W109SS08

While watching part 2 of The Century of the Self, and rereading select chapters of Bernays’ Propaganda, I couldn’t help but feel a bit helpless. It seemed that I had been mislead, (and horribly too) and indoctrinated into culture as merely a pawn or “consumer.” Was this really the case? Were the beliefs, trends and ideologies that I practiced just part of an elaborate façade designed exclusively to control me and extract my carefully earned money? According to Beranys, this was the case, for I could find no ways to refute his claim that, “…our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men…” (Bernays 1) Even more disturbing was this notion that since birth I had been conditioned to conform, even though throughout my entire life I have always been urged to follow the best path, despite what others think, so long of course, that my chosen path falls under the legal parameters of the law and family approval. To think that the government via school, and my parents via their interactions with me at home was conforming me to fit into the democratic American system never crossed my mind. I had always thought, or maybe assumed (I don’t know the difference anymore) that the entire free market system and democratic ideals that the United States championed were anti-conformity, to pursue your own individuality and explore one’s self. I had been carefully cultivated by my parents to understand that socialist and autocratic regimes preached conformity, in that the citizen must place his or needs after those of the state in order to preserve the common good. To me the capitalist, free market and democratic system of the United States honored the role of the individual in everything, and that conformity and majority rule would undermine the very founding tenants of our nation. To my horror, they seemed to be just as intertwined as conformity is encouraged and idolized in other systems.

For paper 1, I will be talking about cell phones in the consumer society. Throughout the paper, I will incorporate the cell phone in topics such as lifestyle, social relationships, and obsoletism. Here is a rough sketch of the first 2 paragraphs of my paper:

Cell phone use is heavily ingrained in our everyday lives. Contemporary mobile phones serve far more uses than simply making calls. They have been combined with electronic games, radio, TV, digital cameras, music entertainment, Internet access, email, and text messaging (Goggin 2002). Our heavy reliance on cell phones inevitably cause changes in the self; in turn, this affects behavior and social relationships.

Heavy reliance on cell phones inevitably causes changes in the self; in turn, this affects behavior and how people deal with everyday situations. As discussed by Srivastava (2005), the highly personalized nature of mobile phones has meant that their form and use have become important parts of our human identity. Companies have cashed in on this trend, seen through the commoditization of personalized ring tones, custom wallpapers, and colored faceplates.

Prior to the 1980’s conformity was executed through socialization based on Pavlovian conditioning, modeling and habituation. It is a means of internalizing normative morality through physical action and muscle memory. People do not think, merely act. Definition of the self executed though its function, affiliation and identification with society. A prescribed role, produced by the market, was available in limited form. Claiming the title of jock, yuppie, cheerleader, popular, nerd, prom queen, dope head or dropout quantified who one was by defining the role they performed. And consumerism was the avatar through which it was executed. Avenues such as school and extracurricular activities were the means of metabolizing this ideology. Consumerism reserved for a small elite at the pinnacle of society, which every one else aspired. Identity based on conformity to the collectivity and an ambition to become ‘the other’. Advent of the 1980’s marked a breakdown in this philosophy where democratization of the self enabled a greater number of individuals to attain levels of narcissism previously reserved for the elite. Individuals were able to control elements that were previously immutable by engaging in apartheid ideology. By engaging in abject consumerism, individuals could feel like the elite while remaining politically disenfranchised. Supply-side economics facilitated the aggregation of wealth to the top ten percent of society in addition to the dismantling of social programs.

In the 1990’s a distinct shift occurred in this philosophy directly resulting from the events of the 1980’s. Aggregation of wealth fueled racial tensions necessitating another shift in the construct of the self to placate individuals. This resulted from not only the Los Angeles race riot of 1992, but also the personalization of technology within the home. People no longer acted, they owned. The means of internalizing normative morality shifted from socialization based on operant conditioning to one base on isolation and hostage tactics. Stockholm syndrome now the preferred means through which individuals metabolize conformity it emphasizes isolation of individuals through paranoia, and identification with the captor through fear. By fracturing individuals, they are unable to create social collectivities such as unions and engage in cooperative action disenfranchising them through a denial of the ability to affect a greater good within society. Individuals identified with an object and not one another. The mechanisms to metabolize this ideology were technologies such as the personal gaming unit, the television and the personal computer. The chemical release now evoked through objects instead of action.

Beginning in the post-WWII economic boom, Americans transitioned from buying necessities to buying luxury items. The paradoxical sentiment of victory from the war and the feelings of emptiness in the returning soldiers, likely contributed to the increase in consumerism in American society. Advertising agencies began to market products to people on the basis that the goods would give people an identity and fill them with happiness. The 1950s image of the family of four with a suburban home, white picket fence, automobile, and golden retriever became a ubiquitous symbol of the “American dream.” This want of the perfect life filled with a family home and numerous family commodities like televisions, appliances, electronics, and cars created a culture of the overextension of credit and increasing debt. By pursuing these material goods, many Americans fell into the trap of decreased savings and defaulting home mortgages.

During the last decade, lending institutions began a practice of giving mortgages to “risky” customers, who put little, or no money down and paid subprime interest rates. The customers were able to pay the low rates for homes that they could not actually afford until the balloon payment arrived. At that point, they had to either pay the large payment and the sky-rocketing interests rates, or face foreclosure. The many of these subprime mortgages ended up in foreclosure because the consumers who had these adjustable rate mortgages were likely to have low savings balances and low liquidity in assets. They were buying other consumer goods instead of saving to pay for their homes. The mentality of trying to “have it all” has created a buyers market in the home market, and has caused all homeowners to suffer from the foolish overextension of credit to the few “risky” mortgage customers. Unless the government creates new legislation to regulate the subprime mortgage market, the United States will likely suffer great economic hardship for decades to come. The seeds of consumerism were sewed into the fabric of the “American dream,” and now these seeds will lead to increased difficulty in achieving that dream.

Consumer culture pervades our society to the point where it has become our society. Everybody is a target – the elderly, adolescents, and especially working adults. One particularly insidious target is children, who are easy to manipulate. A child has the potential to believe anything they see on TV or hear on the radio, which makes them an excellent target except for one thing - they have no buying power themselves. The pocketbooks of their parents come into play at this point. Some corporations try to create the next big fad, the next big toy, the next big item that every parent needs to get for their child. Success in this field is a huge money generator.

While children have no buying power themselves, they have a lot of control over their parent’s pocketbooks. Once other neighborhood kids start getting a product a parent becomes more and more likely to get one for their children. The bigger a fad something becomes the more pressure parents feel to buy the item in question for their kids. It’s hard to resist buying something that’s going to bring a child so much joy, especially when it seems like they are going to be the only child in the world without the hot product. This phenomenon is what causes parents to wake up at 3 AM on Black Friday, after a day of Thanksgiving festivities, to wait in line for hours on end to get this year’s hot Christmas product before it’s all sold out. Christmas itself is a whole other issue – a holiday that has been repossessed by corporations and turned into a money machine.

