The unstable cocktail

“Human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life.”

― Albert Einstein

Mr. Einstein obviously knows what he is talking about, having seen how humans use the power of knowledge. This is one such story, where great insights into the inner workings of human mind, instead of leading to happiness and dignity, led to loss of human life.

Though brain is an evolutionarily old structure, human mind is peculiar, at least to our knowledge, in its self-awareness. The consciousness of self, we humans are so proud of, lead us to believe for almost as long as we existed, that humans are rational creatures driven by logic and reason.

This belief was questioned, when Sigmund Freud, with his tremendous intuition, has hypothesised that human consciousness only scratches the surface of our mind. He theorised that most of the decision making occurs in the unconscious, that part of the brain driven by emotions and thousands of years old survival instincts. In the battle for control, human consciousness, in its very primitive form, is easily overpowered by the unconscious, that part of the brain the individual is still unaware of.

The instinct to acquire the best possible resources, is a character common to all forms of life. We know it in several forms, with greed being the most pathological of these. The instinct to kill the neighbours, to increase our own chances of survival, is what we call war. Though the features we base upon to organise ourselves into groups have changed, we still are in groups. Though the feature we use to organise ourselves into hierarchies has changed, we still live in hierarchies.

Giving cognitive power to such an irrational creature, whose decision-making Unconscious is optimised to stones and sticks, is a great risk. It puts in jeopardy, great number of lives, their own, and those surrounding them.

This is one such story, where narrow, short sighted self interest of a greedy human, combined with the cognitive excellence of another, formed the cocktail of death.

It begins with Sigmund Freud sharing his intuition with his nephew Edward Bernays. Bernays learnt, not just how powerful the unconscious is, but also the ways of manipulating it. He understood that the irrational drives in the unconscious, if targeted, have a great potential to change the course of humanity. Thus began, public relations, the science of manipulating the masses.

In 1920s Eddie tapped into the feministic desire to feel liberated from the patriarchal suppression. Consulted by a tobacco company to increase the sales of its products, specifically to women, he organised a rally on Thanksgiving Day, projecting cigarettes as a way of liberation. “Torches of freedom” he called them. The crowd obliged. Smoking which was till then considered a taboo among women, quickly became a symbol of power and freedom. Somehow, they believed that smoking made them better. It did not. It made them sick. The prevalence of smoking increased to 33% among women and parallelly rose the incidence of lung cancer.

He used a similar approach and made “bacon” the official food of US. The breakfast in the majority of the households changed from toast, eggs and juice, to toast and bacon. Parallelly rose the incidence of obesity, colorectal cancer and CVA.

The NCDs cause 89% of the deaths in US, with more than 80% of them being caused by the two big killers, CVA and cancers. Two major risk factors for these NCDs are smoking and obesity. The two risk factors, so intricately connected with Edward Bernays.

No guns and no bombs. Greed of a businessman, apathy of a technician and the knowledge from a genius, together with the irrationality inherent to human mind, managed to kill millions. We continue to advance, in the technological front, making better tools, may be only to kill ourselves more efficiently. Once we become efficient enough, there will neither be need nor chance to advance.