The first episode (below) explores the impact of attempts to control cultural memory in the run up to the Nuremburg trials and its later impact on the West German state, though later episodes here and here focus on how attempts were made to erase, amend or even create new memories in individuals and entire societies.

My favourite bit in the series is the slightly comedic revelation in episode two that in the 1950s the CIA spent $25 million dollars on Acoustic Kitty, essentially a cat fitted with a recording device used for eavesdropping purposes.  Things didn’t quite go to plan, however, as during its first test mission the poor moggy was run over by a taxi when it tried to cross the street.  Meow.

Adam Curtis‘ acclaimed series examines the rise of the all-consuming self against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty.

“The Century of the Self”, reveals the intricacies of psycho-manipulative social engineering through propaganda. Propaganda is a type of communication which is aimed at influencing a community toward a  cause. Media utilizes propaganda by constantly dispersing certain information over a wide spectrum of mainstream media outlets (e.g.:ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News) or more recently internet social networks (e.g:Facebook and Twitter) to sequester the desired attitudes from it.

“It”, or the emotional cue contemporarily may be like the succinctly charged statement ” War on Terror” which evokes conditioned visions of 9/11. Or more recently the foiled underwear bomber. These reminders consistently played over time through all strata of media fearfully allow us to give away our 4th and 5th Amendment liberties away for invasive T.S.A. (Transportation Safety Administration) naked body scanners and pat downs at airports.

The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

The Freud dynasty is at the heart of this compelling social history. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis; Edward Bernays, who invented public relations; Anna Freud, Sigmund‘s devoted daughter; and present-day PR guru and Sigmund’s great grandson, Matthew Freud.

Sigmund Freud’s work into the bubbling and murky world of the subconscious changed the world. By introducing a technique to probe the unconscious mind, Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the precursor to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls, and society’s belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness is humanity’s ultimate goal.

Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.

His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle Freud had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.

This programme looked into the selfish gene theory which holds that humans are machines controlled by genes which was invented by William Hamilton. Adam Curtis also covered the source of ethnic conflict that was created by Belgian colonialism’s artificial creation of a racial divide and the ensuing slaughter that occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is a source of raw material for computers and cell phones.

This episode investigates how machine ideas such as cybernetics and systems theory were applied to natural ecosystems, and how this relates to the false idea that there is a balance of nature.

In the first episode, Curtis tracks the effects of Ayn Rand’s ideas on American financial markets, particularly via the influence on Alan Greenspan.

By the 80s, the day of the buccaneering tycoons was over. Tiny Rowland, James Goldsmith and Mohammed Al Fayed were the only ones who were not finished.

This episode recounts the story of how James Goldsmith became one of the richest men in the world by taking over some of the biggest corporations in America.

Unreported and almost unseen approach that capital and capital markets have taken since 1945 to gradually take control of the political systems of the USA and the United Kingdom. Adam Curtis outlines several key points and analyses at great length various events and personalities.

This is a documentary series on how City of London bankers systematically dismantled British industry from the 1960s-90s and removed the power of the state to protect people from the greed of the market.

This episode was named after a 1953 General Electric propaganda film that explained nuclear power and features artfully chosen footage from this film.[6] The episode is an insight into the history of nuclear power. In the 1950s scientists and politicians thought they could create a different world with a limitless source of nuclear energy. But things began to go wrong.

A look at how Kwame Nkrumah, the leader of the Gold Coast (which became Ghana on independence) from 1952 to 1966, set Africa ablaze with his vision of a new industrial and scientific age. At the heart of his dream was to be the huge Volta dam, generating enough power to transform West Africa into an industrialized utopia.

This part focuses on attitudes to nature and tells the story of the insecticide DDT, which was first seen as a savior to humankind in the 1940s, only to be claimed as a part of the destruction of the entire ecosystem in the late 60s. It also outlines how the sciences of entomology and ecology were transformed by political and economic pressures.

This film focuses on how both the Conservative and Labour governments of the 1960s attempted to use economists to engineer economic growth to specific targets, as well as programme post-war economic management in the United Kingdom, and attempts to prevent relative economic decline and the perception of the 1960s Wilson governments that devaluation would jeopardize against national self-esteem.

This episode outlines how the US government attempted to use systems analysis and game theory to develop strategies to control the nuclear threat and nuclear arms race during the Cold War.