“Fluency manifests some of that unself-conscious youthful ease which we prize in children but which in its raw form can morph into sloppiness, laziness, or complaisance, whereas when reproduced by virtue of hard work and purposeful discipline it may reappear in a mature and productive form that moves beyond the obsessive authoritarianism sometimes associated with being grown up” (41).

The structure of today’s consumer-driven society enables the new generation to inevitably maintain a stagnate livelihood in which hard work and motivation seem to arise with much more difficulty than ever before. This new age of ‘easy over hard’ allows for people to lead a life filled with effortless achievement while living in the comfort of blissful ignorance. The fundamental ease at which most things come to us these days has proven to create a society in a motionless trance. Although it seems easier and easier to access information, succeed on a test, or perform at top level, the value of discipline and effort seems to be dissolving as such tasks grow more achievable.
In Barber’s “Infantilizing Consumers,” he mentions the fact that it is easier to get a marriage license than a drivers license while divorce is just as likely as marriage. This dependency on the ‘easy way out’ has mandated a society whose features are becoming more and more conducive to laziness. Everything around us seems to be a quick-fix solution: weight-loss pills that knock off weight without the actual thought or effort of engaging in exercise; the ability to get a college degree without even leaving your home, or maybe even your chair; shopping without having to leave your home, drive your car, or even exerting all that effort to try something on; even athletic ability has reverted to pure ease with the use of body-enhancing drugs such as steroids, protein powder, and muscle builders; and if by some chance it becomes too hard to maintain a balanced diet, you are readily presented with an array of multi-vitamins for every kind of nutrient you could possibly imagine! The commitment to hard work has declined in such a way that it now seems like a distant virtue lost to the institutions of mass consumerism.

The consumerism of a variety of products and the advertisements placed forth by invisible forces created a sense of freedom to be an individual in the sense that you could choose or reject a product based on your taste and lifestyle. Although a consumer society can provide individualistic freedoms it can also be regarded as paradoxical because society also begins to enter a realm of collective ideologies where people start valuing certain products and behaviors more than others that offer the prestige people are looking for.
In Bernays article he states that in order to have the markets function in a smooth way "society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda. (pg. 3)” This quote suggests the idea that consumer society was willing to give up a piece of themselves for the sake of not being overwhelmed by evaluating the products they wished to buy in a detailed manner, instead the relied on advertisements and propaganda material to get the information they needed to make their purchases. This lead to an immense trust for advertisements as sources of information, eliminating the self trust in making decisions on what to buy. This gave a certain group of people the upper hand in advertising their lines of products. Those involved with advertisement and propaganda were capable of appealing to society in a number of ways and the people let themselves be persuaded with the colorful descriptions of products.

During Edward Bernays life, society changed immensely, in part because of him. During the Victorian era, as discussed by Philip Cushman, people were “secular, rational, subjective, divided, sexually conflicted” and “viewed the world as objectifiable and quantitative” (Course Reader page 18). The people of this period were quiet and did not buy things because they seemed ‘cool’ or because they felt the product would fill them up. In this period, they did not feel they were empty, thus they did not have any ‘emptiness’ to fill. Consumers only purchased items that were necessary because they thought rationally. Even those in the upper echelons of society did not purchase items that were unnecessary or had useless frills. In the early nineteenth century, Edward Bernays began to advertise in ways to appeal to consumers irrational thoughts. Things that appealed to people’s irrational thoughts are often unnecessary items that do not last for long periods of time. People began to consume large amounts of useless items because they were convinced by Bernays that the products would complete their lives. After World War II, this type of consuming became the focus of the United States economy.
"The individual learns not merely to measure himself against others but to see himself through others' eyes” (Page 32) describes the motivation many people have to buy certain items. Brands like BMW and Mercedes Benz are very expensive, and thus, synonymous with rich people, so when people see others driving these vehicles they assume the owners are rich. People have images they want others to see. People who want to be seen as environmental wear hemp clothes, people who want to seem rich and preppy wear Lacoste polos. This reminds me of a clip in the cartoon “Family Guy”. One of the characters, Brian, was making fun of people writing on their computers at Starbucks and commented, “You are only writing a novel if someone sees you doing it”. Those people, he claims, only write at Starbucks so others will see them and think they are smart and creative.

The consumer in the American society is obsessed with being an “individual.” Starting in the early 20th society, American society began to see options and corporate advertising dollars becoming increasingly important. The American consumer faced options that promised individualism and prominence amongst their peers. However, ads that reached millions of consumers also sold to millions of consumers, creating cliques and fads that mirrored each other – taking away from the individualism that consumers were desperately seeking.
This need to be an individual thought up by marketing experts created an even greater long term affect. Not only did the new item become the must have item but once everyone had it, it lost its perceived value – creating a need to have the next new thing in order to stand out once again. Instead of becoming an individual in society, the “individual” ended up becoming less of an individual and more of a lemming who would transform on the drop of dime – something that he would do over and over again.

The auto industry is able to take excellent advantage of how illogical our minds work by creating advertising that not only targets certain groups, but give impressions of changing lifestyle. One instance is that of the 2008 Honda Accord, which is being advertised on many internet websites. It advertises the vehicle, but in addition to the standard information about the car, it also feels the need to point out that it’s “ultra-low emission” and include the slogan “Go Beyond the Road”. Both the quote and the slogan work together to imply that the consumer will have a different standard of living after purchasing the car. These two elements, along with the tree in the background, bring up the issue of the environment and illogically suggest that by buying the car, the consumer is magically a new eco-friendly person. Whether any new eco-friendly habits are actually formed or not, the belief is that this new life is better for the consumer because it is better for the environment. Perhaps this is reading into the ad one step beyond what is intended, but the idea of going “Beyond the Road” must be there to give the impression of a change in mentality, and not just car choice.
Honda also had a commercial that aired on television for the same car, this time with Hold on Tight by Electric Light Orchestra playing in the background. The song and the car are accompanied by projected images in the background that take the form of old home movies inter-cut between pictures of landscapes and nature. The combination of the two suggests that by buying the car, one goes back to traditional values and lifestyle, but improved to be environmentally friendly. Again, the slogan of “Go Beyond the Road” appears at the end and further reinforces the idea. They all work together to illogically give the impression that not only does the consumer need it, but also it will make the consumer feel better about him or herself because of helping the environment.

A play on desires is the driving force used to manipulate the society into consuming goods. Advertisers use an array of methods to persuade people to purchase goods that they do not need. Their tactics vary but a common thread in advertisements is the ability to make us want a product. Effective advertising is the key to success of a product or business. Advertisements use our desires to influence us into purchasing goods.

