Catrina asked:

Do you ever get the feeling that we are moving with ever increasing speed towards self-destruction?

Do you think that humanity, in it's lust for power, is sealing it's own fate?

Are we all brain-washed by advertising? Do you ever get sick and tired of being swamped by
advertising?

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My answer to every question is yes, apart from, "Are we all brain-washed by advertising?" To which I
can say no, I am not; but I see your point, many people are. The reason? Probably the use of
professional psychologists who now go into advertising as a career, and find it easy to pull the wool
over the eyes of most of the populace. To stand up to these people you now require to be a
philosopher or a logician. It is a pity that young people, at an early age, are not taught logic in school.
When I tried, along with others, to establish this we found little support, as we expected in a capitalist
society, too many 'thinkers' could be detrimental to profits.

More and more people are beginning to recognise the doom and gloom scenario that you portray,
which is a good sign that there is still some common sense and moral awareness left in the world.
Protests against global capitalism are now on the increase. In my opinion, and I believe I am
supported by many others, the great threat to this world has always been capitalism, rather than
socialism. So far as I know, socialism, in it's true concept of rule by the people for the people, has
never been established anywhere. Police states and oppressive dictatorships have masqueraded as
socialist states, and provided the excuse for capitalists to identify them as such and to condemn
them.

One Prime Minister of this country was famously allowed to say, without challenge, that socialism had
been brought to an end in Eastern Europe by the demolishing of the Berlin Wall. The same Prime
Minister said that there was no such thing as society, which led to the "never mind you Jack I'm
alright" society which is prevalent today. Following this, unrestricted capitalism was let loose upon us
in this country, the national assets of water, energy, railways, public transport and telephones were
virtually given away to profit motivated organisations. Prices rose, profits soared and members of
society ceased to exist, they became known as 'consumers,' to make use of consumers and exploit
them to the full, you have to constantly let them know what you have for sale, and to keep updating
what is now loosely known as a 'product.' This ethos has now rubbed off onto all kinds of profit
inspired business. This brings us full circle to the answer to your questions on advertising.

The unfortunate thing about all this is that capitalism has been equated with democracy, the public
are conditioned to refer to Western capitalism as Western democracy. There is a rather weird idea
abroad that capitalist societies are free societies, I harbour the idea that you can be free in these
societies if you can afford it. But there again, I'm old fashioned, I belong to another generation. Banks,
financial institutions, insurance companies and big business, all seem to have loads of freedom,
perhaps this is what is meant.

Your questions have to be modified a little. "...we are moving...towards self destruction." would be
better posed as; "...we are being moved towards....etc." Secondly; "...humanity in its lust for power, is
sealing it's own fate." Would be more acceptable as "Certain elements in their lust for power are
sealing the fate of humanity." These 'certain elements' want us to believe that what is happening is
the universal fault of all humanity, it relieves them of blame.

As governments of all political persuasions condone this state of affairs it is difficult to predict the
outcome. The worst scenario would be global anarchy, but perhaps nature will intervene before then.
The button for self destruction, as you call it, has already been pressed, global warming is no longer a
myth but a reality, rise in sea level is evident, and millions of people are starving in droughts that
seem to have no end in sight. Capitalist greed has been let loose on the world and who is powerful
enough to stop it?

John Brandon

Regarding your third question, I am not sure that I can answer you actually asked but I can offer you
an answer that may provide you with a 'defense against the dark arts'. You might find it interesting to
read an article in The Guardian Unlimited an online version of a UK paper containing an article by
Madeline Bunting entitled; 'Slaves of our desires' in which she discusses evidence of the disturbing
systematic and deliberate use of psychoanalytic thinking at corporate and later state level originating
with Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, to promote a concept of self and a view of human
nature that it could manipulate. In particular the view, almost certainly not true that humans are
nothing but a bundle of irrational, emotional responses and desires often contradictory and often
infantile. She argues that clever market research enabled corporations and later politics, to
understand and respond to those emotions and desires to manipulate based on Freud's view that,
'democracy is impossible because people are irrational and ignorant'.

Bunting argues that there is evidence that the strategy of social engineering in conjunction with
capitalism is so powerfully adaptive that even counter-culture movements such as those of the 60's
and 70's were transformed into virtues of the cultures they opposed. The prisoners became the
guards and imprisoned their own children. Freedom loving hippies wanted their true selves so
insurance companies presented their financial goods as though they would provide exactly those
ends. So how can you defend yourself against the dark arts? (C.f. Harry Potter and The Philosopher's
Stone).

The logical analysis of advertising and political spin is difficult to deal with partly because logic is like
the T-Rex food object in Jurassic Park, if it doesn't move it ain't there, so you can't eat it. In logic's
case if it's specific types of imagery then it ain't there, so you can't criticise it. So how do we make the
images of advertising and spin arouse our critical hunting instinct? If we take one example from UK
TV advertising you may begin to see how you can create a logical potion powerful enough to counter
the bewitching charms of the media.

If we consider that TV adverts contains two types of strategy then we can characterise them as
property affirming or perception denying or a combination of the two. Property affirming advert
elements simply list the properties of a product without touching the effects that ownership could have
on the individual. More sophisticated versions of this type also list the properties of 'toy' rivals,
compare the benefits of the two products and declare theirs the winner. These types are often given
credibility by actors playing the role of experts or scientists (men with glasses, white coats, a serious
expression and tone of voice). Perception denying adverts concentrate more on the effect of
ownership on the individual. The example I wanted to look at is mostly of the second kind. There is an
alcoholic drink advertised in the UK, Guinness, which was not being bought for reasons partly to do
with its properties but more to do with specific absolute perceptions of the drink and relative
perceptions of the drink compared to new drinks such as lagers. My knowledge of this subject by the
way stems more from observations and inquisitiveness than professional or personal experience in
the either the advertising or drinking fields.