This episode details how the Bolshevik revolutionaries who came into power in 1917 attempted to industrialize and control the Soviet Union with rational scientific methods. The Bolsheviks wanted to turn the Soviet people into scientific beings.

In this episode, the Imperial aspirations of Margaret Thatcher were examined. The way in which Mrs Thatcher used public relations in an attempt to emulate Winston Churchill in harking back to Britain’s “glorious past” to fulfil a political or national end.

In this episode, the history of brainwashing and mind control was examined. The angle pursued by Adam Curtis was the way in which psychiatry historically pursued tabula rasa theories of the mind, initially in order to set people free from traumatic memories and then later as a potential instrument of social control.

In this episode, Adam Curtis examines how the various national memories of the Second World War were effectively rewritten and manipulated in the Cold War period.

Follows the story of the cells of Henriettta Lacks. She dies in 1951 of cancer, before she died cells were removed from her body and cultivated in a laboratory in the hope that they could help find a cure for cancer. The cells (known as the HeLa line) have been growing ever since, and the scientists found that they were growing in ways they could not control.

During the era of decolonization, Western colonial powers tried to maintain control of their holdings, either through direct military intervention or through more subtle economic tactics. Local leaders were often supported if they agreed to repress popular uprisings, especially those motivated by the desire for democracy. Often times the Cold War offered Western powers a pretext for their draconian measures: “Perhaps we’re supporting a tyrant but it’s necessary. If we don’t keep control at whatever the cost, then this country might go red and fall in line with the communists. These puppet dictators are a means to an end–albeit a noble end.”  This happened in South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Those with a more cynical view on the matter suggest that these harsh and repressive Western-supported tactics were done to guarantee “client states”; that is, states who would be beholden to Western interests and who would supply natural resources (ie. oil) as conveniently and cheaply as possible.

Read/Watch this Adam Curtis blog from the BBC. In it he takes a look at the repressive history in Bahrain and Britain’s involvement in it.

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom is a BBC documentary series by English filmmaker Adam Curtis, well known for other documentaries including The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares. The final programme focussed on the concepts of positive and negative liberty introduced in the 1950s by Isaiah Berlin. Curtis briefly explained how negative liberty could be defined as freedom from coercion and positive liberty as the opportunity to strive to fulfill one’s potential.

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom is a BBC documentary series by English filmmaker Adam Curtis, well known for other documentaries including The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares. The second episode reiterated many of the ideas of the first, but developed the theme that drugs such as Prozac and lists of psychological symptoms which might indicate anxiety or depression were being used to normalise behaviour and make humans behave more predictably, like machines.

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom is a BBC documentary series by English filmmaker Adam Curtis, well known for other documentaries including The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares. In this episode, Curtis examines the rise of game theory during the Cold War and the way in which its mathematical models of human behaviour filtered into economic thought

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blindly trust the world system I was born into and living in, because I was taught that the government is here to care for all us, to ensure that everything that requires fine-tuning to support the well being of individual’s lives and that all actions required execute this are conducted with no delay or hesitation, wherein all forms of poverty that I would witness in my surroundings became the acceptance of that which I thought was ‘unchangeable,’ because of believing that: if the government is here to protect us all, there must be something creating a great obstacle that is making it very difficult to change the current status of poverty in this country, and within that complying to the idea that there were ‘problems’ in the system that could not be solved, without realizing only the greed and desire for power over others were such ‘great obstacles’ that still remain as a way to justify the inequality in this world.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blindly believe that there were actual ‘impossible’ things to do/ conduct in order to create an actual well-being for all living beings in my world and reality, wherein I had deposited all faith that the government was doing all that they could in order to solve the problems in the world, without realizing that the government is simply the representation of our own abdication to us participating in the decision making and the responsibility that should be inherent to all individuals by mere virtue of coexisting as equal parts of this reality, wherein no ‘single organ’ can be made responsible for all the decision making and the actions to solve any problem – within this

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blindly accept ‘problems’ in the system as if it was an inevitable outflow of living in a world with many people, without ever questioning how it is that such problems have prevailed throughout history and there has been No Change and no definitive solution to them, wherein I accepted the inherent flawed quality of a system as a reality that could not be stopped, because of believing that politicians, people that were in charge of the institutions, law making and execution of justice were in fact doing ‘the best they could’ to solve such problems – without ever realizing that as long as there is a superior power over any form of law, principle or authority as what Money represents, we have abdicated our very own ‘right to live,’ and diminished it to a single side-viewed low-end experience of ‘living’ as survival-mode within a system wherein all problems stem from the inherent disregard of each others’ as equals.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to suppress the questions and observations about the world system that I had, because of the believe that I should trust that everything that is toward the benefit of all is invariably conducted to do so, without ever pondering why it is that we could have millionaires with exorbitant quantities of money – even more than ‘governments’ themselves – and have extreme poverty and starvation on the other side of the coin, which implies that the only interest that has always been at hand is greed and desire for power that is stronger than any best-for-all common sensical proposal that could benefit all individuals equally – within this