Today, advertising is everywhere, from television, radio, internet, product placement and celebrity endorsement the idea of consuming goods is constantly in our faces. We are unable to escape the images of advertisements relentlessly attempting to make us purchase different goods. In the article Propaganda by Edward Bernay he says “propaganda does exist on all sides of us, and it does change our mental pictures of the world”. This statement is incredibly true. We rely on advertisements to let us know what is in style and what the must have items are. We accept most advertisements as the truth allowing them to dictate our consumption, believing that what we see is what we will be able to obtain.

“Our minds are molded, our tastes are formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never herd of”. We allow executives to make our decisions for us and give us limited choices to choose from. We are only able to purchase what advertisers say is the best or cheapest. In a sense we have lost the power to consume items on our own decisions. When you enter a store you have a limited amount of choices on a product, making you believe that these are the best items available.

In the consumer society we live today propaganda is key to the development of democracy. In "Propaganda," Edward Bernays argues, "We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high spot the outstanding issues that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions" (p.11) Bernays suggest that the manipulation of habits of the masses is crucial to our democracy. We are indirectly governed by the invisible, the stake of our life and our country depends on us the "consumers." Therefore, I will argue that natural resources such as water have transcended from being a necessity to a commodity, for example bottled water. The bottle or logo may vary, however the awakening reality is; the consumption of bottled water from the consumer society exacerbates the management of recycling rates.

Consumers of the 21st century are more focused on creating a identity/personality for others to judge. Trends, labels and prices guide consumers, sadly not many are interested in showing their inter beauty, one must see himself through the eyes of beauty. For example, water bottled water in my opinion creates a personality. Bottled water may range for a dollar to a few dollars. There is dozens of brands such as Fiji, Arrow Head, Spring. Unquestionably, bottled water may shape someone’s personality/identity. Christopher Larsh offers and insightful critique of the current consumer society, suggesting that society went from judging others by their character in the nineteenth century, to judging others "personality" today. "Both as a worker and as a consumer, the individual learns not merely to measure himself against others but to see himself through others eyes. He learns that the self-image he projects counts for more than accumulated skills and experience. " (30).

A consumer nation is built upon the psychology of its clientele. The United States, for example, is comprised of separate groups of consumers, including those who are educated and those who are not. Companies must discover what, exactly, clients look for in products. According to Christopher Larsh, a country full of only intellectual consumers would not only be incredibly boring, but it would be unbelievably frustrating. Nothing would be solved, nothing would be accomplished (due to inevitable, long-lasting arguments), and products would be difficult to market. It is to this idea that author Benjamin Barber connects. The study of infantilization is based upon the belief that every consumer’s psychology consists of certain childlike aspects which lack maturity. Such vulnerability—a common denominator in all adults—is for what advertisers desperately search.

In his book, Consumed, Benjamin Barber writes that “truly mature adults supercede easy/hard altogether, and instead achieve something like fluency, the seeming ease that comes with extensive learning, effort, and discipline, that consummate skill that makes art and achievement appear effortless” (41). He believes that taking the easy pathway toward a goal is childlike, and therefore is a flaw in an adult. According to Consumed, the most mature adult will choose to represent certain characteristics instead of giving into his temptations or impulses; he will demonstrate attributes such as individualism instead of community, images instead of ideas, and narcissism instead of sociability (40). These choices, however, are what worry Larsh.

What, then, is a satisfactory medium? What appear to be flaws to Larsh are signs of maturity to Barber. In my opinion, Barber’s idea of the seemingly perfect adult is not that at all: he is restricted, limited, and boring. If a human is asked to accomplish all of those character choices, he is being pushed back into the middle ages, when religion and total constraint were the major goals and achievements in life. That should not be the lifestyle for which we are supposed to strive in the age of technology and limitlessness.

The society reflects the people who are living in and thus the cultures, trends, philosophies, and every aspect of our lives. As pointed out from the readings, today we are living in a so called consuming society, and we who are living in the society are largely represented by this trend of the society. From both Bernay’s and Cushman’s articles, the propaganda and the formulation or the emergence of the “empty self” after the war are the key facts of creating such society. From the beginning of this consuming society with the ideas of propaganda and mass manipulation under the name of Democracy, the invisible government or the “true ruling power of our country”, as Bernay put it, have tried only so hard to control crowds’ minds to organize and fit them to their ideas of right society. Then, it comes to me to question “are we really the ones who represent ourselves and the society we are living in?” if we are, how can it be when we are only living under the rules and ideas that are set by the society? I think it is not the people who represent the time but it is the society that represents, and in that sense it is not false to say that we are the products of our time and the society. The “consuming society” shows well enough how we are living in such an era where the society defines the people.
As mentioned in Benay’s article, "We are governed...largely by men we have never heard of.", it is quite frightening to see how our minds and thoughts are controlled or governed by the hidden force of our society when we think that we are actually in control of our own mindsets. It is not surprising to see when we look around ourselves how we are largely influenced by the mass media or the propaganda. It is often the case how importantly we come to think upon when choosing the products their names, or brands, the name values, and how we think little of the necessity of what we buy or consume. People tend to consume not necessarily because they need but rather because they want and seek to fulfill their enjoyment and pleasure by continually filling up the desires, which are fundamentally created by the society. It is quite ironic to see in today’s society how people have become so influential to the society where the individualism is so greatly concerned and emphasized.

"Where once intelligence was equated with wisdom and deliberation, with the deliberate privileging of slowness and intentional expenditure of time's wealth, today smart is too often about quick." (Barber, 49)
Within this quotation and much of the material we have looked at so far, I have noticed a general trend in our society to obsess over the short-cutting of time. Within all aspects of life, there are available shortcuts that create a consumerist society that is always on the go. The problem is that with all of these shortcuts there is a severe lack of face-to-face communication and perhaps even a decline in personal relationships.
One major example of one of these shortcuts is in the recent increase in use of the text message. While convenient and instantaneous, the text message also eliminates phone calls, which therefore cuts out person-to-person conversations. There is no way of deciphering tone of voice, which can lead to many miscommunications. Some people prefer to use symbolic happy faces and frowns to convey emotions, but somehow I do not think it's quite the same as an actual conversation.
Another relevant example of shortening time is in the invention of easy-made food products and fast food. These creations emphasize speed instead of quality, which cannot be a healthy prospect for our society. Besides health reasons, the invention of quick meals also puts a damper on the idea of a family dinner. The essence of a family meal together has been tampered severely as people eat while doing other activities such as watching t.v or doing homework. This affects family relationships as the family members are spending less time connecting and conversing with one other.

