Society and Culture on Ghafoor's Personal Blog

Manufactured Desire and Planned Obsolescence

hello@ghafoorsblog.com (AG Sayyed) — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Wants can be designed, products can be made to wear out, and even the record of the past can be quietly replaced by copies. These shorts ask how much of what we want, buy and believe was shaped by someone else's incentive.

Published 2026-08-06 · Watch the short

The short argues that advertising was built on purpose to install desires people did not have. In 1928 Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, published a book applying his uncle’s psychology to the public, which he called the engineering of consent. He wrote that those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society form an invisible government.

Orwell Versus Huxley

hello@ghafoorsblog.com (AG Sayyed) — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two famous warnings about the future point in opposite directions. One fears a state that forces obedience through pain, the other a culture that wins obedience through comfort until people stop caring about the truth.

Fear or Pleasure, Two Models of Control

Published 2026-07-06 · Watch the short and the companion short

Two shorts posted the same day make one argument. People picture the future going wrong as George Orwell’s 1984, with a government that watches everything, restricts speech and controls truth through fear. Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, warned of something different, control through pleasure.

Puzzles From the Past and Philosophies of Repair

hello@ghafoorsblog.com (AG Sayyed) — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A book no one can read, a machine that seems too advanced for its age, and a pot mended with gold. Each short turns a puzzle or a break into a question about knowledge, loss and what makes something worth keeping.

The Voynich Manuscript

Published 2026-07-27 · Watch the short and the earlier repost

The short says the Voynich Manuscript has confused historians for more than 500 years because nobody can read it. The rare book dealer Wilfrid Voynich discovered it in 1912. Its pages carry detailed drawings of plants that do not seem to exist, astronomical diagrams and strange biological images, and every page is covered with writing in a language matching no known one.

Society and Culture on Ghafoor's Personal Blog

Manufactured Desire and Planned Obsolescence

Edward Bernays and the Engineering of Consent

Orwell Versus Huxley

Fear or Pleasure, Two Models of Control

Puzzles From the Past and Philosophies of Repair

The Voynich Manuscript