Is Advertising Ethical?

For a start, is advertising a consensual activity? Clearly it is not, though some people might say that it is neutral, since people who see the advertising haven’t actually said 'No'.

This is an important issue, since a significant part of our spending relates to goods we would not otherwise have bought, and therefore don’t need. In particular we have the phenomenon of pester power, where kids see adverts and what the eye seeth, the heart grieveth. In one country at least, Sweden, advertising that targets children is banned.

At present, in Botswana, the government is trying to do all it can to evict the Bushmen, or San, since the area they inhabit offers opportunities of wealth from diamonds. But they need neither diamonds, nor the goods that advertisers want us to want. And they have skills that our ancestors lost when they ate the apple of knowledge and were expelled from the Garden of Eden. So perhaps what we can still learn from them is a greater asset than the diamonds.

In my view, it is an infringement of our liberties that we need to take positive action to avoid seeing such advertisements, and further, little in our society trains us to resist the misleading elements of advertising. Thus there must be a freedom from psychological conditioning to aid somebody’s thirst for profit. What this really means is that people will not see any advertising unless they go to the classifieds or click on the appropriate button.

Big business will throw up their hands in horror, saying that advertising promotes growth. But in reality it doesn’t hold back growth, but redistributes growth.

However there is one way in which advertising creates growth in addition to redistributing it: the advertising industry. This is a form of growth – including the branding and marketing - that clearly doesn’t add to people’s standard of living. This is what the East Germans found out when they had the opportunity to buy Wessi goods – if they could afford them after losing their jobs – the packaging might have been more glossy, but the contents were not necessarily better. So the packaging doesn’t really add to their standard of living either.

So if a restriction on advertising really does cause people to spend less, they won’t mind paying more in taxes for such things as the environment, health and education.

I would still permit unsolicited advertising for road safety campaigns, charity advertising, public opinion campaigns and the like, where such knowledge is in the public interest. And maybe for small businesses, to some extent, though not much positive action is needed to avoid those little cards in the newsagents’ window.

And coming back to Page Three, which is essentially an advert for the Sun: anyone has the right to read a newspaper that claims to be opinion-forming. But Page Three is nothing to do with opinion-forming, or shouldn’t be. One should not need to take positive action to avoid it, which you do in fact need to when it is the first thing you see when you start looking inside the paper. Why not have a don’t drink and drive advert on Page Three? And if we really are to be foolish and naughty, pop those pictures on Page Two, which is less intrusive and we only see it after the ‘good’ adverts.

Well some time ago I presented two diagrams to capture exploitation:

 

And here we see a difference between the exploitative methods of liberals and conservatives. Here the liberals educate the exploiters, and keep the exploited people happy. But conservatives keep the exploiters happy, make no attempt to keep the exploited peoples happy, and scare the fellow exploiters when the exploited start being ‘awkward and unreasonable’. So the grey is the colour here for exploitation of ignorance and keeping people in blissful ignorance. But though the powers that be will complain that they are merely respecting people’s freedom, in reality it is all about anything but freedom.

So how do we relate advertising to freedom? In general, there is a need for advertisers to positively avoid the need for readers to positively avoid what they want to positively avoid. And indeed, though it is a vain hope, advertisers should want to positively avoid all this. If they don’t, don’t buy their goods.

And of course let’s have a don’t drink and drive advert on Page Three.

Martin Prior

Desire and Individualism

“If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.” - Epicurus

How better to start an article on desire than with a quote by Epicurus - called by many the happiest man who ever lived. And before we continue, let us not equate the 'man' in his quote with an actual, male man. Epicurus was one of the few ancient Greek philosophers to teach women and slaves. Now, to deploy some counter-intuition!

The culture of desire we find ourselves in is often labelled 'individualistic'. This seems intuitive - a desire fulfilled means someone is getting what they want. Yet desire is not an individualism. Desire comes from outside of the self, and depends on an intrusive external object to manifest itself. It is not a creative flourishing or self-expression; desiring something and getting it does not make you a unique individual. We do not choose to desire things, we merely choose between desires. This means that desire can, and is, engineered from without.

If the ability to desire something were determined from within me, I could look at, say, a tissue and desire it! Yet the tissue is already mine, it is not separate from me. In the shaky language of property, I 'own' the tissue. Where is its mystique, its appeal? The tissue has none. I desire only the superior tissue - the iTissue 5G, with its multivarious (but ultimately futile) gadgets. This new, special tissue lies beyond my grasp, and that is precisely its appeal. Once something is claimed, tasted, possessed, it loses appeal, revealed as the charlatan it is. So, it cannot be said that my desire is individualistic, because once obtained the desire creates no inner-fulfillment. It is only when a desire is unclaimed that it can promise fulfillment.

