Does constant exposure to advertising screw up our heads and lives?

I think so.  The rampant commercialization of the U.S. becomes powerfully evident whenever I return from an extended trip to a country where people don’t wallow in materialism (on this exact point, see this post by Mindy Carney).  Americans are professional buyers and horders of things they don’t need.  I believe that the trojan horse of ubiquitious advertising is largely to blame.  Before I go further, here are a couple of quotes to ponder.

Don’t tell my mother I work in an advertising agency – she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.  ~Jacques Seguela

He who buys what he does not need steals from himself.  ~Author Unknown

Many people would argue that we can freely ignore advertisements. Therefore, it’s OK to make the all-American deal: allow as many ads as necessary to pay for news and entertainment. 

I disagree. Yes, we can ignore particular commercials or even dozens of commercials.  But the average person is exposed to two million television commercials by age 65.  In The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (2005), Barry Schwartz writes that “The average American sees three thousands ads a day.”  As advertising professor James Twitchell puts it, “Ads are what we know about the world around us.”  Just listen to Americans!  They have become the commercials they have been exposed to.   They just can’t stop craving the things they see advertised.  They recite skits they hear on commercials just like people often used to sing the melodies they heard on …

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Terrorism as a political tool exploited by the alleged victims

It should now be clear to everyone (though, sadly, it is not) that the threat of terrorism has been drummed up for political gain by neoconservatives. In the past, politicians often offered us hope. In recent years, they have found it more useful to claim that they are protecting us from nightmares. Thus, they often claim that they are rescuing us from horrible dangers we cannot see, by conducting their wars on "terror" and immorality. In reality, they have been offering us dark illusions and fantasies. Until two days ago, those politicians with the darkest imaginations had become the most powerful. For those of you wondering how this insanity came to be, consider viewing the BBC’s superb documentary: “The Power of Nightmares: The Shadows In The Cave.” Here is a taste of this gripping three-part documentary (If these links don't work, try Here's a new set of links that work on Google for the three parts of the documentary. Part I Part II Part III ):

There are dangerous and fanatical individuals and groups around the world who have been inspired by extreme Islamist ideas, and who will use the techniques of mass terror - the attacks on America and Madrid make this only too clear.

Continue ReadingTerrorism as a political tool exploited by the alleged victims

Real terror is fear

I remember in my college days in the late 70’s and early 80’s taking a course in International Law with Professor Jean-Robert Leguey-Feilleux Ph.D.  The course included a discussion of terrorism. Dr. Leguey-Feilleux told us one of the issues before the United Nations and the international community was a definition of “terrorism.” The best definition of “terrorism” I remember, and the one I believe my instructor endorsed, was “the taking of innocents for political purposes.”

Terrorism was not killing, but may cause death and certainly fear. Terrorism is political. In another class, I read that David Easton defined “politics” as “the authoritative allocation of values.” So “terrorism” is the taking of innocents in an attempt to influence how people or peoples allocate their values. The primary motivator in any such effort is fear. The absence of fear negates the intent of the terrorist. But fear may motivate others to seek gain from the tactical terrorist efforts for strategic purposes. I believe such is the goal of the Bush administration and the Republican Party in the United States.

During the 40 or so years of the Cold War, the Republican right could be counted upon to rant about Democrats being “soft on Communism” and take an electoral victory in the White House which was only interrupted by Kennedy’s “missile gap,” Johnson’s “Great Society” (following JFK’s assassination) and the blip of Jimmy Carter after Watergate.  After the rise in expectations after the growth and success of the Solidarity movement in Poland, due …

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“I’m not an animal!” cried the human animal.

Go ask one of those opponents of stem cell research why it’s OK to donate a kidney.  They’ll look at you like you’re nuts.  They’ll tell there’s a person who’s about to die and another person with an extra kidney, and it’s all that simple.

In 2006 you won’t hear any protest that kidney donation is something Frankenstein would do. Stem cell research opponents won’t assert that the extra kidney constitutes a “human life” even though it is alive and human.  They won’t tell you that kidney transplants are morally wrong.  They won’t claim that a kidney has an invisible soul.

Instead, they will reassure you that a spare kidney is not a unique human being.  They will tell you that kidney cells are only “potential” human beings (reproductive cloning, illegal in most countries, could accomplish this).  As icing on the cake, they will assert that kidneys don’t feel any pain. 

At that point you’ll need to jump in. For starters, you might remind the stem cell research opponents that blastocysts (from which stem cells are harvested) are clumps of about 150 cells small enough to fit inside Roosevelt’s eye on a U.S. dime. 

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You might then add that blastocysts are only five days old when the stem cells are harvested.  At this point in time, the stem cells are pluripotent: they can develop into all the different cell types in the body (except the placenta), but they have not yet developed into any specialized type of cell.  …

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Beware of your vain brain. Don’t let optimism lead you astray.

I am only through the first chapter of A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives (2006).  Nonetheless, this is a delightful and insightful work by experimental psychologist Cordelia Fine.  So much so that the first chapter of the book, “The Vain Brain,” is well worth the price of the entire book.

Fine is a witty yet precise digester of cognition research.  The main point of “The Vain Brain” is that we work exceedingly hard to interpret reality in a way that is kind and gentle to our egos.  We do this constantly, often to an extent that is often comedic.

In one experiment, subjects were arbitrarily told that they did well on a test.  They were happy to take credit for their “success.”  Those who were told they did badly tended to blame their “poor performance” on conditions other than their abilities.  Whenever we fail, we dig hard to find lots of “reasons” other than blaming the person we so often see in the mirror.  Researchers have dubbed this strategy “retroactive pessimism.”  According to Fine, it “makes your failures easier to digest.”

We have two big allies to help us in our “retroactive pessimism”: manipulative memory and manipulative of reasoning.  Who is doing the manipulating?  We do it. 

With regard to memory, we are terrifically talented at forgetting evidence that embarrasses us.  “It seems that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for negative feedback to …

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