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to accept a world of extreme polarities such as wealth and starvation wherein the reality of ‘who I am’ is defined according to being in one point in between such monetarily-defined polarities wherein we have deemed ourselves as ‘not powerful enough’ to take responsibility for what we have accepted and allowed as a world-system

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that poverty was a real ‘problem’ that had skim to none solutions, while making it acceptable to see massive deployment of wars conducted with exorbitant amounts of resources, wherein the belief that ‘peace’ and the need for ‘defense’ against latent enemies had to be ‘prevented’ by waging wars before it happens, wherein I then accepted war as something more important than carrying out massive social enterprises to support millions of beings living in extreme conditions of poverty and starvation with no other means to fend for themselves but the occasional ‘food aid,’ while believing that I must trust what my government is doing and that ‘they know better,’ without realizing that this entire world system has been built upon abuse, to continue and perpetuate abuse, where no life has actually been supported in any way whatsoever

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become jaded to political decisions, wherein I made it ‘acceptable’ that wars were able to be conducted for decades, spending exorbitant amounts of money on weapons, sustaining military, living facilities abroad, chemical warfare investigation, all forms of supersonic transportations and the most Avant-garde technological research and production only in the name of waging wars/ killing people/ stealing resources – within this neglecting and deliberately ignoring the absolute common sense facts wherein: if there were real intentions to support human beings in extreme impoverishment = it would have been conducted  the same way that wars are executed promptly and using all necessary resources – even building the necessary means  to do so, wherein there is no skimping on funds to deploy massive operations where there is a juicy reward awaiting the final battle – whereas supporting fellow living beings in need would mean little-to-no benefit to those that would invest in taking entire countries out of chronic financial crisis and states of dependency to charity/ aid programs that didn’t, don’t and will not ever solve the problem at its root, which is not based on lacking resources or scarcity of means to distribute them, but simply not being willing to do so because there would be no profit-making out of supporting others –

I forgive myself that I have ever accepted and allowed myself to trust that the government/ the institutions were based on the benevolence to always ‘try and do good’ in this world, without ever actually investigating how all charity institutions and financial aid programs are based and created upon the sole purpose of re-inserting money back to the same monetary system that is preventing any form of real solution toward the billions of people that are having no means to live in dignity – within this

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to dumb myself, blind myself and deliberately follow the absurdity of living in a world where all necessary cutting of public expenses are conducted in the name of deploying troops overseas in the name of so-called defense of ‘homeland security’ and exterminating ‘all threats to our liberty,’ without ever questioning why is it that the focus is on protecting ourselves from a man-made thread as knowledge and information that I have accepted as ‘real,’ while the actual physical and tangible need and lack created through the same monetary system that is being defended through/ by wars, is side- viewed as a ‘non of our business’ social and political problem in ‘other sides of the world,’ yet being willing to help and ‘liberate’ others just because in doing that, the reward implies massive gain in and of resources that will add up to the never-ending conquering state of accumulating wealth as a means of control/ power, which we all as individuals have accepted and allowed as the ultimate way to conduct ourselves in reality: seeking to make the most our of anything and anyone to always win.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deliberately blind myself from investigating why wars are massively supported through psychological warfare, wherein fear is instilled as a form to trigger the most uncanny justifications to go and wage war against ‘an enemy’ that is also constructed in the name of vindicating the most vile acts in the name of power and control over and of money in this world, of which I as an individual have tacitly agreed upon the moment that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I only have the right to live if having enough money to do so – and in this, becoming part of the masses that justify all means to get to such desired end of being wealthy/ powerful and linking this to an inherent ‘well being’ and optimum condition of the human being, without ever realizing that the mere acceptance of power is implying obvious abuse toward those upon which power is exerted on.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself for having become a prey of my own fears when it comes to political warfare, as I had trusted that ‘the government/ people in power ‘know’ what they’re doing’ and within this blind faith and belief, never question their decisions as I thought that such national security defense-mechanisms were in fact to the benefit of protecting ‘myself’ and ‘my loved ones’ wherein I then, through accepting such threats as real, gave permission and support to the vindication of wars as a means to reinstate ‘peace,’ which means that I over-looked the actual needs and problems in this world that require massive attention ‘at home,’ and making myself belief that ‘the real problem’ was ‘outside’ of ourselves – in this

