Thought Manipulation: The Use and Abuse of Psychological Trickery (14 page)

6. See, for example, Ibid, 225: “In any event, you cannot beat something with nothing. One must always compare alternatives: the real with the real. If business advertising is misleading, is no advertising or government control of advertising preferable? At least with private business there is competition. One advertiser can dispute another.”

7. See Hayek, F. A.,
The Road to Serfdom
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1944.

8. For a further discussion, see Caldwell, B., Hayek’s Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 239–240.

9. See, for example, Caldwell, B., “Hayek and Socialism,” Journal of Economic Literature 35 (December 1977): 1867–1868.

10. For a clear discussion, see Leibowitz, Y.,
Body and Mind: The Psycho-Physical Problem
(Tel-Aviv: Honiversita Hmeshuderet (in Hebrew), 1982). I am aware of the illuminating discussion of Popper and his differentiation between three worlds (Popper, K. R. and J. C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 36–50). However, the distinction, or maybe the artificial distinction, between the physical sphere and the mental one seems to be useful to concretize the problematic discussion on the manipulations that are in the scope of this book.

11. For a comprehensive discussion on the meaning of freedom, see Hayek, F. A.,
The Constitution of Liberty
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 11–21.

12. See, for example, Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 12: “...‘freedom’ refers solely to a relation of men to other men, and the only infringement on it is coercion by men.”

13. For example, Raz, J.,
The Morality of Freedom
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 13: “Coercion and manipulation subject the will of one person to that of another.”

14. Moreover, such expressions, which describe our soul in physical terms, give the impression that “mental freedom” is measurable. This confusion leads to scientific determinism, which destroys the basis for individual responsibility. See Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 15–16.

15. See Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 71: “Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.”

16. For a general discussion on the problems involved with governmental regulation, see Hayek,
The Road to Serfdom
(1944) and Friedman, Free to Choose (1979).

17. See Orwell G.,
1984: A Novel
(New York: Plume, 2003).

18. See, in particular, Szasz, T. S.,
The Myth of Mental Illness
(New York: Harper & Row, 1974).

19. See, for example, a quotation that Szasz brings in order to demonstrate the gravity of this issue (1974, 44): “It can be rightly claimed that malingering is always the sign of a disease often more severe than a neurotic disorder because it concerns an arrest of development at an early phase.” Szasz,
The Myth of Mental Illness
, 44.

20. See, in particular, Szasz,
The Myth of Mental Illness
, 32–47.

21. See Sullum, J., “Curing the Therapeutic State: Thomas Szasz Interview,” Reason Magazine, July 2000.

22. See Wyatt, C. R., “Liberty and the Practice of Psychotherapy: an Interview with Thomas Szasz,” 4.
http://www.psychotherapy.net/interview/Thomas_Szasz
: “...all psychiatry is coercive, actually or potentially—because once a person walks into a psychiatrist’s office, under certain conditions, that psychiatrist has the legal right and the legal duty to commit that person.”

23. See Wyatt, “Liberty and the Practice of Psychotherapy: an Interview with Thomas Szasz,” 5: “We don’t have any laboratory tests for neuroses and psychoses.”

24. Szasz goes further than his intellectual teacher, Hayek, who claims that “...the argument for liberty can apply only to those who can be held responsible. It cannot apply to infants, idiots, or the insane...A person whose actions are fully determined by the same unchangeable impulses uncontrolled by knowledge of the consequences or a genuine split personality, a schizophrenic, could in this sense not be held responsible. The same would apply to persons suffering from really uncontrollable urges, kleptomaniacs and dipsomaniacs, whom experience has proved not to be responsive to normal motives” (Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 77). In contrast, Szasz argues that “the weakness of Hayek’s writings touching on psychiatry lies in his treatment of insanity as a condition, similar to infancy, rather than as a strategy, similar to imitation. The proposition that so called kleptomaniacs and dipsomaniacs “suffer from really uncontrollable urges” is erroneous and unsupportable by evidence. Hayek here falls into the linguistic trap of psychiatry: he seems to think that because a word ends with the Greek suffix “maniac,” it designates a bona fide disease, characterized by irresistible impulses to commit a particular act. Thus, the person who likes to steal is a “kleptomaniac,” the person who likes to drink is a “dipsomaniac,” the person who likes to commit arson is a “pyromaniac,” and the person who likes his own single-minded obsession is a “monomaniac” (Szasz, T. S., “Hayek and Psychiatry,” Liberty 16, 2002: 20).

25. It is interesting to notice that notions like “the people’s will” or “the will of the people” in society are difficult to reconcile with the liberal philosophy. Ironically, these notions are problematic to liberals especially because they emphasize the individual’s independence and ability to choose freely. I will put forward two comments on this issue. The first is from Friedrich Hayek, who posits that people often deposit their freedom into the hand of a “social expert,” hoping to find comfort. Unfortunately, the ability of the expert to ease the distress is limited (Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 4): “...our freedom is threatened in many fields because of the fact that we are much too ready to leave the decision to the expert or to accept too uncritically his opinion about a problem of which he knows intimately only one little aspect.” The second comment is from Karl Popper, who stated that “the rule of the people” and a democratic regime is a problematic combination. The problem is that people can decide to give up their democracy. To fill the breach, Popper had noted that democracy, which is his favorite program to implement liberal principles, is a regime that gives people the right to criticize their rulers and dismiss them without bloodshed. For a further discussion, see Popper, K. R.,
The Open Society and Its Enemies
(vol. 2), (London: Routledge, 1996), 151–152.

