Advertising, Placebos and Nocebos
By John Taylor; 2009 May 16, Jamal 19, 166 BE
Abdu'l-Baha was reported in a Denver, Colorado newspaper as saying,
"The contingent world is like the human body that has grown from the embryonic state and reached maturity and perfection. It may be said that the development of the human being from the beginning of life to the age of maturity is but a preparation for the appearance of the power of reason. This is the age of maturity and the time of the manifestation of the Most Great Intellect and the Most Ancient Bounty so that divine and material civilizations may be joined and the perfection of the human world may dawn." (Abdu'l-Baha, qi Mahmud's Diary, p. 292-293)
As we come of age we learn to think of God as the "Most Great Intellect," a reasoning Being that does not force or cajole us to do His Will. Reason gradually is coming to dominate our age. But irrational forces still hold sway because our reason is split. The reason of the individual and the reason of society are treated as entirely separate spheres, not as two reciprocal sides of a single reality. The wealthy and powerful exploit and manipulate this dichotomy by using propaganda and advertising.
Over the past few days I have been studying advertising because it is evident that this industry has become perhaps the greatest obstruction to the quick, thorough response we must make to climate crisis.
Advertising is defined as a strategy to "create, organize and where possible control markets." In other words, although it uses money as a means, the end is power. Worse, it causes conformity without variation, the opposite of unity in diversity. Advertising can only work by "homogenization of consumer tastes" on a broad scale.
"At its limit, this involved seeking to create world cultural convergence, to homogenize consumer tastes and engineer a convergence of lifestyle, culture and behaviors among consumer segments across the world." ("Advertising," Wikipedia)
According to this encyclopaedia, the complete domination by advertising in the public sphere is a recent phenomenon. It started with monopoly capitalism in the 19th Century and its influence accelerated with the invention of the assembly line. Mass production required mass consumption in order to gain efficiencies of scale. A diverse market is hard to control and exploit, so advertising favours conformity and centralization. Like a powerful drug, over the past century it penetrated every cell in the body politic, even the brain.
So tight is its stranglehold on politics that we cannot conceive of any other way to run things. Recently a reporter from Russia Today asked the most prominent American intellectual, Noam Chomsky, why the Obama administration is not doing what it promised by cleaning up Washington, for example by introducing structural change in the financial industry. He answered,
"Elections in the US are essentially run by the public relations industry which manages elections. They sell candidates the way they sell toothpaste on TV. Think of the circumstances during the election, and imagine yourself as an advertising executive. You have a country where about 80% of the population thinks it is going the wrong way, thinks the government does not work for us. It works for a few looking out for themselves. Of course, you are going to make your slogan "Change of hope and unity." And a crucial difference in the campaign was that the financial industries which are the major funders preferred Obama to McCain, so he was far better funded by the financial industries since neo-liberalism has become overwhelmingly important in the US and the world in fact. So yes, they were brought in to fix up the crisis they created. And of course, they are going to fix it up so the institutional structures remain the same." (http://www.russiatoday.com/Politics/2009-05-11/Does_Obama_recycle_George_W._Bush_s_plans.html)
Surely if advertising is such a newcomer it cannot be a fundamental. Yet everybody I meet treats it as such. Albeit reluctantly and resentfully, we still treat the publicity machine as unalterable, sacrosanct. We may not have the awed reverence that members of a primitive tribe show their local demon, but like them we refuse to contemplate any alternatives. It is hard to imagine real change ever coming out of a publicity campaign. You cannot brainwash people into caring for the planet. Yet deep down that is just what we seem to be waiting for.
However, worse than its political influence and domination of the public forum, worse than our grudging but rapt deference to those wealthy enough to advertise, is the bad example that advertising gives.
Advertising is negative. It starts with a lack or deficit and offers to alleviate it. Whereas capitalism at its best serves society by finding a need and filling it, advertising creates a need by main force of will, whether it is real or not. Essentially, it puts the real estate inside our cranium up for sale. Even the best publicity uses flattery or appeals to lower motives, passions or desires. They do an end-run around the brain by encouraging snap decisions based on half-understood ideas and images. Quantity of decisions outweighs quality, implying that deep reflection and deliberate consultation are a waste of time. Instead they actively subvert rational thinking and discourage responsibility. Conscious, public-spirited action is deemed futile and impotent.
Contrast that with the positive example of selfless service that Baha'u'llah gives to the world,
"My object is none other than the betterment of the world and the tranquillity of its peoples. The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established. This unity can never be achieved so long as the counsels which the Pen of the Most High hath revealed are suffered to pass unheeded." (Gl 286)
Along with advertising I have again become fascinated with the placebo (Latin for "I will please") and nocebo ("I will harm") effects. Although we tend to think of placebos only in terms of medicine, I think that the phenomenon hints at why advertising has become so powerful, and so dangerous. The Wiki article on nocebos cites a cancer specialist who observed that the very word "cancer" killed some patients. When he told them their prognosis they turned their heads to the wall and died a premature death.
"... there is a small group of patients in whom the realisation of impending death is a blow so terrible that they are quite unable to adjust to it, and they die rapidly before the malignancy seems to have developed enough to cause death. This problem of self-willed death is in some ways analogous to the death produced in primitive peoples by witchcraft."
Doctors are learning, or rather re-learning, that even their clothing, their attitude, the clothes they wear, the color of their pills, can have so powerful an effect that they either save or doom the patient.
Who can doubt but that a flood of advertising messages telling us that "you are inadequate, take this to cure it" has a powerful nocebo effect? Again, contrast that with the optimistic, loving example of Abdu'l-Baha. Instead of saying "you have a problem, solve it like this," He says, "We are all blessed by a loving Lord who cares about us all and wants us to succeed." Even if this message were utterly false, if we were all on a handcart to hell, this mental placebo would do no harm and might even plant in us the optimism that leads to solutions.
For that reason, I try to read one talk of Abdu'l-Baha for every few advertisements or newspaper or magazine articles that I read. His repeated message is that the Most Great Intellect is One, and its traces can be detected both in the self and in the general interest. This has a placebo effect. It cures me of the negativity and subliminal slashes advertising make at the soul.
For a long time I used to wonder, why does the Master repeat Himself so often in His public talks? Why so little new information? And why is He so consistently broad and general, so upbeat and effusively loving? The answer has to be that He understood leadership and public service in a different way.
The job of a public figure most of the time is not to convey new news or spout streams of data but to do what `Abdu'l-Baha called "spreading fragrances." He spread fragrance literally, when he washed His guest's hands in rosewater before they entered a banquet room or holy place. The public addresses of the Master are verbal rosewater bathing the mind in the nurturing optimism we must have to solve problems on our own and fit them into the broader divine purpose.
This is the reverse of the corruptive object of commercialism. The difference is like night and day, or rather between a placebo and a nocebo, between God and the world.
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