818 --> 00:53:28,615
to explore the inner feelings of lifestyle groups
785
00:53:28,890 --> 00:53:32,478
and out of that invent whole new ranges of products
786
00:53:32,478 --> 00:53:36,729
which would allow those groups to express what they felt was their individuality.
787
00:53:38,110 --> 00:53:41,326
And the generation who had once rebelled against the conformity
788
00:53:41,326 --> 00:53:46,204
imposed by consumerism, now embraced it because it helped them to be themselves.
789
00:53:47,487 --> 00:53:51,767
Stew Albert - Founder member of Yippie Party - What capitalism managed to do that was brilliant
790
00:53:51,767 --> 00:53:56,369
was to actually create products that people like me would be interested in.
791
00:53:56,369 --> 00:53:59,083
That people like Jerry Rubin would be interested in.
792
00:53:59,083 --> 00:54:03,709
Capitalism developed a whole industry at developing products
793
00:54:03,709 --> 00:54:06,363
that evoke a larger sense of self,
794
00:54:07,238 --> 00:54:11,664
that seemed to agree with us that the self was infinite,
795
00:54:11,664 --> 00:54:13,770
that you could be anything that you wanted to be.
796
00:54:13,770 --> 00:54:16,393
That took our philosophy and agreed with it.
797
00:54:16,721 --> 00:54:23,817
And than created products that supposedly helped you, aids, they helped you be this limitless self.
798
00:54:24,802 --> 00:54:28,145
The product sells you a way of life, a way of being.
799
00:54:29,041 --> 00:54:30,760
The products sells you values.
800
00:54:31,744 --> 00:54:37,819
You dress this way, you live in a house like this, you have furniture like this,
801
00:54:38,021 --> 00:54:39,825
you use this computer,
802
00:54:49,076 --> 00:54:52,480
you eat in these restaurants, there are values there.
803
00:54:52,695 --> 00:54:55,505
Hipness, coolness, so the notion that you could buy an identity
804
00:55:02,795 --> 00:55:06,621
would place the original movement notion that you were perfectly free
805
00:55:06,621 --> 00:55:08,588
to create an identity.
806
00:55:08,902 --> 00:55:10,829
And you were perfectly free to change the world
807
00:55:10,829 --> 00:55:12,962
and make the world anything that you wanted it to be.
808
00:55:13,242 --> 00:55:17,024
Well, what I wear is ...a statement...
809
00:55:19,214 --> 00:55:24,573
And this vast range of new desires fitted perfectly with changes in industrial production.
810
00:55:25,681 --> 00:55:28,775
Computers now allowed manufacturers to economically produce
811
00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:31,706
short runs of consumer goods.
812
00:55:32,152 --> 00:55:34,994
The old restrictions of mass production disappeared,
813
00:55:35,510 --> 00:55:38,246
as did the worry that bedeviled corporate America
814
00:55:38,466 --> 00:55:41,045
ever since mass production had been invented.
815
00:55:41,258 --> 00:55:43,354
That they would produce too many goods.
816
00:55:43,936 --> 00:55:47,436
With the new self consumer desire seemed to have no limit.
817
00:55:47,716 --> 00:55:53,149
Daniel Yankelovich - Yankelovich Partners Market Research Inc. - In the United States the concern of companies was always
818
00:55:53,149 --> 00:55:56,028
that supply would outstrip demand.
819
00:55:56,250 --> 00:56:01,403
That we were producing too much and that there was not a market for it.
820
00:56:01,732 --> 00:56:04,775
You don't hear that kind of talk anymore
821
00:56:05,061 --> 00:56:10,436
because you've gone from a conception of a market of limited needs,
822
00:56:10,885 --> 00:56:12,958
and if you've filled them they're filled,
823
00:56:13,185 --> 00:56:17,125
to a market of unlimited ever changing needs
824
00:56:17,125 --> 00:56:22,154
dominated by self-expressiveness, that products and services
825
00:56:22,374 --> 00:56:28,313
can satisfy in an endless variety of ways and ways that change all the time.
826
00:56:29,459 --> 00:56:33,738
And consequently economies have unlimited horizons.
827
00:56:35,969 --> 00:56:40,233
Out of this explosion of desire came what seemed a never ending consumer boom
828
00:56:40,233 --> 00:56:42,686
that regenerated the American economy.
829
00:56:44,937 --> 00:56:47,868
The original idea had been that the liberation of the self
830
00:56:48,095 --> 00:56:52,084
would create news kinds of people free of social constraint.
831
00:56:53,615 --> 00:56:56,206
That radical change had happened.
832
00:56:56,422 --> 00:57:00,500
But while the new beings felt liberated, they had become increasingly dependent
833
00:57:00,500 --> 00:57:03,065
for their identity on business.
834
00:57:04,740 --> 00:57:08,063
The corporations had realized that it was in their interest
835
00:57:08,063 --> 00:57:11,556
to encourage people to feel that they were unique individuals
836
00:57:11,556 --> 00:57:15,130
and then offer them ways to express that individuality.
837
00:57:15,505 --> 00:57:19,118
The world in which people felt they were rebelling against conformity
838
00:57:19,411 --> 00:57:23,566
was not a threat to business but its greatest opportunity.
839
00:57:29,438 --> 00:57:32,878
Robert Reich - Economist and member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - It was in a sense the triumph of the self,
840
00:57:33,131 --> 00:57:36,088
it was the triumph of a certain self indulgence,
841
00:57:36,088 --> 00:57:41,804
a view that everything in the world and all moral judgment
842
00:57:42,005 --> 00:57:47,134
was appropriately viewed through the lens of personal satisfaction.
843
00:57:47,613 --> 00:57:53,444
Indeed, the ultimate ending point of that logic is that there is no society,
844
00:57:54,305 --> 00:57:58,496
there is only a bunch of individual people making individual choices
845
00:57:58,496 --> 00:58:01,411
to promote their own individual well being.
846
00:58:08,006 --> 00:58:11,506
Next week's episode tells the story of how politicians on the left
847
00:58:11,757 --> 00:58:16,146
in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business
848
00:58:16,445 --> 00:58:18,476
in order to regain power.
849
00:58:19,351 --> 00:58:23,123
But what they didn't realize, was what had worked for business
850
00:58:23,123 --> 00:58:26,599
would undermine the very basis of their political beliefs.
851
00:58:27,039 --> 00:58:32,288
They would find themselves trapped by the greedy desires of the new self.
852
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:36,000
Time synch (+2.7s), spellcheck, and (some) edits by coyote 26December2011
853
00:58:36,001 --> 00:58:39,600
from version uploaded to Subscene.com 18October2010 by subsred
84167
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