In reading the materials and watching the film about advertising and the consumer society, I had mixed feelings about the arguments being made. On one hand I felt that accurate observations of human behavior were made, such as Bernays’ ideas that one person can be affluent in multiple groups and thus their ideas will bleed into other groups and spread or that people have developed a motivation to buy things based on desires and wants rather than needs. However, I found it somewhat ridiculous that this is simply a result of society entering a social contract that decrees a few individuals will sort through choices and those decisions will be spread through propaganda. In this terminology it seems that there is a conspiracy theory, and to some degree since it is based on Freud’s ideas that people were inherently bad and therefore needed by social constraints. This idea however brings up too many questions, such as when did our society enter into such a social contract- I know I didn’t. Or who picked the group that would decide what choices people could pick from for products? There are many examples where the group in control had no interest in protecting the masses from themselves, but had self-serving motivations. I think that Barber has a more realistic view of the consumer society: “This is to say, it does not result from a silent conspiracy of corporate meddlers and marketing propagandists. Yet it serves capitalism- in the case of the infantilist ethos, it serves consumerism- in ways that can be quite concretely elucidated.” While I’m not entirely convinced by his infantile consumer theory, I think that he hits on the important point that the ways in which people decide to buy products are naturally occurring phenomenon and that advertising manipulates these motivations to their advantage.
I would like to use dieting commercials as an example. The means by which advertisers go about marketing diets and diet pills are relatively simple. They play on the desire to look attractive. In one Nutrisystem commercial the background music is a woman singing “Look at me!” and one of their testimonials has a woman saying that her husband now jokingly calls her his trophy wife. There is nothing in these commercials that points out the health benefits of losing weight or that tries to raise women’s self-esteem. What makes this complicated is what is considered attractive. It wasn’t that long ago in human history that women who were heavier and had more curves were considered to be the attractive women- think of Greco-Roman or Renaissance sculptures. People have always desired to attract mates, which isn’t to say that that is all women and men think about or strive to do, but reproduction is a fundamental of human life and making oneself attractive is part of that. Over time, what is considered attractive has changed. Today being skinny is considered attractive. One question that should be asked in trying to understand consumerism is who pushes these trends? A theory suggested by evolutionary psychology is that what is considered attractive is pushed by the fashion industry. The majority of designers in fashion are homosexual men. Today’s models have skinny boy-like figures, who are picked by fashion designers. These models end up in fashion magazines that millions of women read and therefore try to emulate to follow the latest trends, especially since many clothes are designed for skinny boy-like bodies. This turns into millions of dollars worth of products sold for the fashion and diet industry. A lot of consequences just by the manipulation of a basic desire- to be attractive.

Each individual of the masses designates contemporary society as consumerism. The consumerism society convinces its consumers to be scared about being behind popular demand and current times; “the individual learns not merely to measure himself against others but to see himself through others’ eyes” (Lasch, 29). Products that are favored by majority of the masses become what the individual pursues and what the individual sets as a standard. For the sake of popularity and the masses’ tendency to assimilate the majority’s favor, anything could be the standard in the society. For instance, the great mass of consumers puts on a pair of boots on a raining day, and then it is the standard to have at least one pair of boots for raining days. Otherwise, the society would define anyone without the boots as outside of norm. This immoral definition of standardization leads the society to homogenous collectivism and further destroys uniqueness of individuals.

This world where one is a cloned human being of another is imaginable through contemporary society; literarily one is a clone of another. Our society opposes human cloning and every individual even dissents the idea that one can coexist with the sameness of oneself. Without their knowledge, however, they reproduce themselves in the consumer society by the meaning of the standard; they chase popularity and imitate what majority favors, then finally become a mirror of one another. Lasch states that sameness is each individual’s identity (31). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, identity is defined by “the condition of fact that a person or thing is itself and not something else; individuality, personality,” but in the individual’s mind, identity merely retains an equal sense of sameness (Lasch, 31). Society and individuals have a paradoxical issue since the meaning of identity barely differs from the definition of a clone which society refuses by law and individuals despise due to immorality.

I am an individual. I am an individual person who can make decisions on my own without external influences. I think and act uniquely from the rest of the human population. These are the thoughts that run through a person’s mind (my younger self included) who believes that they are their own entity among the plethora of conforming groups in the United States. What is not realized is that even so-called non-conformists are conforming to a non-conformist life-style. Everyone fits into a socially constructed life-style that is influenced by the friends they surround themselves with, the media they watch, and the celebrities/heroes they admire. Life-style has become a product that sells itself, and the individual has become a consumer who seeks, desperately, to buy it. Whether we choose to believe it or not, most of us are those consumers who “buy” life-styles.
The most crucial aspect in understanding the reasoning behind the fact that we purchase our life-styles is to realize that the self has a history. What I mean by this is that the self is not an essential thing, it is actually socially constructed. It is more affiliated with cultural practices then it is with innate features. There is no universal, transhistorical self, only local selves; no universal theory about the self, only local theories. This holds true not only if you compare two people from two different time periods but also if you compare two people from the same time period but from two diverse cultures in the world. For example, my life-style is completely different from that of my cousin in Taiwan. Our differences range from the way we dress to the way we speak. One major distinction that I found most intriguing was the difference in our skin color. My cousin and I are both from Taiwanese descent; therefore we have the same natural skin tone. My cousin wears more conservative clothing and carries a flower umbrella whenever she is out in the sunlight. I, on the other hand, put on a bathing suit and tanning oil and proceed to layout for hours under the sun. The result of our routines is that she preserves her fair white skin while I gradually become more and more bronze. Both are beautiful and socially acceptable in their own settings. My cousin tells me that I look like a poor farmer when I visit her because only the farmers in Taiwan work in the field everyday and become tan. In her culture/life-style, every famous singer/actress and middle to high class individuals prefer to keep a fair complexion. But in American culture, carrying around an umbrella in the daytime would draw curious eyes towards you because it is more acceptable to be tan. On a typical summer day, you can see hundreds of people on the beach tanning and playing sports. In our culture, our friends and celebrity icons such as Giselle Buchen and Angelina Jolie always have a bronze complexion which we are trained to see as beautiful. My cousin and my own differences are a good depiction of how the self is socially constructed.

Advertisement has evolved from mostly targeting adults to now largely aiming at children. Adults bought into anything corporate stores tried to sell them without trying so hard, children are an even easier audience to convince. Children are led to believe that a certain product can make them popular among their peers and parents are led to believe that their children need that product.
Over the years we’ve seen how game consoles have become more popular than ever. It started with Atari and now there are 3 major companies who produce all kinds of game consoles that kids have to chose from. They have choice of buying something big to play at home and a smaller version of the console to play on the road. Some of the game systems are more appealing to young adults right now but eventually they become attarctive to younger children and therefore “The Coming of Kidults”.

