Friday, June 15, 2007

Incentives

Incentives, Real and Imaginary

By John Taylor; 2007 June 15

We have been considering the ideas of Andrew Potter and Joseph Heath in their book, "The Rebel Sell," where they say,

"What we need to realize is that consumerism is not an ideology. It is not something that people get tricked into. Consumerism is something that we actively do to one another, and that we will continue to do as long as we have no incentive to stop. Rather than just posturing, we should start thinking a bit more carefully about how we are going to provide those incentives."

They suggest that controls and disincentives on advertising would be more productive than anything presently discussed in the public forum. Abdu'l-Baha, in His immortal SDC, suggested an even more pro-active approach.

"We should continually be establishing new bases for human happiness and creating and promoting new instrumentalities toward this end. How excellent, how honorable is man if he arises to fulfil his responsibilities; how wretched and contemptible, if he shuts his eyes to the welfare of society and wastes his precious life in pursuing his own selfish interests and personal advantages. Supreme happiness is man's, and he beholds the signs of God in the world and in the human soul, if he urges on the steed of high endeavor in the arena of civilization and justice. `We will surely show them Our signs in the world and within themselves.' (Qur'an 41:53)" (Abdu'l-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, pp. 3-4)

The Master here laments that it would be "wretched and contemptible" to shut our eyes to social good and bury ourselves in "selfish interests and personal advantages," which of course is exactly what the billions of dollars squandered yearly in advertising sets out to incite. The least governments can do is to stop subsidizing this active seeding of tares in the best part of ourselves, our desire to serve the whole, the polis.

The solution that the Master offers is as simple as living the devotional life. Prayer is the mother of all incentives. Every time we sit down to reflect, meditate and take ourselves into account, we are counteracting the mind-set that advertising are actively planting in hearts and minds.

To me, when I read the story of the early life of the Buddha, I do not see the life of an individual, I see our present age, the story of the corruption of democracy in microcosm. Consider what happened. A wise man predicts that the newborn prince Siddartha will be a great worldly statesman, if He stays protected in the castle. Otherwise, He will become a great Teacher of enlightenment.

So His father, a king who wishes Siddartha to succeed him, isolates him in the castle, offering every worldly luxury and indulging His every desire. He offers him knowledge and education, but also large numbers of pleasure girls. The pleasure girls today are advertisers, whispering sweet temptations in the ear of everyman. The father of Siddartha, the king, is our plutocrats, movers and shakers who imagine that they benefit by indulging the masses, isolating us, keeping us down, limited to lower, selfish, petty, personal rule.

It took a vision of suffering to make Siddartha into the Buddha, who as soon as He witnessed pain had the realization that we are all on a rapid slide to suffering and death. This is what our true Father, God, teaches. He does not desire transient power, born of denial, for us. Such wealth is illusory, and divine riches far outweigh anything that advertisers can dangle before our noses, would that we knew it.

"All things lie prisoned within the grasp of Thy might, and the whole creation is destitute when brought face to face with the evidences of Thy wealth." (Prayers and Meditations, 253)

In the past decade drug advertising has risen to the top of the heap. More money is now spent on network television advertising by Big Pharma than any other segment of industry. Like Siddartha's father, Big Pharma wishes to block out higher solutions. It covets what used to be the exclusive domain of religion, relief from suffering and anxiety. In times past when they felt discouraged people might go to a doctor or a shrink, but mostly they had recourse to prayer in a place of worship, or a walk in natural surroundings.

Not good enough.

What they really needed all along was a pill. Now that Big Pharma has all but staged a coup on medical education, the number of prescriptions for antidepressants has gone through the roof in the past five years. This in spite of studies that have found, for example, that a simple twenty minute walk through the forest is so restorative to heart and soul that, if done on a daily basis, it can replace anti-depressant drug therapy. Needless to say, though, you do not see forest paths forking out billions of dollars to persuade sad or overstressed people to walk on them. Consider this article, "Television adverts for antidepressants cause anxiety," (New Scientist, 12 November 2005), which reports,

"Adverts that claim depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, and that antidepressants correct it, are false and should be banned, say two mental health specialists. Popular antidepressants such as Prozac and Celexa block the uptake of the neurotransmitter serotonin and have been shown to be slightly better than placebo in treating depression. But low serotonin levels are no more the cause of depression than low aspirin levels are the cause of headaches ..."

The article quotes a researcher, "It has become an absolute mainstay of popular culture. But there's very little support for this. We really don't know what chemicals are involved." Another FDA official agrees that the idea that depression is a chemical imbalance is nothing more than a "useful metaphor," but that it is difficult to say that to patients, who now are programmed to regard it as gospel.

