autocratic advertising

While I was reading through Carl Elliott's "The Identity Bazaar" I experienced both feelings of revulsion and revelation. The revulsion is easy to explain: I didn't like having to come face to face with the realization that a lot of what defines our society stems purely from capitalism.

Buy this Product; Your Life will be Changed, and Everyone Else will LOVE You!

He made a very strong point about marketing's deceit and treachery (and how if you're a conscious, self-aware human being you should consider advertising as treacherous) when he brought up ADHD and its companion drug, Ritalin. The marketing technique focuses on changing one's lifestyle for the better, without overtly promoting the product itself. Elliott: "Anyone who is in the business of planting ideas, like ap harmaceutical company, does well to make sure that the ground is ready; otherwise the ideas will simply wither away." This means that once Ciba-Geigy has sold the disorder to the American public, and convinced many people that they need to treat this disorder to have as good of a life as possible, the drugs to "fix" the disorder basically sell themselves.

"Advertising is no longer just a means of selling goods; it is also an instrument for the transmission of values." If this is true, our country will be (or already has been) hijacked by corporations out to make as much money as possible. Young people haven't had the time to form concrete value systems, much less think about whether they're sensible or ethical. At the same time young people have a lot of purchasing power: children persuade their parents (through whining, nagging, pleading) that they want a product, and the parents often give into their children. Ciba-Geigy takes on both fronts at once: it markets Ritalin to children as a "study aid" that can help the child (out-)perform his classmates; it especially markets Ritalin to their parents as a method by which their child can achieve the "ideal lifestyle" purportedly held only by well-educated offspring of other American parents.

But who says every child has to get all A's in school in order to succeed at life? Wherever this idea first came from, Ciba-Geigy wasted no time once they figured out how to capitalize on it. I would hope that we would all be able to examine where our values came from, and not fall prey to advertisers who want to influence our minds just so they can make money off of us. But (and this is where the revelation came in): 99.9% of the population strives to become equal to or better than "the rest of us." A competitive nature seems to be ingrained into us. If the advertising of values is convincing enough, we will collectively buy into the delusion that Ritalin will help us achieve the "ideal lifestyle" ... and, all of a sudden, Ritalin has become a part of daily life, something you need in order to succeed, instead of merely yet another addictive stimulant.

If we want to not fall prey to such aggressive advertising, we can't ever afford to be superficial nor accept things at their face value. One's success or failure is largely determined by what the rest of society thinks, but the final barrier in between society and the ego involves decisions made by the superego. With effort the morals of society may be deconstructed and rated according to what one feels makes the most sense for himself, no matter what he's been told. (Superego might not be the right word, I just mean the process of logical self-reflection)