Consumers are thought to benefit from Capitalism and market competition in a number of ways. First of all, capitalism is praised for the wide array of choices it offers to the consumer. Consumers are also thought to benefit from competition between producers because each tries to create a product superior to their opponents’. According to Edward Bernay however, consumers are not as free to choose as they might perceive themselves to be. Bernay argues that behind the scenes of the free market competition operates an elite group of men, a government of sorts, which regulates and dictates what the consumer will purchase. In our society when the products we purchase became inseparable from our identities, when things we buy define who we are, this idea has major implication. Does this “invisible government” through regulation of the market indirectly define individual consumer’s identity?

Issue of identity in the age of consumerism is a complex one. It seems to me that if purchases shape our self-perceptions and the way others view us, the money we possess is also an inseparable aspects of identity, after all we can only purchase as much as our finances allow. The wide spread of credit does off course challenge this notion to a certain extent.

The fact that identity is tied in with consumerism in individualistic cultures such as ours creates some implication for the question of self-expression. Individuals in our country like to stand out, and since our purchases seem to reflect our personalities, people would seem to want to buy things that are unique. How does this notion then tie in with the obsession with replicating the looks of celebrities, as well as die-hard loyalty so many of us have to their favorite brands? By trying to stand out are we merely blending in?

You’ve heard people saying “I’m just being myself.” A person who says this might think that he is unique individual that is not even similar to other people in this world. But what if he is exactly the same as the person listening to him as he says this? What if he has been a projector that is merely showing images the society has provided for him and he was never given the power to make decisions for himself? Edward Bernays stated in his book Propaganda, “we have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions…we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time.” The “invisible governors” have guided us to certain directions they want us to follow and many of us gladly followed the directions given by them. Propaganda was used to promote democracy and to show people how they can be good American citizens. One of the cardinal virtue required to be a good American citizen was to become a good American consumer.

When propaganda is combined with consumerism, people are willing to buy products that have been set up by invisible governors and equate personal happiness with the purchase they make. While consuming the same products, people conform to the standardized code of social conduct as well. Bernays worked for the American Tobacco company in 1920s and he successfully made persuasion for women to smoke in public. He sent in group of young female models to New York City parade and told them to lit Lucky Strike cigarettes all at once. He called this the “torches of freedom” for women. Women felt more independent by smoking in public and many women started smoking. Bernays successfully promote the sale of cigarettes by connecting emotion to the product even though smoking in public does not guarantee women’s freedom and independence.

Many people are associated with the products or services they consume. I feel that many luxury and unnecessary products people consume today are social signals, attempting to display their “wealth.” I think that product advertisers and marketers feed on the consumer’s needs and desires of never being entirely filled. Therefore the market and advertisers response to consumers display is that they will sell to them a flashy trinket or trendy apparel that will no longer be so trendy or in the trinket case, wear out or break quickly. By doing this the market industry is assured steady profits and is almost guaranteed that consumers won’t be satisfied with the soon to be outdated apparel; since consumers always feel the need to stay up with the latest trend.

Our society has shaped the way we consume and has become what we consume. Advertisers must indeed look for and discover exactly what it is that people want. Consumerism has unfortunately hooked us into gorging on material things and has proved that we suffer from social and psychological hungers. You would think that with all the items we consume we would be at least moderately satisfied, but still we have yet to be provided with a sense of fulfillment.

Americans have always attempted to be unique and define themselves as an individual. The idea that we must be unique has been engrained in our minds since childhood. Mothers are constantly telling their children that he/she is special and unlike any of his/her classmates; that her child possesses a type of individuality that cannot be duplicated. As we age, this idea turns into a struggle to define personal individualism as an adult. As infants turn into toddlers, toddlers into children, children into adolescents, and adolescents into adults - we learn another important factor in creating individuality: you can define yourself in what you consume. However this consumption is not based on free will. What we choose to consume is not an individualistic choice, it is one of several options give to us by a small group of corporate elites. Thus, the idea of defining oneself as an individual and completely unique is a contradiction in contemporary US society.
In order to define ourselves, we purchase items to put on display - clothing, cars, houses, purses, shoes etc. This concept verbalized by Lasch, "the individual learns not merely to measure himself against others but to seem himself through others' eyes. He learns that the self image he projects counts for more than accumulated skills and experience..." (33). Consumerism presents a great opportunity for capitalist America and corporations. Realizing the struggle for identity among Americans, corporations have figured out how to manipulate the masses into think that through purchasing their products each person in the mass can identify him/herself as an individual. Bernays presents this idea clearly, “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of” (9).

The consumer society is predicated on the notion that the individual is nothing more than "a cell in the social unit" (Bernays, 28). Thus, the individuality that the market supposedly provides for shoppers (and the creativity that it allows) is really nothing more than a manipulation of one's consumers as walking manequins. If a woman crossing the street has a red purse that catches my eye, I will be sure to look for that purse whenever I go shopping. This is how the market sustains itself, and this is how our "invisible governors" keep us under their control.

Not long after Bernay's fall from power from the Great Depression, his successful method's of propaganda lived on to influence the rise of the Third Reich. Joseph Goebbels, leader of the Nazi Regime's propaganda, praised Bernay's methods and applied them to his campaign in Germany. Looking back at Bernay's book, Propaganda, one may cite similarities between the axioms of totalitarianism, where the government allows much financial freedom but has strict regulation of personal expression and culture, and Bernay's writings, where he expresses the idea that people are dependent on propaganda and bear a need to be controlled through propaganda. However, regardless of the political and moral implications of Bernay's ideals, the success of the rise of Hitler only bolsters Bernay's work through its successful application. Hitler's reign brings up the question regarding people's complacency and possible dependency on propaganda as Bernay had argued.
I have my own disagreements with Bernay's theories. I don't believe people need advertisements to tell them what to buy. I think people can honestly filter out advertisements and make arbitrary guesses as to what to buy as if there was no advertising to begin with. There are many examples of types of products that have many different producers but don't differentiate themselves from one another very much. Another example of people blocking out advertisements is that one of the proposed explanations for the ADD is television advertisements, because many people stop paying attention at the break to commercials (though this has not been proven).