26. Hayek relates specifically to certain kinds of manipulations in a way that helps demonstrate his broadest view (Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 4). Hayek objects to “environmental manipulation” that is geared toward constructing the external environment in order to shape the decision-making process of the target. “Whether he is free or not does not depend on the range of choice but on whether he can expect to shape his course of action in accordance with his present intentions, or whether somebody else has power to manipulate the conditions as to make him act according to that person’s will rather than his own.” Hayek does not explicitly explain the meaning of “manipulate the conditions,” but it will not be difficult to determine his intentions. In his political discussion, Hayek focuses on the objective sphere. Therefore, it seems that he is referring to manipulations that are geared toward constructing the external environment without any possibility that the target will know about and object to them. Examples include hiding relevant information from a target or indecent trading that misleads participants in the financial market. As stated in the first chapter, these manipulations have an effect similar to coercion. Therefore, they are not within the scope of my discussion.

27. It worth reminding that a major part of Hayek’s political work, especially his early writings, was in reaction to the rise of fascism. See, in particular, Hayek,
The Road to Serfdom
. However, it seems that Hayek was fully aware that society, and in particular a free society, without governmental presence is an unrealistic option. Keynes’s reaction to
The Road to Serfdom
seems to reflect Hayek’s ambivalence toward a clear discussion on the limits of governmental intervention in the conduct of society (Keynes, J. M
., Activities 1940–46: Collected Writing
volume 27. D. Moggridge (ed.) (London: Macmillan) 386–387): “You admit here and there that it is a question of knowing where to draw the line. You agree that the line has to be drawn somewhere, and that the logical extreme is not possible. But you give us no guidance as to where to draw it...as soon as you admit that the extreme is not possible, and that a line has to be drawn, you are, on your own argument, done for, since you are trying to persuade us that as soon as one moves an inch in the planned direction you are necessarily launched on the slippery slope which will lead you in due course over the precipice.”

28. For a clear presentation of this issue, see Heilbroner, R. L., The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 40.

29. Hayek, especially in
The Constitution of Liberty
, argues that a decent society should be conducted as a multidimensional free market. The economic sphere is only one dimension of the whole structure that enables social scientists to concretize general claims about the decent social order.

30. See, for example, Hayek, F. A., “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” in American Economic Review xxxv, No. 4, 1945: 519–530, and Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
.

31. The “genius—idiot” problem has many aspects and formulations. One of its more interesting versions is the search for adequate criteria to distinguish between the genius, who comes with a revolutionary idea, and the crazy person, whose ideas are far from being considered normal. Unfortunately, it is not so rare to find cases where individuals who were labeled as crazy and insane “suddenly” become revolutionaries, pioneers, and, of course, geniuses (sometimes after their death). For a fascinating discussion on this issue, see Fried, Y., and J. Agassi,
Paranoia: A Study in Diagnosis
(Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1976), 72–73.

32. See Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 42.

33. Ibid.

34. See Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 45. Socioeconomic gaps can be both destructive and constructive for society. It seems that the appropriate discussion should focus on the limit between the two kinds. Hayek proposes a criterion for distinguishing: as long as society is progressing, socioeconomic gaps are constructive. Of course, the questions are: What is a progressive society, and how do we measure progress? No doubt that these are complicated issues exceeding the scope of this research.

35. See Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 42.

36. In this context, it might be interesting to recall Alvin Toffler’s claim that entering the barcode into service in the supermarkets has created an ethical problem (Toffler, A.,
Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century
(New York: Bantam Books, 1990), 102–104). The new invention enabled the collection of information about consumers’ habits of consumption without their approval. Moreover, it turned out that consumers are paying twice—the first time in money (for the merchandise they bought) and the second time in information. The issue is that the information collected on their consumption habits, which is accumulated without the consumers’ approval, could be used against them (for example, in creating effective manipulations).

37. Compare to Schudson, M.,
Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society
(New York: Basic Books, 1986), 6: “The ads say, typically, ‘buy me and you will overcome the anxieties I have just reminded you about’ or ‘buy me and you will enjoy life’ or ‘buy me and be recognized as a successful person’ or ‘buy me and everything will be easier for you’. “

38. Of course, it is always possible to claim that such arguments are only valid for a free-market society, and our social order is not even close to Hayek’s vision of a free, prosperous society. However, we can always reply and ask: Where exactly does the free market exist? As far as observations have revealed, the market is never completely free. Of course, governments of one kind or another always exist and, no doubt, their actions deprive the market of complete freedom.

39. Compare to Szasz (
The Myth of Mental Illness
, 226.): “It is evident, that honest and dishonest game playing represent two quite different enterprises: in the one, the player’s aim is successful mastery of a task—that is, playing the game well; in the other, his aim is control of the other player— that is, coercing or manipulating him to make certain specific moves. The former task requires knowledge and skills; the latter—especially in the metaphorical games of human relations—information about the other player’s personality.”

40. See Agassi, J., “Brainwashing,” in Methodology and Science 23:1990, 117–129.

41. For a further discussion, see Agassi, “Brainwashing,” 117–129.

42. Moreover, Hayek claims that knowing about the burden of responsibility in itself will affect one’s course of behavior (Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
, 75–76): “...we believe that, in general, the knowledge that he will be held responsible will influence a person’s conduct in a desirable direction.” Therefore, “a free society probably demands more than any other that people be guided in their action by a sense of responsibility which extends beyond the duties exacted by the law and that general opinion approve of the individuals being held responsible for both the success and the failure of their endeavors. When men are allowed to act as they see fit, they must also be held responsible for the results of their efforts.”