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be blinded by my own self interest, because: as long as ‘I’ am Not affected by such wars ‘at home’ – then I should not care/ worry or even ponder if it is the ‘right thing’ to do, because I am fine and being cared for  – thus it’s not my problem/ not of my interest – and through having followed this jaded perspective upon reality, I asserted myself as the selfish, self-seeking and self-indulgent individual that is willing to turn its back at the face of the most atrocious acts being conducted by self as fellow human beings, and walk way within the justification and excuse that ‘it’s not happening to me, why should I care?’ – wherein I then go back to my individual cave of security wherein money becomes the power to keep living in a self-interested greedy lifestyle, while in this same world, at the very same time, wars are being conducted in the name of keeping ‘my money’ as the ability to have power over others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blind any form of care and consideration to study and investigate the world system and how it actually functions, due to the belief that its operational mechanisms were ‘out of reach’ for me, wherein I accepted then myself to see the authority/ government/ points of control as ‘superior’ to myself, and in that only ‘surrendering’ to accept the system ‘as is’ because ‘at least I have what I need to have a comfortable happy-go-lucky lives wherein I can comfortably watch wars being televised while I remain having food on the table, water, toilet, food, care, education and even entertainment to believe that ‘everything is fine’ and that I should not worry as ‘others’ are taking care of it all’   which implies accepting money as my god and savior and absolute disregard for anything or anyone that is being abused in the name of my personal power and satisfaction as the ‘god’ that I’ve been taught I can be when having enough money in my pocket.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I could trust that other human beings that were in specific positions to do so, would take care of solving the massive problems of poverty, starvation and abuse through creating laws and executing social, political and economical policies that would benefit the well being of human beings without any hold or hesitation, disregarding the fact that I live in a world where wars/ killing people is conducted with more ease than supporting people in extreme conditions of poverty, famine and abuse.

I see, realize and understand now that I have accepted and allowed knowledge as a way to justify the most atrocious acts upon humanity/ ourselves in the name of money, and that I have been tacitly agreeing to it the moment that I have accepted this entire world-system of money to run ‘as is’ – which implies that the only solution to this world is becoming an equal participant in the decision making of policies that apply to all through the review of laws and principles that can ensure the well being of all beings is actually executed and never tampered in the name of personal interest as a deliberate act of abuse and oppression in the name of money.

I commit myself to continue educating myself about the world system and how it actually functions, as I see and realize that this is the first step to ensure that I take responsibility to correct all the points that I had blindly accepted and allowed as laws, policies and enforcements that denigrated, abused and violated life in all ways – and within this, become the solution by first educating myself to become an active participant within the decision making in the world wherein within living in and by an equality-as-life principle, no further abuse will ever be perpetrated in the name of ‘power’ and ‘control’ – as all forms of power and control will be dismantled the moment that we start valuing Life as the one an only value in this world.

I commit myself to install direct democracy as a goal for all human beings to finally understand that we can only thrive if we all live by the principle of equal rights = equal responsibilities, wherein laws will be then written and applied according to a principle of supporting all living beings equally – and taking equal responsibility for the functioning and sustainability of a system that will take care of all within an actual living neighborism of giving to each other what we want for ourselves – thus voting/ selecting and deciding what’s best for all in mutual consent of such policies, laws and enforcements being standing in the best interest of all equally.

I commit myself to stop my inner-battles and participation in the constant seeking of ‘my own good’ and ‘my own benefit’ while neglecting the reality that I abuse in every moment that I seek to satisfy my personal interests at the expense of others beings’ lives.

I commit myself to expose how any attempt to ‘do good’ within the current system is a futile act of actual self interest, wherein any form of ‘good’ is created through a temporary relief that money provides, yet money in itself remains as the source of conflict, separation and abuse – which implies that I must create a reform in the system from within, beginning with myself as an individual that understands how the current monetary system operates – which means that I commit myself to install the Equal Money System as the only way and solution to the problems in this world, along with proper individual education wherein we can learn how to live and coexist as equals, which implies that: all that we will ever accept as the future of this world and for the children to come, is a process of Self-Correction in Self-Honesty until it is done – this is to ensure that life is never again placed in front of the barrel of a gun.

