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Things, Correspondence The Culture War Front Madison Avenue encourages and exploits American consumers' vanity, lust, and lack of self-control. Moreover, it has an interest in undermining cultural values that lead to self-control, since those values limit our receptivity to its advertising ploys. Appeals to sex sell products, and if Americans learned to say no to sex, who knows where it might lead? We might next work up the nerve to say no to whatever Madison Avenue is hawking this month. The last thing advertisers want is for Americans to lead contented lives of simplicity, fidelity, and responsibility. They happily collude with liberals in our culture's degeneration in a shortsighted effort to boost sales. Modern Age: A Quarterly
Review, —Testimonies of Gratitude— Thank You, Tommy p.296 And, as Richard M. Weaver saw, "character is often an obstruction to the wheels of economic progress."6 Devotion, spiritual and ethical discipline, mortification, fidelity to standards, and a willingness to endure for their sake peril, struggle or suffering of any kind, all of which heroism presupposes, are utterly incompatible with the lust for comforts and good times so central—and essential—to a consumer economy. "Industrial civilization," Huxley observed, "is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning. "7 To keep the wheels turning, people must be gelded into "consumers" and jobholders, and never mind their souls. ______________________ 6. Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago, 1948), 64. 7. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World London, 1932), Ch. 17 |
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