Social Engineering is one of the worst problems in societies today.  The discussion that follows does NOT pertain to all businesses and industries.  Earning a profit, earning high profits, because products are outstanding, and because employees and contractors LOVE what they do, and LOVE how they are treated, is the very best in the history of work and employment.  So get that clear from the start.

“Fascists” as used here means a group of persons or organizations who believe that (1)  they are “superior” to others and (2) they view others as “useful” for their profiteering and wealth as

• • “oxen laborers” for profiteering use their labor as employees, with little or no concern for fair wages, health, safety, or fair treatment;
    
  • “sheep to be sheared” seeking to capture worker income, in high prices for necessities to live, and in contracts for debt for whatever disposable income is left over;
    
  • “cattle for the slaughterhouse” always using citizens–never their own children or grandchildren–to fight “wars-for-profit” for military manufacturers, banks, and financial speculators.
    

Such persons and organizations are not just national and international vampires, sucking out the labor and life of any and all outside their circle.  They are not merely following the ancient Law of Power, “might makes right.” They are not merely imitative kin to Nazi Social Darwinists who believe they have “evolved to be smarter and stronger, naturally destined to rule and conquer, or kill and destroy,” anyone they choose.  They are not, put into traditional spiritual terms, merely real kin to Satanists bowing down to Satan for worldly rule, afterward given permission to rule themselves by the Law of Thelema, the Self unleashed, “Do What You Will!”

Sociopaths. Do research on the psychiatric criteria for sociopaths.  These are people who use others for their own purposes, without any guilt or conscience.  Sociopaths may be highly educated, highly functional in society, highly places in organizations of government or even religion.  Many sociopaths use their long list of achievements as cover for their harmful destructive uses of other people, accompanied by the usual sociopathic smile, slap on the back, handshake, and “Just trust me, Friend!”

Now in the quotations below, some most definitely are NOT sociopaths.  Complete immersion in their writings, public and private, and many other facts only could construct an argument that they were, or not.

However, there is NO doubt in the quotes below that these were written by intellectuals, and oftentimes, intellectuals paid by and working for “economic elites.”   For example, Frederick Gates was one of the closest friends of John D. Rockefeller.  Gates knew the inner thoughts of his vastly wealthy patron, and he helped shape some of Rockefeller’s thoughts. Gates was the intellectual engine useful for Rockefeller’s materialistic uses of everyone outside his inner circle.  Rockefeller likely could be classified as a sociopath, though he was a “devout Baptist” who destroyed economically and personally any and all who opposed him.

There always have been Social Engineers.  Someone leading you to goodness and virtue is not immoral.  Unless you are a parent with a criminal mind, who wants your children like yourself, you want schools and social influences for your children which Teach and Reinforce Honesty, Integrity, Truth, Critical Thinking, Mercy, Compassion, Discipline, and Self-Control, etc.  To “engineer” children’s learning so such moral content is obtained and practiced is NOT fascist social engineering–preparing the children to “be used” by others–but the best in healthy democratic social engineering; that is, preparing children to become Responsible Persons, for themselves and for others.

So what we are doing with this page is offering you real statements from SOME people who did NOT believe that you and your children had equal value as human beings, and from OTHERS who made observations on how people like you “lost your own identity in a crowd,” such as the brilliant Gustave LeBon. However, at all costs, we do NOT want to engineer your thinking, or trick you.  We want you to be self-aware of your values and choices.

Read, think, add to the mix at info [at] leadershipethicsonline.com.  We need YOU and your wisdom.

 

Quotes on Social Engineering
For Research and Reflection

 

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: an Economic Study of Institutions (Allen & Unwin: London, 1899; reprint edition, Introduction by John Kenneth Galbraith [Houghton and Mifflin Company: Boston, 1973)

Manual Laborers and Workers Are the Inferior Class.  Manual labor, industry, whatever has to do directly with the everyday work of getting a livelihood, is the exclusive occupation of the inferior class. This inferior class includes slaves and other dependents, and ordinarily also all the women. If there are several grades of aristocracy, the women of high rank are commonly exempt from industrial employment, or at least the more vulgar kinds of manual labor. The men of the upper classes are not only exempt, but by prescriptive custom they are debarred, from all industrial occupations. The range of employments open to them is rigidly defined. On the higher plane already spoken of, these employments are government, warfare, religious observances, and sports…. [Ibid., p. 22, par. 1]

Honorable Secondary Employments Serving Leisure Class.  To the lower grades of the leisure class certain other employments are open, but they are subsidiary to one or another of these typical leisure-class occupations. Such are, for instance, the manufacture and care of arms and accoutrements and of war canoes, the dressing and handling of horses, dogs, and hawks, the preparation of sacred apparatus, etc. The lower classes are excluded from these secondary honorable employments…. [Ibid, p. 22]

John D. Rockefeller
I don’t want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers.

Frederick T. Gates, The Rockefeller General Education Board, Occasional Letter No.1, 1906.

“Nothing is more central to the maintenance of social order than the regulatory mechanisms employed to control and socialize our children.”