“Famine – FAM (family) IN E (separation) – Famine exist due, to / because of the family of humanity not standing in and as equality and oneness, where we’re supposed to exist in equality and oneness – not leave any one behind, but the family of humanity has separated into families that only protect their own possessions as children, that eventually become possessed by the same mental state/condition of survival, protection and defense at the cost/expense of other human beings’ lives…time to sort out the families, and expand family to humanity, stop possessing children to let them stand as the future of this world in fact, until we live so – that no one is ever left behind again” Sunette Spies

 

Blogs that explain HOW we have abdicated our living authority to the mind authority:

• Day 46: TRUST ME!

• Day 39: Is Charity Greed?

• 
  

  Day 45: Life is the ONLY REAL VALUE

• Consciousness Energy-Authority – Conclusion: DAY 46

• 2012 The Reward World War

• Day 40: The You-Diss-All System in Me

• Day 11: I.O.U. Life as a Debt System of Power

• War Stops Here

• Witnessing: You’re Equally Responsible

• Anger towards Authority

• Birth Life – Not War

Day 47: The Evil Individual

http://creationsjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/05/day-47-evil-individual.html#

The Prophets of Damnation: DAY 47

http://heavensjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/05/prophets-of-damnation-day-47.html

Documentaries:

The Trap and The Century of the Self

Psywar – Full Documentary

Interviews:

The Consequences of Survival : the battle for survival only exists as a mind-driven parasite that has No physical common sense  – lessons from the human physical body and how it functions in an optimum way due to not being existing in inner battles of overpowering and subduing others. – 

Life Review – An Elite Philanthropist why giving money away to charities is supporting wars and the same monetary system that is owned by the elite. This series is the education required in this world to empower individuals within one single principle: Life in Equality as what’s best for all.

VLog:

2010 Equal Money System: WAR is Unacceptable – YouTube

2012 Gun Culture in America – YouTube

Art By: Scott Cook

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give my power away to the mind as consciousness where evil lives in the mind as the human.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the thoughts and pictures within my secret mind triggered through watching a violent fight scene in a movie where for a moment I feared what if I become the show within my mind and thinking in the illusion of horror that I wasn’t previously aware of as a part of me that I at some point accepted and allowed to be me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to sink in self-doubt and shame within my awareness of myself as my secret mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to question my abilities and effectiveness in supporting life when I see/realize and understand that who I have accepted and allowed myself to be as consciousness will take time in walking out of – I re-commit myself to myself within the gentleness of self-forgiveness.

Art By: Marlen Vargas Del Razo

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be controlled by my mind as consciousness where I actually feared thoughts and pictures within my mind as if they can actually control me without me first giving myself permission to be and exist as them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exist in an illusory world according to feelings and emotions as if they are real when I’ve proved for myself time and time again that they are the illusion that sucks the life out of me as my physical body.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to disregard the role that violent movies and video games play to further armor and fuel the mind with ammunition to direct the human unaware of how the mind as consciousness will create self as it, if accepted and allowed, thus we continue to project and manifest evil as is already here in living color for us to see through the examples of murder, rape and starvation within and as our world.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see what we’ve been showing for ourselves to see as who we are through television shows, movies, newspapers, video games and a countless number of wars, all representative of greed and ego, for as long as any of us here have been walking this earth as, and yet in our quest to compare, compete and win, we have failed to recognize the evils we unveil upon ourselves and our reality in our unwillingness to walk in the shoes of another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to Not consider the external factors such as parenting, education, television, consumerism, religion, and video games and the role they have in forming the personalities within our mind which we keep in secret to such an extent that when crimes are suddenly committed against another with no explanation and/or previous warning we sit in a silent stutter as if we’re not equally responsible when in fact we are All Equally responsible for what is here.

I commit myself to stop taking for granted the breath I breathe and to face me within all that is here in becoming a living example of self-responsibility in supporting a world according to what’s best for All.

“I commit myself to show that the game theory taught to the child through fairy tales, comic books, television, religion, education, family values, consumerism, and all systems that now exist in the world, in fact only shape the Graven Image of self-interest that ends with death as it is not in fact real.” Bernard Poolman

For Further Perspective: Read:
The Invisible Invincible Mind