Folly

Every once in awhile, I come across a writer whose words are those I wish I’d said, who expresses my own thinking a better than I can. The latest in the line of such writers is Alfred de Grazia, who has published an archive of his work at the Grazian Archive.

A sample:

Of artists and scholars, of the creative class, it is said, “Their work lives on.” But does it? If as much effort were put into carrying the effects of a creative mind into the future as is put into keeping it oxygenated for a few weeks longer, the American cultural heritage would be much the richer. Not that our proposition would be sharply for the one or the other. It is rather that much can be done to invent a low-cost socially beneficial system of managing intellectual estates, which would operate also to resolve the typical anxieties of creators and their intimates.

But my real admiration with de Grazia is for the scope of his thinking, his ability to draw connections between the personal and political, local and global, overt and covert.

Do I understand you, I said; and is your meaning that you teach the art of politics, and that you promise to make men good citizens?

That, Socrates, is exactly the profession which I make.

Then, I said, you do indeed possess a noble art, if there is no mistake about this; for I will freely confess to you, Protagoras, that I have a doubt whether this art is capable of being taught, and yet I know not how to disbelieve your assertion. And I ought to tell you why I am of opinion that this art cannot be taught or communicated by man to man. I say that the Athenians are an understanding people, and indeed they are esteemed to be such by the other Hellenes.

Now I observe that when we are met together in the assembly, and the matter in hand relates to building, the builders are summoned as advisers; when the question is one of shipbuilding, then the ship-wrights; and the like of other arts which they think capable of being taught and learned. And if some person offers to give them advice who is not supposed by them to have any skill in the art, even though he be good-looking, and rich, and noble, they will not listen to him, but laugh and hoot at him, until either he is clamoured down and retires of himself; or if he persist, he is dragged away or put out by the constables at the command of the prytanes. This is their way of behaving about professors of the arts.

But when the question is an affair of state, then everybody is free to have a say-carpenter, tinker, cobbler, sailor, passenger; rich and poor, high and low-any one who likes gets up, and no one reproaches him, as in the former case, with not having learned, and having no teacher, and yet giving advice; evidently because they are under the impression that this sort of knowledge cannot be taught.

And not only is this true of the state, but of individuals; the best and wisest of our citizens are unable to impart their political wisdom to others: as for example, Pericles, the father of these young men, who gave them excellent instruction in all that could be learned from masters, in his own department of politics neither taught them, nor gave them teachers; but they were allowed to wander at their own free will in a sort of hope that they would light upon virtue of their own accord.

– from Protagoras

Salon’s piece from February, 2000 on the misuses of psychology to manipulate kids and consumers is a great read. The piece is a little old, but still highly relevant, and the topic isn’t getting the attention it deserves.

An unholy alliance of psychologists and advertisers targets kiddie consumers.

Shrinks and con men

An unholy alliance of psychologists and advertisers targets kiddie consumers.

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By Arthur Allen

A 7-year-old boy and his mother sit at play behind a two-way mirror, research subjects scrutinized by an ad team seeking ways to sell a new breakfast cereal.

An interviewer probes the child’s feelings about some established brands, eliciting heartfelt opinions about Froot Loops and Cap’n Crunch. After a while the boy begins to tire, though, and when he’s asked about a particular brand, he turns to his mother and asks, “Do I like that one, Mom?”

For a parent, this vignette is oddly touching. It captures a truth about little ones: For all children’s mulish intensity, their wants and plans are innocently evanescent; all that’s real is the fiendish attachment to mother.

But for Langebourne Rust, who cons the soul of the family on behalf of corporations that want to sell more stuff to kids, this moment of
childish confusion yields an insight that can be spun into gold.

The 7-year-old “couldn’t remember, but he trusted his mom’s judgment,” concluded Rust, the marketing consultant at the controls on the other side of the mirror. “In the real world, lots of kids don’t know what they want and look eagerly to Mom to direct them.”

Rust, who has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Columbia University, has been delivering emotional intelligence to corporate clients for 28 years. His craft is to convert knowledge of kids and their families into messages that sell. And it is Rust, and professionals like him, whom a group of activists have in mind as they lobby the American Psychological Association to discipline those of its 159,000 members who “use psychological techniques to assist corporate marketing and advertising to children.” (The activists, most of them psychologists who belong to the APA, formally petitioned the association with their demands in October.)

Marketing aimed at children has reached “epidemic levels,” their letter stated. It is an “enormous onslaught” that constitutes “arguably the largest single psychological project ever undertaken.” Psychologists who lend their services to this business, it went on, “are not using their knowledge to mitigate the causes of human suffering. They are using it instead to promote and assist the commercial exploitation and manipulation of children.”

Two groups of psychologists have been targeted by the campaign. One includes child psychologists like Rust, who work in corporate advertising or as consultants. The other includes the 700 members of the Society for Consumer Psychology, who do academic research that the critics charge is too frequently aimed at improving marketing techniques rather than examining their deleterious effects……