Behavioral control technology reached civilian society under cover of cold-war and crime panics
Evidence
The report’s critique of behavior modification has unique relevance for our time. It begins by asking a question that we must also ask: “How did they get away with it?” Their answer invokes the “exceptionalism” of that era. Just as surveillance capitalism was initially able to root and flourish under the protection of a so-called “war against terror” and the compulsion for certainty that it stirred, in the middle of the twentieth century the means of behavioral modification migrated from the lab to the world at large primarily under the cover of cold-war anxieties. Later, the behavior-change professionals of the 1960s and 1970s were summoned into civilian practice by a society turned fearful after years of urban riots, political protests, and rising levels of crime and “delinquency.” The senators reasoned that calls for “law and order” had motivated the search for “immediate and efficient means to control violence and other forms of anti-social behavior. The interest in controlling violence replaced more time-consuming attempts to understand its sources.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1016
Categorization
- XREF: Parallels the moral-panic framing in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — panic over social disorder licenses intensified social control. — connects to: Cold war panic over communist brainwashing drove CIA investment in mind control research. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1006; Behavioral engineered self-control masks society’s ultimate control over individuals — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1386; Skinner envisioned a population-scale technology of behavioral control that rejected freedom — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1012 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Surveillance capitalism continuously intensifies the means of behavioral modification
#expands(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 37 - Moral panics recruit state agencies of social control to contain perceived threats
#corroborates(0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1045 - Behavioral engineered self-control masks society’s ultimate control over individuals
#complicates(0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1386 - The mugging panic fused crime, race, and urban change into social crisis
#exemplifies(0.78) - Skinner envisioned a population-scale technology of behavioral control that rejected freedom
#corroborates(0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1012 - Control shifts from external surveillance to a deterrence system internalized as the self.
#expands(0.75) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 108 - US historical threat spikes raised measurable societal authoritarianism
#corroborates(0.74)