The Century of the Self

How smoking became cool, or why politicians want your brain for breakfast.

Written and produced by legendary British documentarian Adam Curtis in 2002 for the BBC, The Century of the Self offers an utterly fascinating four-part probe into the depths of consumerism and democracy. Though it focuses primarily on how those in power have used Freud’s theories to manipulate public opinion and perception, the series delves into the richest and most profound layers of 20th century culture, from the hidden mechanisms of advertising to the civil rights movement to the inner workings of political belief systems — all whilst managing to avoid the trap of conspiracy-theorism with incredible elegance and dexterity.

Mixed throughout the documentary footage are exclusive interviews with cultural influencers, ranging from Edward Bernays, the mastermind of modern Public Relations, to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, by way of Philip Gould and Freud’s infamous daughter, Anna.

The Century of the Self is reminiscent of Naomi Klein’s No Logo in its relentless investigation of the crafting of consumer culture, with all its whims and whimsy, only layered on top of the complex political, psychological and sociocultural forces that shaped it.

The series consists of four parts — The Happiness Machine, The Engineering of Consent, There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed, and Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering — each an hour long but well-worth the time and thought.

And though Google has kindly made all the parts available to stream for free, we suggest you do your personal collection and cultural savvy a favor, and grab a copy of the DVD — settling for flimsy footage and pixelated politicians is no way to take a stance against consumerism.

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DoGooder: Do Nothing, Change Everything

How to bypass annoyance with slick design and serious dogoodness.

UPDATE: DoGooder is now available for Chrome, the Brain Pickings browser of choice. Perfect combo of performance and purpose.

This week, a new report found that the average American guzzles more than 34 gigabytes of data per day. And anyone who’s ever been online can attest that a hefty portion of this comes from advertising, which, with the exception of the best-curated sites (ahem…), can be anything from a distraction to a nuisance. This has led many to the infamous Adblock Firefox plugin, eliminating ads altogether. But why take your negative experience and turn it neutral, when you can turn it positive?

Enter DoGooder, an ingenious new browser plugin for Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer that turns your ordinary browsing into donations supporting sustainability initiatives and movements — with no cost to you and no change in browser performance.

Here’s how it works: DoGooder hides all the ordinary ads and swaps them out for simple daily green tips, health and wellness ideas, and well-designed messaging for meaningful initiatives from the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) category. Half of their profits then go to a thoughtfully curated list of charities and nonprofits — which means DoGooder has the potential to generate thousands of dollars a month for good causes.

If you’re a publisher, there’s nothing to fear — DoGooder doesn’t block ads from being served on your site, it just changes the end-user experience, so your CPM earnings remain unaffected. (Think of it as slipping a nice cover over a questionably designed couch.) If your run a charitable or sustainability-related site, you can even drop DoGooder a line and they’ll whitelist you and “exempt” your site from ad-blocking.

This is what a couple of popular sites look like goodified:

In the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, you can even keep track of how many ads have been swapped.

And if for some reason you’re particularly enamored with the regular ads on some site, you can always disable DoGooder there simply by right/ctrl-clicking on the site and selecting “Show Original Ads.” The right/ctrl-click is also the way to let DoGood Headquarters know about a good cause they should consider featuring — just select “Suggest a Cause to Support.”

Genius, or what?

Thanks, Andy

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Buy Nothing: No, Really, It’s For Sale

What the hottest gift this holiday season is, or how to dodge your modern addictions.

Let’s face it, we live in a material world. And this week is its annual pinnacle, the frantic shopping bonanza known as Black Friday. But it’s also the 10th international Buy Nothing Day — Friday in the U.S. and Saturday everywhere else. It’s a chance to detox from the omnivorous toxicity of conspicuous consumption, to seek some brief redemption from our wasteful and unsustainable more-more-more modus operandi. (Come on, did you really need that Steve Jobs bobblehead?)

Our friends at Do The Green Thing are doing something quite ingenious — they’re selling nothing. Really. Their Buy Nothing campaign is a clever reminder that we all buy stuff, often just for the sake of buying, while sticking with what we’ve got can make more sense. So in their Amazero store, an Amazon mock-up, you can literally purchase Nothing, which costs, well, nothing — they’ve got the standard e-commerce checkout procedure, from the Buy It Now button to the email confirmation after your purchase. (We’ve worked out a special deal for Brain Pickings readers — you can purchase Nothing for 30% off using this link.)

The point, of course, isn’t to completely eradicate consumption — that would be absurd — but, rather, to help us be more mindful of what it is we actually need versus what we buy just for the new-stuff thrill of it.

The effort is a simple yet powerful reminder that, over the holidays, we often end up giving and getting lots of useless stuff. (Green Thing did a survey, which found — unsurprisingly — that 96% of people have gotten a useless gift at some point. We can attest with what’s now a vast collection of annual reindeer figurines from grandma.) That stuff takes energy and precious resources to make, creating unfortunate waste as it ends up in landfills.

And if you think you’re immune to the buybuybuy messaging of the ad industry, you can test just how stealthy its impact is in the All Spin No Substance game, where you get to guess the brand advertised based solely on its logoless visual communication — we bet you’d be surprised how many you get right.

Buy Nothing promotes one of Green Thing’s 7 green actions, stick with what you got, as an antidote to our reckless and thoughtless material habits. And with testimonials from an impressive line-up of celebrities (including one of our favorite British indie bands, The Noisettes) swearing by Nothing, it’s not hard to buy into it.

And if you still feel the compulsion to buy — because, let’s face it, we’ve been so powerfully conditioned for it by today’s media environment — Green Thing’s got your back. Dr. Will Powers, retail therapist, can help you dodge any temptation to buy with some grounded professional advice. You can email him for help in taming your shopaholic urges, or tweet your concerns to @DrWillPowers.

We love both the clever campaign and what it aims to achieve. (We’ve even offered Green Thing some ad space on Brain Pickings — look right — for the attractive price of Nothing.) So exorcise your shopping urges this weekend by buying yourself some Nothing — we vouch for it with a full money-back guarantee.

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