Anything but confidence

It’s pretty dang awesome that we can, in today’s world, buy just about anything. Right? We’ve got cool clothes and fast food and slick cars and sweet technology. If it’s a desire, even an obscure one, there’s a pretty good chance it can be purchased somewhere.

Awesome. Or is it?

I understand how many benefits we enjoy, collectively and individually, because of the ease with which we can meet our wants and needs. And so I can see how progress in this regard – that is, enhancing the efficiencies of our capitalistic society and increasing the availability and distribution of stuff – was (and, to a large extent, still is) welcomed. Considered good and positive.

But often times we let the initial excitement of our progress trump objectivity. Or good judgment. And before we know it, we’ve gone too far. But rather than acknowledge this and make the necessary corrections, we tend to justify and proceed.

And so today we can buy nearly anything. But it’s not just the fact that we have so many consumer products available to us today (which, by default, means we’re doing less and less for ourselves). It’s the way in which these products are marketed to us and the affect this has on our outlook.

Manipulation

I was just looking through some old Life magazines – one from 1964 and the other from 1979. The change in advertisements during that 15 years was astonishing. In the 1964 issue, the vast majority of ads were promoting food products, with a cigarette or alcohol ad thrown in here and there. In the 1979 issue, almost all of the ads were for liquor or cigarettes, and sexuality, as a marketing tool, was obvious.

Yet even that change is child’s play compared to what we experience today. Marketing sophistication has evolved exponentially, though I use the term loosely because evolution suggests improvement. As measured by the advertiser’s ends, perhaps. But means, not a chance.

And this is what I imagine to be the greatest difference between our society and those that came in preceding generations. Namely, the shameless pursuit of individual or business goals, as carried out by the advertising industry, at the expense of what we all inherently know to be right and proper.

Though there are infinite casualties of this shift, it’s our self-esteem that has taken the brunt of the blow. Because no matter the product or service, the advertiser’s goal is (as I’ve mentioned before) always the same – to convince you that you need it. And if you need it, you are, by definition, deficient in some way. One at a time, these assaults seem inconsequential, but taken together, their damage becomes clear.

Never mind the fact that many of the products so heavily advertised are actually potential hazards to your physical health (fast/overly processed/HFCS-ridden food, liquor, cigarettes, etc)…that’s a discussion unto itself, and equally horrifying when viewed through the lens of responsibility to our fellow humans. What troubles me the most is the affect these marketing tactics, and the more general issue of a highly consumerist society, are having on our self-esteem.

For decades we’ve been told that happiness is found at the mall. That no matter our problems, it’s nothing a new gadget can’t fix. Television shows, movies, fashion magazines, national sports figures…all of them and more have added fuel to the fire by endlessly endorsing products and displaying images in such a way that clearly create a collective, homogenized version of an ideal man or woman that can never be achieved lest we purchase it. Though even then it’s a moving target.

And it’s in this effort that the real problems lie. When we’re tricked into believing that our value as a person is dependent upon our ability to buy certain clothes or have certain toys or drive certain cars or live in certain neighborhoods, then the lines that divide the haves and the have-nots become much more pronounced, and the natural consequence is that material wealth becomes the measuring stick. If you can’t keep up, you’re inferior. And little by little, confidence erodes. Even if we do have the means with which to play that game successfully, we still believe that it’s the money that matters, or the stuff it can buy. Not us, not who we are inside or the way we contribute to others.

Such are the pitfalls of a highly consumerist society.

But it wasn’t always like this. Obviously I didn’t live through earlier centuries, but here’s how I imagine it went (and please feel free to correct me if my ignorance of history becomes too obvious)…

Everybody toiled. Everyone produced. Maybe your neighbor had more horses or a better piece of land. Finer equipment, perhaps. But at the end of the day, we all got our hands dirty. We all labored physically in the effort to provide. A good harvest was felt by all, and everybody suffered during the dry spells.

In short, production was the great equalizer. Not just because it put everyone on a similar playing field, but because it allowed us to see, every day, what we’re capable of. To feel that sense of worth that comes with self-reliance. It gave us sufficient examples to refer to when faced with some future challenge, so that we might confidently proceed and overcome.

So where is this headed?

That’s the $64,000 question for me. How far can we take this, and at what point does it become unsustainable? Unfortunately, I’m short on answers. But I do worry about it, and I wonder if enough people have thought about all the eventualities.

More than anything, I wonder about the force that will be required to turn this ship around.

Hard to know, of course, but one thing seems certain…the promise of material wealth being the cure-all has been proven an empty one time and again. No matter your purchase power, you can’t buy confidence, nor the genuine joy that comes from living with it.

Tagged as: confidence, manipulation, marketing