If I might jump in here with a comment. Advertising is an almost
trivial component of the problem. I really like the magazine
AdBusters but ads hardly concern me. (Except to the extent that they
pay for the content (not ads) on TV.
We learn to consume from other people. I think that's what
Duesenberry was showing. Of course now we see "other people" on TV --
and the advertisers control how those other people live. But if TV
ran without ads -- but with the sponsor's money just the same -- it
would have at least the same impact on us as now. Might even be worse.
Gene Coyle
On Jun 4, 2008, at 4:55 PM, raghu wrote:
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Sandwichman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Of course, the implication of what you say is profound. Only the
unenlightened "want to teach people what they should want".
Knowledge is
what people should want. Therefore all teaching is, by definition,
unenlightened. Since any learning corresponds with some teaching,
then
learning, too, is, by definition, unenlightened. By a process of
elimination, ignorance is enlightment. But having just learned that
ignorance is enlightened we have managed to darken it by our so
learning.
Well S-man, behind the (entirely unintentional) profundity, there was
what I think is a serious question.
1) The masses have learned to want to consume (actively helped along
by eager capitalists through advertising, indoctrination and so on.)
2) This desire to consume so well-learned by the masses has disastrous
consequences for the environment and for society.
3) What to do? Help the masses to learn (teach?) to want something
less destructive, e.g. leisure?
Is it unenlightened to use the weapons of indoctrination and
counter-advertising against their original purveyers? If so, what is
to be done by the enlightened (beyond simple gestures of individual
protest)?
-raghu.
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