If we characterise the perceived dissatisfactions, i.e. those features we have but do not want in the
drink we could list them as follows:

*It was drunk by safe, cautious, unadventurous, unattractive, elderly people in dingy run down pubs
(UK drinking houses).

*It was boring, conventional, unexciting, and serious.

*It took a long time to pour. (One of my sons tells me that some pubs will pour the drink by 'phone
order half an hour before you go to the pub. This is now considered a quirky good thing.)

*It was messy to drink. It has a large, white, frothy head that sticks to your lips and dribbles down your
chin.

*It was a drink of the poor and lonely.

*Drinkers of Guinness were quiet, isolated, unapproved by the majority and especially the young.

*The taste was sour and metallic.

*It was a form of medication. (Iron for the anemic)

*It was drunk in very small measures.

Guinness advertisers have countered all these perceptions or truths with two, at least particularly
successful TV advertising campaigns. The first featured a young, male, different looking,
individualistic, idiosyncratic, understatedly uncaring (of approval) comic dancer who hesitatingly but
deliberately delayed his approach to an already poured drink and deliberately delayed the slaking of
his thirst.

The imagery was so successful because it created and showed controlled frustration leading to
positive satisfaction through the medium of understated visual and musical (accompanying sound
track) humour. Humour is a particularly good medium for delivering adverts and spin because it is
part of the logic of humour that it essentially unanalysable because the analysis of jokes are
themselves not jokes and we think of that which is self sustainingly true to be necessarily true, (there
is a famous argument concerning the 'analytic-synthetic debate and the attack on the notion of
analytic truth by the mighty Quine, a noted US logician). So humour is the analogue of unanalysable
truth and may not switch on the critical brain. The packets of information being carried in the humour
parcel may well slip into your mental mailbox without you even noticing it. It is only possibly later that
you might begin to realise that there is critical food in front of you and begin to question what has now
become visible particularly when the humour begins to fade through over frequent exposure. Though
by now the drink and its alleged effects may have taken on mythical proportions for the enchanted.

What dark magic did the advert work on you? First it did not attempt to send a double negative
message of the form:

"'Some people say the Guinness is bad because a,b,c,........,n, but in fact, a is not bad because p, b is
not bad because q,.......etc'"

The advert restated the denial of the dissatisfactions in positive property form; the denial of
dissatisfaction (a) = x, the denial of dissatisfaction (b) = y,....etc. It then built all of these counter
properties into the image of the individual personifying the ideal Guinness drinker and in some small
measure the drink as well. So that the advert asserts that:

"G (the drink) and G (drinkers) Have (x,y,.........., z) characteristics."

It particular it showed or demonstrated rather than stated the argument that, 'if you drink Guinness
then you will create the following perceptions in your observers including yourself as self-observer:
You are amusing, idiosyncratic, strongly independent, admirably eccentric, unconcerned, easy going
but discerning.'

We could summarise this advert as containing the following elements:

*An image consisting of positive versions of counters to specific dissatisfactions,>

*The meta-message that, having 'strong frustrations that will eventually be satisfied,' is a good thing
i.e. something you ought to want and can get by having ownership of Guinness. Guinness in other
word has promissory value for the frustrations and dissatisfactions identified.

*Protagonist-viewer identification. For the target audience and possibly beyond the message carriers
is likeable and like the message receivers.

Following Bernays principle the advertisers have focussed on the general cognitive effects of
frustration and satisfaction in the inference pattern:

*the frustrated-drinker becomes the satisfied-drinker

*[leads to]

*the frustrated person becomes the satisfied person

*any frustrated person can become a satisfied person

*[following from]

*a frustrated person becoming a frustrated drinker.

In short a general or specific sense of frustration can be satisfied by drinking Guinness specifically.

The advertisement does not need to create a sense of frustration or dissatisfaction in the viewer but
only needs to show that when it exists it can changed to satisfaction by ownership of the product
given that the first cognitive module of the thinking process is concerned with motivational arousal
determined by perception of frustration or dissatisfaction. (See Luria, The Working Brainch; Thinking,
Penguin). The brain has been charmed into letting images into its thought production mechanism,
which carry highly charged frustration-satisfaction images. You might consider this process to be
brainwashing.

This advertising campaign was followed by an even more visually striking one that could be
considered to have some of the features of a work of photographic art independent of its dark
purpose and therefore a source of self-sustaining and unanalysable 'truth' akin to the 'do not attempt
to analyse this' prohibition warning attached to humour and performative utterances in general like
promises. (See Austin, How to do things with wordsOxford.)

The dissatisfaction features it worked hard at countering were the dissatisfaction sources the previous
campaign did not touch which were the drinks' medicinal, unpleasant metallic taste and the small
amounts drunk at one time. This advert features an individualistic, eccentric, idiosyncratic surfer who
against the odds rode and tamed a towering white, foaming wave that transformed itself into white,
foaming horses (probably mares since they were tamed by males (not my view!!)) to the acclamation
of his surfing friends. The salty taste of the sea horse would be a token of the trial and triumph (c.f.
The trials of Hercules in the Odyssey) and power of the victor over the wild, dangerous challenge
from nature. (There may even be a sexual Freudian subtext going on here).

The towering, foaming sea became a large glass of foaming Guinness and the challenge was to
drink large amounts of it. The advertisers have again slipped past the sleeping analytical dragon
without arousing it by wrapping their message in the invisibility cloak of artistic pleasure. This like
humour allows the Trojan message to jump out into your thinking mechanism resulting in your
thinking that you want to be a hero amongst men and when you are in a pub you can satisfy that goal
for yourself at least by drinking a lot of Guinness and you will probably feel you are being applauded
(Contd.)