Were the moon landings faked? Did George W. arrange the 9/11 thing? Are the Baha'is going to unite all world religions? HAVE YOU WON A FREE IPOD?
It's great isn't it? It's all really interesting stuff and really exciting.
And then there's a little questionaire.
I studied psychology at college. I didn't do very well for several reasons - among them; sexual politics (Sexual politics? Sexual politics? If there are two concepts that should never try and be bedfellows they are sex and politics), boring teachers and more sexual politics (dang).
I got an 'F'.
Or was it a 'U'?
Mebbe it was an 'FU'.
Anyways, the way psychology was presented to me was as a scientific endeavour to understand the human mind and the human condition. It seemed that since psychology's beginnings there had a been a huge amount of heavily funded research into things like perception, motivation, behaviour...all that shit, 'mind as machine' shit. And it all seemed very interesting...Loads of guys in labs wiring up dogs and students and getting them to do all sorts of stuff and doing all sorts of stuff to them. And they seemed to be coming up with all sorts of interesting answers...they could tell you why you see invisible white triangles, they could show you how 'bad' people could be if you gave them uniforms, they could even teach monkeys sign language. Cute.
Now, as I said, I didn't do very well in class so my facts might not be rock solid on this next bit;
My view of psychology now is this:
Most of the famous psychological research was funded by the american government in response to things that they saw happening to their soldiers at the hands of the Koreans with their 'brainwashing' techniques. Someone was able to get to their troops, which they had put there at enormous cost to themselves, and completely undermine all their training and preparation without firing any guns. All, apparently, with a few well placed 'fliers' and a sympathetic looking dude behind a desk.
They didn't like that.
They did, however, like the idea that you could manipulate and subvert not just people's wants and desires but their fundamental beliefs, their ideas...and shit. And that seemed, to them, to be worth looking into in great detail.
What did they find out?
Not fucking much.
To my mind the upshot of all that money being spent, all those unnecessary lobotamies, and all those monkeys chatting away in sign language is this:
You can now walk down any street with shops on it and pay about three quid for a coffee.
Yup, that's it.
Starbucks.
Ipods.
Advertising.
That's all you get.
That and maybe a few footnotes in boot camp training manuals (teach them how to fold up their pants BEFORE you give them the gun).
So yeah, there's all this information out there for free. Who puts it there? Why are they being so nice? Well because they love you of course. And they love that three quid that you're hardly going to notice spending.
So next time you fill out some form online (those personality tests are fun, aren't they?) or tell a stranger your email address, don't worry...it's not the beginning of the end, it's not an erosion of your civil liberties to have a store loyalty card. They just want to get to know you, to get to know you so that they can help you. If they know who you are and where you live they can make sure that there's one of those lovely coffee shops right outside your house. Cool, eh?
Look, it's no big deal...you don't want it to happen? Don't buy the coffee.
Tell you what, come round mine, I'm just about to make some.
It's only two quid.
If you have two you can have them for three quid.
Oh, do you like cakes? I've got some really nice ones here.
They're four quid.
Tell you what, why don't you take this empty book away with you and every time you come back and have two more coffees I'll put a little tick in the book and when you come back with all seven hundred pages filled up with little ticks I'll give you another coffee for free! Or two more for one quid. Or two more and a slice of cake for three quid.
Washoe, over there, will take care of your order. When she does this with her hands [gestures] that means, 'Your coffee is ready'.
Help yourself to milk and sugar.
