The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind. --Edward Bernays
Thank you, Edward Bernays, You Sonofabitch, Father Of Modern Advertising, for contributing to our current experience of continuous marination in ads and commercials and consumerism.
My mind has sure been molded by the advertising wizards. These last few weeks, I’ve resisted a number of strong pulls to buy something or other. The advertising assaults certainly seem to intensify during the holiday season, and/or maybe one’s defenses are compromised because of all the activity and buying going on before and during December. It is interesting that I feel more likely to buy something for myself in December, in the midst of finding gifts for Work Secret Santa and Family Secret Santa, as well as all the host and hostess gifts one brings along to this and that during the holiday season. Thus far, I’ve resisted the siren call to Just Get A Little Something For Myself. I feel good about resisting these potential acquisitions.
All of my potential purchases seemed so easy to justify as something that I really wanted, but having gained some distance on that “wanting” —simply by letting time pass without buying--I can report that the wanting urge petered out pretty quickly.
Here’s a partial list of stuff that really had a strong magnetic pull on me, stuff I sort of almost bought, but then didn’t:
*An asymmetrical boiled wool coat. (I really liked the teal.) I found this one because a favorite women’s clothing web site sent a 40% off coupon to my email inbox. Forty percent off is clever; it feels like they’re practically giving stuff away! I went so far as to select a size and, of course, color, and put it in my online shopping cart. But then I woke myself up from my discount come-on/advertising-induced haze and deleted the contents of the cart. I already have two coats, and while neither of them is asymmetrical, I don’t think I’d get so much use out of a third coat to warrant forking over hard-earned $$ for it.
*Handcrafted, big, sturdy clothespins. They make these from solid maple hardwood end pieces from a mill that supplies maple for guitar-making. They’re repurposing scrap wood! It’s ecological! I hang clothes and linens outside to dry whenever weather allows, and I consider the whole experience to be a series of sensory delights. I like standing outside and feeling the sun and the wind on my skin when I hang clothes; I like the smell of fabric that has dried outdoors in the sun; I like the simplicity of attaching cloth to a line with pieces of wood; I like the way a line full of hung clothes looks. Why not have special clothespins to add to the experience and to better hold up heavy covers and comforters, which always get twisted on the line around weaker, less wonderful clothespins? I deserve that! It was pretty easy to turn away from this one, though, when I realized that the maple clothespins were $1.50 each. Plus: I already have clothespins.
*Two books on toolmaking: The Making Of Tools and Tool-Making Projects For Joinery And Woodworking. This is so characteristic of my former life before I got more conscious about spending money. I have made a few things out of wood—easy things, like simple trellises and shelves. But I want to make more things out of wood. I want to make a little round table and two simple stools to go with it. I want to make new benches for my dining table. I have even found plans online for these things that I believe I could be successful with. I have a couple of tools that see a lot of use, primarily for home maintenance and for various tasks at my job. I don’t really need other tools to make the projects I’ve described. So this potential purchase was primarily to feed a fantasy—an image of myself that attracts me, that reminds me of my father, an image of someone who makes things and makes them well, like my dad. But I am hardly doing enough “woodworking” to warrant diving into making my own tools. Once I acknowledged that I would probably just skim these books and never have time to actually make and use tools from them, it was easy to let this one go too.
*Real bayberry candles. I am fascinated and intrigued by the idea of bayberry candles; I have no direct experience with them, but feel like I’ve heard about them my whole life, mostly in nursery rhymes and Little House On The Prairie books. It takes 50 pounds of bayberries, boiled, to yield enough bayberry wax for half a candle or something like that. So obviously, a real pain in the ass if you’re making them, but something about them seemed so charming, so old timey. Advertising organized around these kinds of ideas really tends to grab me. “A bayberry candle, burned to the socket, brings health to the house and wealth to the pocket.” Well, no, it doesn’t, when two 8” tapers cost $15, plus $7 shipping.
There’s more, of course, but you’ve already had a pretty profound peek into my consumer soul. I wonder if all of us who grew up in first world, advertising-saturated places have certain things, certain themes, certain categories that really affect us in advertising copy and images.
The items I’ve listed above basically fall into two categories: things I like the looks of (and it could have been dishtowels or tablecloths; in this list, it happens to have been clothing); and things that feed some fantasy, some imagining I hold of who I am, who I want to be, what the person I want to be should be doing, should want to be doing. I love making things and doing things, but one’s capacity for making and doing will always bump up against time and energy limitations. And I love beautiful things handmade by others—such as linseed-oil-treated maple clothespins—but the desire for that stuff will always bump up against money and space limitations. I see this latter, fantasy category of purchases as responsible for much of the stuff I’ve accumulated over the past 30 years. I didn’t always factor in what I had time for before making a fantasy purchase, imagining instead that I’d get around to one or another project “someday.”
I can scoff at some of the things that others purchase—“Who would ever buy that?”—but I’m cut from the same cloth, a very large piece of fabric designed and manufactured by Bernays and his ilk.