Let us pause here a second. Does that mean that our recreation time could be spent, well, re-creating us, removing our need for medical therapy, instead of shoveling money into the coffers of big corporations? Consider the theme parks, the Disney Worlds, the super-rollercoasters that have proliferated in past decades. Not a word of criticism is said against them or the thrill seeking use of leisure time that they encourage because, after all, everybody's pension funds are heavily invested in corporations, and nobody wants to lose money.

But at the price of our own happiness?

Consider what Xenophon wrote about Cyrus the Great, whom he knew and worked with personally. Although a rival Greek, Xenophon repeatedly called Cyrus the greatest king that ever lived. He said that Greeks should not be ashamed to take a leaf out of Cyrus's book. Here, in his Socratic dialog "Oeconomicus," is how Xenophon describes Cyrus's use of leisure time,


"... if such is his conduct, I admit that the great king does pay attention to agriculture no less than to military affairs."
And besides all this (proceeded Socrates), nowhere among the various countries which he inhabits or visits does he fail to make it his first care that there shall be orchards and gardens, parks and "paradises," as they are called, full of all fair and noble products which the earth brings forth; and within these chiefly he spends his days, when the season of the year permits.
Crit. To be sure, Socrates, it is a natural and necessary conclusion that when the king himself spends so large a portion of his time there, his paradises should be furnished to perfection with trees and all else beautiful that earth brings forth.
Soc. And some say, Critobulus, that when the king gives gifts, he summons in the first place those who have shown themselves brave warriors, since all the ploughing in the world were but small gain in the absence of those who should protect the fields; and next to these he summons those who have stocked their countries best and rendered them productive, on the principle that but for the tillers of the soil the warriors themselves could scarcely live.
And there is a tale told of Cyrus, the most glorious prince, I need not tell you, who ever wore a crown, how on one occasion he said to those who had been called to receive the gifts, "I myself deserve to receive the gifts awarded in both classes; for I am the best at stocking the country and the best at protecting the goods with which it was stocked."
Crit. Which clearly shows, Socrates, if the tale be true, that this same Cyrus took as great a pride in fostering the productive energies of his country and stocking it with good things, as in his reputation as a warrior.
Soc. Why, yes indeed, had Cyrus lived, I have no doubt he would have proved the best of rulers...


I want to direct my laser pointer at three important aspects of Cyrus's rule, as described here by Xenophon. First, the great leader's use of leisure is, as already pointed out, not thrill seeking but relaxing in a garden. Want a thrill? Make your life's work your thrill, not your leisure. Make "continually ... establishing new bases for human happiness and creating and promoting new instrumentalities toward this end" your joy, not riding on a roller coaster or entering into a movie simulation.

But no, Cyrus did more than sit around idly in his paradises, as later moneyed aristocrats were notorious for doing. As Xenophon points out elsewhere, Cyrus got down on his knees and worked a section of his garden with his own hands, and took great pride in the results. What? That kind of thing makes drugs and therapists unnecessary! How could he? But gardening was so much a royal pastime that, as Xenophon says, the ancient Persian word for paradise was the same as garden (it still is, in both Persian and Arabic).

More recently this royal gardening tradition was carried on by the spiritual King of Kings, Baha'u'llah, whose greatest festival, Ridvan, took place in a garden, Who featured the garden front and center in some of His Tablets, and Who later spent his time of reflection and relaxation in another garden named Ridvan, as well as a few other gardens in the area. Plus, holy days in Akka were not spent in buildings as now, the early believers, directed by the Master, always set up large tents right in the middle of one of these gardens and held their devotions there.

The second aspect of Cyrus's benevolent rule that I wanted to point to was his use of rewards. He did not hold random lotteries; he rewarded good work, honest faithfulness to duty. Nor were there any all-expense-paid trips to elaborate vacation resorts coming from him. The reward for doing a good job at administering his dominions was, for all intents and purposes, free. The lucky winner got to spend time with Cyrus, to enter into discussions of policy with him in his garden paradise. That is probably where we get our idea of "going to heaven" as the ultimate reward from. A king already offers a major reward to anyone who can brag, "I met the king," but it is quite another thing to be able to say, "We talked things over in his garden." The administrator who got this reward not only got a relaxing experience that he could brag about, he got practical advice that he could use to further improve his management skills.

The third point is how Cyrus divided his rewards, into two classes that seem identical to how the Learned are divided in the Order of Baha'u'llah, protection and propagation. He says that he, Cyrus, also took pride in how much he himself accomplished in "stocking the country" and "protecting the goods with which it was stocked." Thus he was both farmer and soldier, in fact such a courageous fighter that he eventually was killed in hand-to-hand fighting on the battlefield. In any case, it may happen in future that for Baha'is a conference in a garden with a Board Member will be regarded as the greatest reward for teaching initiatives or for protecting the Faith from those who would be its opponents.

 

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