Frederick T Gates, The Country School of To-morrow, in which young and old will be taught, in practicable ways, how to make rural life beautiful, intelligent, fruitful, recreative, healthful, and joyous (Publications of the General Education Board: NY, 1913, “Occasional Papers, No. 1”)

Fascists Growing No Thinkers or Leaders, but Workers. “We shall not try to make these [rural] people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply. We are to follow the admonition of the good apostle who said, ‘Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low degree’ [Apostle Paul, Romans 12:16, King James Version]. And generally, with respect to these high things, all that we shall try to do is just to create presently about these country homes an atmosphere and conditions such, that, if by chance a child of genius should spring up from the soil, that genius will surely bud and not be blighted. Putting, therefore, all high things quite behind us, we turn with a sense of freedom and delight to the simple, lowly, needful things that promise well for rural life. For the task that we set before ourselves is a very simple as well as a very beautiful one : to train these people as we find them for a perfectly ideal life just where they are…” [p. 6]

Laborers Learning How to Work for Necessities.  “…our school in its aim includes everybody, old as well as young; it is to be in session all the year round, and every-one shall have something yet to learn always before him. Every industry in the district finds place in our curriculum. Every kitchen, barn, dairy, shop, is a laboratory for our school. The growing crops, the orchards, the vineyards, the gardens, the forests, the streams, the domestic animals, nay, even the tools of every farm, are part of our scientific equipment.” [Section, “Every Industry in a Curriculum,” p. 7]

Children Taught Equally to Follow, Help, Be Gentle.  “… the first social principle of our school shall be to encourage the children to aid each other as freely as possible. Indeed, much of the teaching will be done under supervision by means of mutual assistance of the pupils. Doubtless the pupil groups will have their own pupil captains, as they have their baseball captains. This free social life of the children during all the hours of the school, conducted mainly out of doors, will form an ideal laboratory of manners and of character, affording opportunity for the sweetest social culture, courtesy, helpfulness, gentleness, deference, truth, reverence, honor, chivalry. These virtues shall form the breath and atmosphere of our child community.” [Section, “The School a Cooperative Democracy,” p. 12]

Shepherds Teach the People of the Soil to Follow.  “The shepherds are trained, but the sheep go shepherdless. When the spirit of education shall be changed, as it will be, then the direction in which the machine works will be reversed, and the colleges will studiously employ themselves in carrying civilization with all its blessings downward to the people on the soil…. [Section, “Utilizing the College-Bred Youth, p. 15]

Edward Bernays
Advisor to U.S. Politicians and Corporate Leaders
Propaganda (H. Liveright: NY, 1928)

Conscious Manipulation of the Masses Forms an “Invisible Government.” “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.  Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country…. Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.”  (Chapter 1, “Organizing Chaos,” Par. 1, first two sentences, and Par. 3)

Groups Do Not Think but React, and Follow Trusted Leaders.  “[Wilfred] Trotter and [Gustav] LeBon concluded that the group mind does not think in the strict sense of the word. In place of thoughts it has impulses, habits, and emotions. In making up its mind, its first impulse is usually to follow the example of a trusted leader.” (Chapter 4, “The Psychology of Public Relations,” Par. 7)

Politicians Use Propaganda to Mold the Will of the Masses. “Fortunately, the sincere and gifted politician is able, by the instrument of propaganda, to mold and form the will of the people.” (Chapter 6, “Propaganda and Political Leadership,” Par. 3)

Gustave LeBon
Father of Social Psychology
The Psychology of the Crowd [Psychologie des foules] (Paris, 1895)
French original insertions by JD Willis

Masses Led by Impressions, Seduction, Appearances, Make an Unjust Tax Tolerable.  “It is only by obtaining some sort of insight into the psychology of crowds that it can be understood how slight is the action upon them of laws and institutions, how powerless they are to hold any opinions other than those which are imposed upon them, and that is is not with rules based on theories of pure equality that they are to be led, but by seeking what produces an impression on them, and what seduces them. For instance, should a legislator, wishing to impose a new tax, choose that which would be theoretically the most just?  By no means. In practice the most unjust may be the best for the masses.  Should it at the same time be the least obvious, and apparently the least burdensome [et le moins lourd en apparence], it will be the most easily tolerated.” (Introduction: the Era of the Crowd)

Affirmation, Repetition and Wide Distribution of Ideas Grants “Prestige” (Authority). “Great power is given to ideas propagated by affirmation, repetition, and contagion by the circumstance that they acquire in time that mysterious force [pouvoir mystérieux] known as prestige…. Prestige may involve such sentiments as admiration or fear….Prestige in reality is a sort of domination exercised on our mind by an individual, a work, or an idea. This domination entirely paralyzes our critical faculty [paralyse tout nos facultés critiques], and fills our soul with astonishment and respect…. Prestige is the mainspring of all authority. Neither gods, kings, nor women have ever reigned without it.” (Book 2, Chapter 3, Section 3, “Le Prestige”)

Ellwood P. Cubberley, Stanford’s Dean of Education, Changing Conceptions in Education, 1909, page 63.

“Each year the child is coming to belong more to the State and less and less to the parent.”

Ellwood P. Cubberley, Stanford’s Dean of Education, Public School Administration, 1916, page 338.

“Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life…It is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down. Every manufacturing establishment that turns out a standard product or series of products of any kind maintains a force of efficiency experts to study methods of procedure and to measure and test the output of its works…[Building pupils demands] continuous measurement of production to see if it is according to specifications [and] the elimination of waste in manufacture.”

Edward Alsworth Ross, Social Control, 1901, page ?

“Plans are underway to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education and mass media.”

William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education,1889-1906, The Philosophy of Education, Lecture 1, January 7, 1893.

“We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.  Ninety-nine out of a hundred people in every civilized nation are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow prescribed custom. This is the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual…”