America is obsessed with image. Barber believes that people define themselves by their possessions and how they present them: “consumerism reduces identity to its own commercial behaviors and leads to an idenitarian psychology in which quite literally we ‘are what we buy’- we are the brands we consume. Shopping and consuming are not as aspect of behavior, but define the meaning of life” (Barber 44). People’s personalities are clearly shown through their clothing. For example, one can walk onto the UCSB campus and immediately point out the jocks sporting athletic team clothing, sorority girls flaunting Greek logos, hippies wearing piece jewelry, and the student government enthusiasts who proudly display their affiliation with certain political parties. We are people who are obsessed with showing the world who we are and the ideas that we endorse. We live in a world in which it is possible to create your own identity, not through skills or experience, but through purchasing power.
Our society sets certain expectations and ideals that drive us towards this obsessive consumerism. The media especially targets certain audiences and manipulates them into buying particular things: “corporations… maximize consumer sales, giving people not what they want but what they want them to want” (Barber, 46). Whether we like it or not, we are unconsciously being controlled by the advertisements that target our irrational emotions. In this way, producers strategically use celebrities to shape consumers’ tastes and sell the latest goods. Due to the fact that athletes are admired by the majority of society, even though Tiger Woods is a golfer and is no expert on automobiles, people will still want to buy the fancy car that he endorses because they assume that his opinion is more credible than the average person’s. We think we are consumers with innumerable options that we can pick and choose from, but in reality, we are limited to what is put before us by producers.

Since the turn of the twentieth century, there has been a shift in consumer behavior in the western world. This shift has been one of people consuming only what they need to one of people consuming both what they need and they desire. This change began at the turn of the twentieth century and was accelerated with the allied victory in World War One. By war’s end, the national level of production was still at an all time high to feed the war effort, but there was no more market for this increased production. This lack of market to sell their goods caused many businesses to fear that they would go out of business, which opened up the door for a new group of thinkers on how to market to the masses.

One of the main figures of this new group is Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays. Bernays used the new ideas of psychoanalysis introduced by his uncle to come up with new ways to promote a product. The basic idea of psychoanalysis says that people have primitive sexual and aggressive desires hidden in the subconscious that unknowingly drive conscious behavior. Bernays sought out ways to bring out these subconscious desires in large groups to influence patterns of consumption and behavior on a massive scale. Bernays successfully changed the public perception of many products, and was soon sought out but the US government to help guide public opinion. The idea of one man being able to persuade millions under a democracy dedicated to free thought and protection of dissent, opened up many new questions on the true nature of democracy and how to ensure its survival.

Society defines people because people tend to change in whatever kind of setting they are in. Today and even some instances in the past, people have a tendency to go with the flow, and follow the crowd. Many people are highly influenced by other they do not even know of. For example, in the article written by Bernay’s, he states “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” (pg 9). In my opinion people are easily influenced by the television ads around them, they people they associate, and what they read on the net. Many people are misinformed but think they can easily gain knowledge of a particular subject by running to net, in most cases MSN.com. In this example, MSN could be a mistaken informer of the subject, but because so many people visit this page, articles are written and cited by others everyday, society “unnoticeably” agrees with these “invisible governors,” that this information is correct.

Another example where I feel that society defines people is in the documentary The Century of the Self. In this documentary it tells of Freud’s outlook how many people were influenced by politicians, and how people are controlled by their desires, not their needs. In my view because people have become so subjective by their desires and the influenced by the tremendous amounts of advertisements and propaganda around, most of them have fallen into consumerism. Consumerism is where people measure inner happiness with the things they do and buy. In the Article Empty Inner Self, by Cushman, he stated that many people often try to fill in what they believe is empty, or they belive that their “inner self” empty. “Inner emptiness may be expressed in many ways, such as low self-esteem (the absence of personal worth), value confusion (the absence of a sense of personal convictions), eating disorders (the compulsion to fill the emptiness with food, or to embody the emptiness by refusing food), drug abuse (the compulsion to fill the emptiness with chemically induced emotional experiences), and chronic consumerism (the compulsion to fill the emptiness with consumer items and the experience of “receiving” something from the world).” (Pg. 20). I believe that because of their biased ways of life, others also believe thinking that they only way to fit in society is to do the same things others do, or to find ways that fill in their emptiness. People want to fill their wishes. They do not wish to feel empty because of they do, then they are not in sync with society and do not fit in.

Everywhere we look there are ads persuading us to buy, buy and buy some more. If you buy this dress, it will make you look more slender and therefore you’ll feel better about yourself. If you buy these shoes people will find you more attractive. We are constantly being told that in order to be liked or to like ourselves we must look a certain way, dress in certain clothing, where certain shoes, or be a certain size. As Cushman stated, “The self is a Social construct” and “Humans are incomplete and therefore unable to function adequately unless embedded in a specific cultural matrix.” (Reader p. 21) In other words, people need culture to give them direction and instill certain standards or rules of “social acceptance” to go by and the consumerist culture does just that.

This compulsion to conform to certain standards of society is what ultimately deteriorates our individualism. The best example of this is pop culture. We are enticed through the glitz and glamour of alluring celebrities and their fabulous lifestyles and strive to replicate them as much as we can. From their clothing to their cars to even their lingo, we buy in and adapt ourselves to anything thrown at us by a famous face. This creates a want and in turn a need to consume ourselves with merchandise and services. We NEED to look like Paris Hilton or Justin Timberlake or whomever is in the spotlight that year and so does every other person. Our interests are being sold to us for the low price of life long conformity. This ultimately creates the heard of sheep I had referred to earlier. Ask anyone and they will claim to have individuality, but little do they know, that’s being sold to them as well, along with their clothing, cars, cell phones and everything else they buy in order to supposedly “express themselves.” We all participate in conformity in one way or another in this culture. Culture is what makes people who they. However, when we allow culture to delude us to the point where we believe we need to purchase ridiculously over-prices shoes in order to be accepted or admired then we know that our culture has gone too far.

Henna wrote:

Mr.Tingle,

After writing two paragraphs for paper 1, I realized that my ideas are not quite narrowed down yet. I talked about how propaganda manipulates people's mind in promoting products and little bit of how propaganda promotes conformity in the society. I want to focus on the conformity of people and describe how people only care about following the trend and not having personal characters (same clothes, same cars, etc). But I find that it is difficult to expand this idea and to relate materials discussed in class to my argument. I think I have many rough ideas but not one firm idea that is big enough to write the whole paper. :(
Please advise,

I wrote back:

Henna--I think you have a complicated idea--one that needs to be spelled out carefully, and I think you can find plenty of quotations to help you with this.

You might take a bit of an historical perspective to try to explain--

something about how how, at one time, society attempted to cultivate in people something more like character. Well, what is that--you could use some quotations there from Cushman and maybe this last article and Lasch--that seems to suggest that character had something more to do with a person's ability to adhere to a moral system--I see this as a three of four paragraph matter--and then shift to the idea of personality (what is this exactly--you could use the documentary here and the idea of celebrity perhaps): and finally (third step) link the idea of personality to the growth of the consumer society..

I hope this helps some..

The last century has seen a change in the economic and social character of America. Edward Bernays spearheaded the use of propaganda to sell goods that people don’t need. He was the first person to apply his uncle’s theories of psychology to business: he developed a public relations firm that operated on the principle that people make decisions based on things other than just facts and information. He was the first person to capitalize on the idea that companies could sell a product by playing into what people want rather than just what they need.

