Vance Packard and the Hidden Persuaders

The American spiritual teacher Vernon Howard has been featured and quoted in several articles. Although he did not mention cults specifically in the material I quoted, some of his words of wisdom are relevant to this topic.

Vernon Howard is not the only American writer to have produced some material that is incidentally useful for understanding how cult members operate. Journalist and social critic Vance Packard wrote a book that exposed the sinister and unethical techniques, the influences and manipulation, the propaganda, the hooks and bait used by advertisers and politicians to make the public buy products, people and ideology.  

It is not just sales people and spin doctors who employ these techniques. Many others use them to overcome resistance and objections and manipulate people into doing something against their best interests: for example, cult members may do it to get people to join or give money and positive publicity to their organisation.

The use of techniques that play upon people’s subconscious minds started in post-war America. The Hidden Persuaders was first published in 1957, but it is still very relevant today.

It is an excellent but very alarming, depressing and disillusioning book. The content speaks for itself and there are many reviews and analyses online, but I want to highlight some of the material that is of particular interest to me and make a few points.

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part IX: More Stalky and Molesworth

Some time after finishing the article about Rudyard Kipling’s Stalky & Co. and the four Molesworth books, I learned that a BBC TVseries based on Stalky & Co. was made in 1982 and that there are two more Molesworth books – albeit written and illustrated many years later by other people.

I had no idea that these additional works existed.

I found some reviews, and there were enough positive ones to make me decide that the extra material seemed at least worth a look.  I bought the Stalky TV series on DVD; I had to buy the Molesworth books too as they were not in my library’s catalogue. 

I wondered if I had done the right thing, as dramatisations of books I like are usually very disappointing and tribute books are rarely as good as the originals.

The Stalky & Co. BBC TV series

I have always believed that books stimulate the imagination whereas films short-circuit it. However, I decided to watch the Stalky DVD in the hope that it would add another dimension to the stories.

I don’t know what people who have never read the book would make of the TV series; my balanced opinion is that while it was not a complete waste of money and it was not so bad that I was outraged by the dramatisation, it is lucky that I had not expected too much.

Some of the stories are shown out of sequence, and only six of the original nine have been included. I wish that they had dramstised The Impressionists instead of The Moral Persuaders, which was very painful to watch.

Although the clothes the boys and masters wear look authentic, as often happens some of the characters did not look at all as I had envisaged them, the schoolmasters Prout and King in particular.

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part VIII: Two school stories

My investigation of Rudyard Kipling's early life has stirred up memories of two good books about life in boys' schools, one of them written by Kipling himself:

Stalky & Co. by Rudyard Kipling

The Compleet Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle.

The Molesworth books are much lighter than the Stalky stories; they are greatly enhanced by Ronald Searle's cartoons.

Rudyard Kipling is a great writer; Ronald Searle is a great illustrator.

Both books are very funny; they have brought great enjoyment to large numbers of people. I am very glad that I read them when I was young enough for them to make an indelible impression.

Reading in childhood

Children may read to escape, to fill gaps in their lives, to exercise their imaginations, to learn directly and indirectly and for enjoyment; whatever the cause, they may remember what they read for the rest of their lives.

Ayn Rand for example read a story in a magazine in 1914, when she was nine years old.  Her biographer Barbara Brandon managed to locate a copy of the magazine in 1982, and discovered that Ayn, who had recounted the story to her at considerable length, had remembered almost every detail, both major and minor, of this work that she had not read since the age of nine.

As a small boy in Southsea, Rudyard Kipling escaped from his unbearable life by reading. He never forgot some of the stories and poems that he read in books and magazines during this time. He wrote about them and his efforts to identify some of them in Something of Myself.

I can remember most of what I read as a child very vividly. Some of it was buried for many years but it was still all there, including these two books about school life. They have their critics; they may seem dated, irrelevant and politically very incorrect, but they are part of my life and I feel privileged to have read them.