Prefatory blah, blah: This column will be getting somewhat short shrift. It seems that I have become some sort of entropy attractor, or more than usual, at any rate. Way behind, way busy and massively disorganized on all fronts. Beyond that, we're off camping again come Tuesday, so I somewhat need to rush this and also won't be around when it posts. That said, avanti popolo

Edward Bernays has come to my attention again, in the form of an article by Mark Manson of markmanson.net titled How Your Insecurity Is Bought and Sold, located here: https://markmanson.net/insecurity . He pretty much tells the same old story abut Bernays, but tosses out some points in a manner that drew my attention to them in a way that led me to really focus on an aspect of his work that I hadn't really focused on before. Let's start here:

Through Freud, Bernays understood something nobody else in business ever understood before him: that if you can tap into people’s insecurities — if you can needle at their deepest feelings of inadequacy — then they will buy just about any damn thing you tell them to.

He next gives some examples of how this works and states that he learned in marketing that the goal is to find people's pain points in order to then subtly amplify them and make those people feel even worse in order to then pitch them a product that will make them feel better with respect to those points. And, all of that was his lead in to this:

In our culture today, marketing often is the message. The vast majority of information that we’re exposed to is some form of marketing. And so if the marketing is always trying to make you feel like shit to get you to buy something, then we’re essentially existing in a culture designed to make us feel like shit and we’ll always want to overcompensate in some way.

That paragraph provides a lot of food for thought, starting with the idea that numerous businesses and other organizations are spending copious amounts of funds on making you feel like shit. They are hiring pros, trained in the art of making you feel inferior, needy, unloved and unliked, and worse. This is broadcast at all comers 24-7, in all forms of media to the extent that if you are not sitting in the wilderness alone, you will almost certainly be receiving these messages. They even pervade pop culture and alternative media of all types. I often advocate walking away, taking the revolutionary step of declaring oneself satisfied and happy with what one has and has achieved, but such a constant barrage of not merely the promotion of consumerism, but of negativity and messages designed to denigrate and minimize one, it is not as easily said as done. It isn't enough to wake up and say, remember, walk away, don't be just another consumer, of anything, including the narrative. You have to continually remind yourself of that and be aware and remind yourself that there is vast machinery at work trying to make you feel needy, inferior, and in want of so many things. Part of your mind needs to be constantly reminding yourself what is going on and that it is all bullshit.

There are numerous little pieces of that, numerous things we can all take away. I've been stocking up articles on the rat race, the pressure to achieve, and overachiever, not once but constantly. The continuous pressure to be the best or have a coronary trying, to do the best, go the furthest, the fastest, the highest, to garner the most and the best, etc., etc., etc. That is also part of this miasma of bullshit. Mr. Manson notes that most of those who write him for advice don't really have any identifiable problem, but merely have unrealistic expectations. This may sound like a cop out, but when I read that I thought of all those I have known who were plagued by such expectations, or who otherwise sabotaged their lives due to such expectations. All the kids who were determined to make the pros to the extent that they became monomaniacal, self-stovepiped into a surreal universe where they saw, learned, understood and cared for nothing that wasn't contributory toward that goal. How many made it, and what happened to the rest? It is not simply that these techniques and this enormous pile of propaganda insidiously drives consumerism and overconsumption, but it destroys lives and souls, takes the pleasure out of existing and slams the door on entire worlds of experiences, epiphanies, and simple joys and pleasures. This is a very sorry state of affairs. There is a lot more one can garner from that train of thought and its various forks, but I think I'll just seque into a little piece by Tim Minchen that I posted the other day. I suspect that not very much attention was paid to it thanks to the context, but, regardless of his humor, he makes a serious point here, right in line with one of the assorted messages above.

So, if we were to walk away from all of it, not merely the consumption that they try to drive with these shenanigans, but the whole message, maybe we could break it. If they found it not working, they might stop. At any event, if that happened or not, by being unresponsive and unreceptive, we at least become immune to all of its messages. So maybe there is more, better, nicer, more refined, and way,way groovier, out there, so what? That's out there, some other place and time. Let's get back to basics, as in Be here now.

And, a little tidbit I picked up the other day, has to do with how they can and no doubt often do trick us into buying more that we need or want. We all, regardless of everything, need to buy stuff now and then, flour, dried beans, chocolate dipped bacon wrapped peanut stuffed Medjool dates, and other such necessities. This is something called the decoy effect that popped up here: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190801-the-trick-that-makes-you-o... . The decoy effect is a cognitive bias and is illustrated in the article by a simple coffee offering, a small, a medium that costs almost as much as the large, and the large. Because the medium is so close in price to the large, we are sorely tempted to go for the bargain but all the same more expensive Large than the small we probably would otherwise get. I highly recommend reading the entire article, it has some great examples of the effect at work. More importantly, this is a cognitive bias that can be exploited in many ways and not merely to sell us the jumbo size laundry detergent or soft drink, to wit:

The decoy effect was first investigated as a potential marketing strategy to influence consumer choices such as this, but the latest research shows that it could also have potent effects in recruitment, healthcare, even politics. It shows us just how easily our judgement is swayed by the context in which the facts are presented – even when that additional information may have no bearing on the overall judgement.

The article particularly notes that the decoy effect may be used to influence our voting decisions. Ya think?

Speaking of Cognitive Biases, immediately following that article at that link is another, which deals with Outcome Bias. Too often we judge the quality or rationality of a decision by the outcome of the decision. If you make an unsound decision, but get away with it and/or have a good outcome, you tend to think that the decision making process was sound and wise in the circumstances and are more likely to repeat it in similar circumstances in the future, even though it is flawed and dangerous. This can have catastrophic results. I recommend reading this article too.

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It's an open thread, so have at it. The floor is yours
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