This idea, which was revolutionary at the time, seems quite obvious now. Advertisers have long realized now that people do now rely on reason to make purchases. For example, car ownership is not simply based on which car is the best. Manufacturers such as Hyundai continually post advertisements which boast their superior ratings from automobile experts; however, in these commercials they concede that they are outsold by competing cars with more cup holders. This is because, as Bernays realized, people do not rely entirely on their reason to make decisions. In the last few years, there has been a lot of public attention to gas mileage and reducing emissions. Although it may not be economically reasonable to buy a fuel efficient, hybrid Prius—the money you will save on gas does not reach the extra money you pay for a hybrid—their huge success in the market has led other car companies to follow suit. This purchase is based more on people’s emotions and desire to do something good for the environment than on reason and economics.

Even the Sports Utility Vehicles have had to change their marketing strategy to meet the demands of consumers who want to feel good about their purchases. In a new Chevy ad, a little girl asks her dad to drop her off around the corner because she doesn’t want to be seen in an SUV when all of her friends’ parents drive hybrids. This cuts directly to the root of the matter. People want to feel good about the car they drive—the dad goes on to explain that they own a hybrid SUV, so it’s okay; even though their car still gets worse gas mileage than many non-hybrid compact cars, the dad and his daughter can feel better about themselves because they paid top dollar for a hybrid. There is a disconnect between the average consumer, worker, individual, and the products they consume. They rely on experts—who the car companies themselves fabricate—to tell them what to think, what is good, bad, right, or wrong rather than applying their own values and knowledge to judge the world around them. American car companies, who have suffered tremendously due in part to out-dated fuel efficiency standards, have begun running misleading ads touting their newest creations—cars that run on hydrogen, emit only water, or run on electricity for 100 miles—that are still in the development stages and probably won’t be available for sale for at least 5 more years. They recognize that average Americans do not consider themselves experts in automobiles and provide the expert opinions that we so desperately long for.

One can’t help but notice how today is not very different from yesterday. We live in a capitalist, white-supremacist society that continues to thrive at the expense of most. We live in a racist, sexist, homophobic, and unequal society that although has seemingly improved with the years has actually worsened. We live in a society in which unfortunately I must wonder: freedom, liberty, equality, and justice for whom? Because consumerism is one out of the many tools that benefits this thriving system I believe it’s extremely important to discuss and analyze it. Personally, I’ve found the readings and films we’ve discussed in class intriguing and therefore worthy of acknowledgement.
They’ve all simply reinforced my previous feelings and thoughts on the topic and of society as a whole. I’m reminded that the public mind is constantly being molded and defined by individuals we’ve never probably seen, heard of, and definitely never met. That we are constantly being put down, forced to assimilate, forced to change, and forced to constantly ‘improve’ ourselves to make others happy before ourselves. They teach us to hate ourselves and to hate each other. We’re taught to compete, compete instead of working together, helping one another, creating community amongst ourselves. And we are distracted enough to think less. Until slowly we become so absolved by these messages that we begin to believe them. Until slowly our true selves become so consumed by this plastic world that we loose connection from our selves and from each other. And until suddenly we find ourselves forgetting about genuine values in life: patience, love, respect, memory, support, and the many other values that can’t be bought.

PC vs. Mac, it is an endless debate for the consumer. Which one to choose? Ever since Steve Jobs came back to work for Apple in 1997, the Macintosh has become the iMac, evolving rapidly, and keeping pace with PC’s largely expanding business market. Apple has marketed their product as a “community” rather than a product. Owning an Apple computer today signifies that one is part of an exclusive group and that you are breaking away from the norm of computers. The other consumer target that Apple has reached successfully are the new computer owners. They market their product as a computer that is simple and easy to use. Their ruthless and endless PC vs. Mac commercials demonstrates how Apple believes they are superior in being more simple. They can do this because PC is not one company, it is a type of computer, and so they can keep attacking them without retaliation or fear.
The “propaganda” Apple Computers uses to advertise their product is a very efficient tool for several reasons. First of all, it targets the right people easily by isolating those who either want to be “different” or those who want a computer that will be easy to use. This pretty much is the majority of the population of the United States. Next, it is efficient because it crushes the competition in terms of advertising by repeatedly using the method of direct comparison and often attempting to embarrass or undercutting the direct competition of the PC computer. While the iMac is consistently getting closer to the PC in terms of interface, it still remains separate and different in external design and uniqueness, and their advertisements make sure of this.

Traditional advertisements are usually done through the use of media, including television, magazine, newspaper and celebrity. However as our consumer society continue to grow; a less obvious, but very effective way to advertise is increasingly popular. This is done through the use of walking billboards; the consumers themselves. Whenever consumers use products of a certain brand, it is acting as a walking billboard for the certain brand. Of course, the same had already been done with celebrities who they were given free products to use and thus appear on the media to attract the public. However, in many cases, the company had to sponsor the celebrity (i.e. $$) in order for them to use the products. In the consumer case, not only they have to pay for the products themselves, they also use it much more than the celebrities. In comparison to the celebrities’ use of media to sell a certain product, sometimes it could be very hard for the general public to relate to. But when a consumer uses a certain product, the general public could immediate relate to, since they are consumers also. Another benefit of using the consumers as a method of advertising is that there is a huge population, so the chance of a certain product being seen is very high.
An example use of the walking billboard advertisement is the use of logo on tee shirts. Many clothing companies will come up with tee shirts that have nothing but an enlargement of the logo on the tee-shirt. This is a very effective method of remaining consumer what brands are out there in the market. If for a chance that the consumer who bought the tee-shirt has a nice body and good appearance, it will give other consumer the idea that “wow that shirt look good on him/her, it might also look good on me”, or “that brand sure makes nice clothes”.

The American consumer society today seems to always be looking for the next the big item to own. As shown in the documentary “Century of the Self” humans have moved from a society of satisfying needs to a society of satisfying wants. There is a drastic difference between these two types of consumers. The American culture has molded this group of consumers who buy on a basis of wants. Their wants are based off of different internal rationale according to, “Why the Self is Empty” by Phillip Cushman, “The self has undergone extreme, erratic, often discontinuous change because it is part of the larger sociohistorical fabric of its time”. This change from a consumer driven by needs to a consumer driven by wants has helped to cause the “empty self”. Why must we always try to consume bigger and better?