By comparison, if I wanted a lute I could get one, but I would need to work on playing it. The lute would be the beginning of an endless journey of self-discovery and creation. My desire to become better at the lute is vague, an adventure through mist. It is a journey that can be entirely unique to myself as an individual. My creative urges on the lute would be spontaneous, seemingly emerging out of nothing; out of my self? Only I can fulfill this want to become a master-lutist! Whereas the desire for the iTissue 5G is direct, highlighted and colourful like the petals of a flower. Like a bee I would have to buzz along a certain prescribed path to then obtain the snazzy tissue of my dreams. Most people can fulfil this desire, ending up in the same place as everyone else, and so it does not differentiate them from other desirers.

To continue on from the previous point, the word 'individualist' is bandied about and hurled at those who are possessive of material objects. Yet to participate in rampant desiring (i.e. consumerism) is not 'greed', it is artificial 'need'. It is the lack of individuality, rather than an expression of it. It demonstrates the individuals inability to complete themselves. It is the most obvious form of conformity available to us today! It may be disguised as an individualism - promising uniqueness or identity for example - but this is a mere deception. Desire operates at the level of 'Man the herd-beast'. Desire is encouraged by our environment, it is generated by masses (if I had to simplify the history of Man into a single sentence, I would proclaim: 'He has one. Therefore I want one!')

This herd mentality obscures the true quality of the things we desire. Desire obscures quality, it does not indicate it. Things that are desired are desirable because they are desired. A thing will be talked about because it is talked about. This is herd, not an individualism. Furthermore, things can become ultra-desirable by virtue of being exclusive, to make one feel special for obtaining them. This is an equally spurious reason to desire something. To bring these general claims into reality, let us consider the following.

Advertising in the previous era would emphasize that by obtaining a product, this would raise one above all competition; towering over the meagre herd, offering a step-up into this dream-world of glamour and envy. Today's advertising tends to be different. It promises to share an experience with our herd (such as a party-inducing bucket of factory-farmed chicken) and to demonstrate just how much one is enjoying oneself among said herd. Both are deceptive ploys, and both are overly concerned with the herd. Again, it does not sound terribly individualistic to me.

This demonstrates how desire is dependent on what others think and feel. It is thus further removed from 'individualistic greed'. Intuitively, it is much easier to explain rampant material possession as an individual not considering what everyone else thinks. This I believe to be the wrong way round; it is someone all too conscious of what others think and feel who wants more than everyone else. Yet there is another reason why desire cannot exist within a healthy individualism: self-control.

For desire is not 'used up'. The faster one fulfills desires, the more one wants. For instance, suppose I desired a pair of new socks once every week. I would become accustomed to obtaining one new pair of socks a week. Without that one pair of socks, I would feel frustration, and emptiness. Yet suppose that one pair was not enough and I lost my discipline. I now purchase two pairs of socks a week. I now need more socks, and more, and more. When the novelty of two pairs falls away, I will need three, then four. Eventually, I am obtaining five new pairs of socks a week, and I become accustomed to this. Obtaining more socks hasn't made me want less socks, it has made me want more. Desire operates in cycles of wanting, followed by acquiring, followed by brief fulfillment, before returning to 'want'. Paradoxically, being able to get what one wants faster, simply leaves one desiring more, as the cycle of 'want' and 'acquire' is shortened.

These cycles of desire cannot be overcome in their entirety - we are desiring machines. For this reason, I do not call desire an individualism; desire does not represent our individuality (and to paraphrase Max Stirner somewhat, they hardly belong to us at all). An understanding of ourselves as creatures of 'yesterday-today-tomorrow' could help us understand where our desires come from, and such an understanding provides us with greater self-control. Yet nothing can extinguish desire itself, no matter how much we wish to. The pursuit of relinquishing desire is itself a painful task. The biblical saints used to go out into the desert to escape material temptation - something even I would balk at! Desire in and of itself is no evil, no guilt, nor shame. As imperfect beings we are bound to have a few vices. It is merely the means of obtaining our desires - namely how much harm they cause on the way - that should provoke ethical alarm.

My conclusion is simple. Being surrounded by desire is not an indicator of individualism. To be put-upon and judged is not the breeding ground of self-development and a healthy individualism. Freedom to be a self-mastered individual is freedom from rampant desiring. We should not measure happiness in how often we obtain what we desire; whoever dies with the most toys dies the emptiest.

How soon once one has possessed something, is one possessed by it?

Selim 'Selim' Talat