What the documentary is
This documentary breaks down how marketing industry leveraged psychology to create a consumer culture that gets people to use material things to satisfy emotional needs. This way of being can make someone add an unconscious layer of stress by striving for things one incorrectly thinks he/she needs to feel satisfied with the self.
Link to the documentary
Summary
People like Freud and other titans of psychology that have tried to understand what drives humans are referenced several times in this documentary and some of these titans were consultants of corporations. Psychologists being used as business consultants is a fact I don’t see referenced in a lot of psychological education materials.
The documentary also shared that some people in influential government and psychology positions in the US believed that society needed to be unconsciously influenced to maintain a functioning society. I find that point of view interesting because it suggests that leaders in government people believe–at least partly–in manipulation. Is that different from what cult leaders do?
The below mind-blowing quote (to me) from Paul Mazur, a Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers in 1927, is shared in the documentary:
“We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. […] Man’s desires must overshadow his needs…”
Paul Mazur,