Today Americans consume an abundant amount of products, goods and services that they do not need. My definition of a need in this case is something that one must have in order to survive. For the most part intellects consider a need for survival to be proper food, water, housing, and clothing. Yet as time and technology has progressed the difference between a need and want has become more difficult to distinguish. Some may argue that a human needs a car because without a car they can’t get to work to pay for the food that keeps them alive. I’ll agree that maybe there are some grey areas where certain goods become a need because they are for survival. On the other hand I would argue that the majority of our consumption is strictly based on wants and not related to survival in the slightest way. Is it necessary to have six different 45,000 dollar cars with one person that can drive them? It is necessary for a woman to get her nails done on a weekly basis? Obviously these things are not for survival, which in turn brings up the question of why do they exist and why do people consume in this fashion? Cushman wrote, “The self was conceived of as capable of personal change; impressing others and gaining their approval became an important aim in life, far outstripping the value of doing the morally correct act, which was dictated by one’s character” (18). Cushman’s article implies that people are consuming these luxurious items and services in order to “impress” other people. These goods are now not about survival and instead are about defining who we are. Consumers are buying these lavish items because they care about how the people around them perceive them. Years ago people were judged by doing the “morally correct act” such as holding the door for a lady. These moral actions were part of our traditional values and these values defined who we humans were as people. With the loss of these values people began to use items to establish their identity. A BMW car is about having a status symbol. Internally people driving the BMW feel proud and powerful in comparison to the man driving the Hyundai. For many consumers it is about competing with their friends to show who has the most money for the best new item

I wondered why nobody had really tried to put a stop to this focus of desire over needs. They’ve certainly had time enough to make the attempt, since the infantilization started at the end of World War Two.

One group that would be interested in doing so would be intellectuals such as academics and researchers, since they both focus on rational decision-making instead of emotional impulse. It seems reasonable to assume that they would not be in their fields of work unless the concept of rationality was ingrained in their very being, so they would be horrified to see their code of living throw aside by a large percentage of the populace. The continued strength of the desire-driven economy would indicate that they either were ineffective or were too lazy to actually do anything.

"Why the hell do people start smoking? Billions of dollars have been spent on educating the white, middle-class youth of our generation about cigarette dangers yet everyday a new addiction is created. Is it the peer pressure, the yearning to blend into the desired crowd? Does that ephemeral high really feel good enough to risk premature death? Do cigarettes serve as a crutch for the socially awkward to lean on? Or is it simply an accessory to help people brand themselves as a certain identity?
Perhaps one of the most obvious motivations for smoking, especially for white, middle class, urban American young adults, is the identity cigarettes give to the smoker. What image do cigarettes give, where did this come from, and has it changed over the years?
Many people realize the stereotypes of smokers and, in thinking it looks cool, want to be associated with it. Since preschool, these modern young smokers have been introduced to cigarettes as the equivalent to death, which adds to the stigma that smokers must obviously be rebellious, care-free and probably dabble in other illegal activities like stealing and/or illicit drugs. According to the label, these smokers also have deep-rooted “issues” and therefore are stressed or even depressed. Many find these characteristics appealing, glamorous, and even sexy, especially as the action of smoking draws attention to the lips."

Culture pervades every aspect of our lives. It rules everything around us, from the cars we drive to the conversations we engage in to the people we place in office. Culture drives science, art, morality and how we think, anything and everything that moves between people in trends. This strange phenomenon of humanity is of our own collective creation, but of who’s design? Could it be that we have become slaves to our own necessary desires to create, express and identify?

In the consumer society we live in today, we are encouraged to buy and consume. Our leaders tell us that consumption is not only good, but necessary, our responsibility as Americans to drive our economy forward. A new morality has emerged, where being a good person now seems to include owning the right things and moving money in the right direction, even if it’s money you don’t have. Certain unseen factors primarily move the churning beast that is culture but in a society where most don’t stop to think why the latest must-have must be had, who is influencing our decisions and why do our minds move the way they do?

To have a sense of control and meaning is a fundamental human desire. We want so badly to be able to manipulate and mold the external environment. We want to feel that the decisions we make have an affect and make a difference. We want control over the events that occur in our life. We want control over the way people perceive us. We want explanations for why things are the way they are. We want to believe in a just world. We want to believe that good people will be rewarded and that bad people will be punished. Without a sense of control and predictability we become insecure and lost.

Recent events in history have lead to a loss of the sense control and predictability. Advancements in the field of science, for example, have left many feeling confused. Without religion as a way to explain happenings in the external environment, we no longer feel a sense of control or predictability. Our newly industrialized world is highly urbanized. More and more people are moving to highly populated cities. Compared to living in small, rural communities, it is much harder to feel significant; to feel that our actions have an impact on the world, when we are just one among thousands. With such large populations it is much harder to play an active role in our communities. The world is unpredictable and that scares us. The advertising industry takes advantage of our fears and insecurities. They try to convince us that by buying their products we can gain control over our environment.

The role of propaganda in our society is two-fold. Without it, we would be lost amidst the huge number of ideas and products to choose from. Our society depends on the use of propaganda to maintain the orderly functioning of group life. Bernays’ writes, “[Propaganda] is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society” (Reader, 1). We avoid mass confusion and maintain social cohesiveness by having our “choices narrowed…through propaganda of all kinds” (Reader, 2).

On the other hand, propaganda is easily, and often, abused for ends detrimental to the common good. This is the major downfall of modern propaganda. By shifting our mentalities from needs to desires, propaganda has promoted the development of a hedonistic society. There is a strong emphasis on the importance of satisfying our every want, which often means purchasing products that we don't need. Cushman writes, "[We seek] the experience of being continually filled up by consuming goods" (Reader, 16). He continues, "For this self there are supposed to be no limits to achievement and enjoyment" (Reader, 19). Modern propaganda has created a consumer society that somehow feels liberated by the consumption of nonessential goods.

As a species that prides ourselves on the ability to form cognitive thoughts, we as humans tend to rely on choices given to us by the “intelligent minority.” Because of the mass amounts of products available, it almost seems necessary for someone to point us in the right direction. Unfortunately, this influence translates from products purchased for necessity like shampoo or food to products purchased for expression of our personality. In this way, we trick ourselves into believing in a false identity and therefore establish a “self” that society defines for us.
Several elements come together to create our social identity in this world. Among these are music choices, clothing styles, and even film preferences. How many of these elements, however, actually significantly contribute to the identity of an individual? For example, only certain songs are chosen by producers are released on radio and even then, radio hosts play the top songs or older hits. Upon first hearing a song, we may not like it—an instinctive decision made by our “self.” With it frequently shoved in our faces as a top song, however, it may become one of our top songs as well. We use the term “it grew on me.” Did we really develop a liking for the song or just the social interactions associated with the tune? In this way, we buy in to what Billboard or MTV tells us is the best while still attributing it to something we really like. Further down the road, it becomes something we identify with. We claim it as a defining characteristic of our “self,” but, in reality, it is a defining characteristic of our culture as a whole.