Kill the messenger?
(No. 4) An ex-ad man speaks, and an imposter claims his rights, by Ty Montague and Stephen P. Williams
Consider a world without public persuasion. Photo by Charlie Deets on Unsplash
Maybe we should just ban advertising
One of the “dark secrets” I wrestle with at times is the fact that I worked in the mainstream advertising business for 20+ years. This was a strange career choice, given that my parents were academics and activists committed to social justice and environmental issues. Maybe it was my own weird form of rebellion? Who knows. Spilt milk. The thing is, I had a good time in the ad industry for many years. It is full of smart, creative and interesting people. I eventually got pretty good at it. I tried to work for companies that were “good companies” by my own imperfect metrics, steering clear of the oil/chemical/tobacco industries. And in moments of introspection the story I told myself was that I was helping the economy and helping to create jobs by helping companies grow. That was true and that’s a pep-talk I’m guessing a lot of us have given ourselves at various times over the years. no matter what industry we work in, because the story that “growth creation” is universally good permeates capitalism.
But looking around the world today it’s pretty hard not to see that advertising is also a driver of a host of negative impacts on the world. The whole ad supported model upon which social media depends has led to the issues that we see with Facebook and Instagram – algorithms have been weaponized to prey on weaknesses in our brain to drive more and more “engagement” on behalf of advertisers. Two of the main symptoms are a pandemic of depression among young people and the unraveling of our republic.
And in a larger sense, the culture of consumption we have created using advertising has overshot the ability of the planet to support us. We put massive amounts of effort into creating products that nobody really needs and then use advertising to make us need them… to maintain… what? Our social standing?
Lately that looks like a really bad idea. All the evidence suggests that we need to dramatically cut our consumption of, basically, everything. For a deeper discussion of this I recommend episodes 29 and 30 of The Great Simplification, featuring Josh Harley and Steve Keen. And here’s the thing, changing human behavior is hard and takes time. We know, because it has taken advertising and advertisers 100 years or more to convince us that we all “need” a bigger house, that we “need” at least two cars (I worked at J. Walter Thompson, the ad agency that, back in the 1950’s, invented and sold us the idea that you need a “second car” on behalf of the Ford Motor Company). So if we have any chance at changing culture back to a saner pace of consumption of energy and resources we stand a much better chance of doing it without the constant drumbeat of advertising telling us we need more.
Maybe an outright ban on advertising is too far. Companies spent an estimated 297 billion dollars on advertising in the US alone in 2021. That’s more money than the entire GDP of Finland. And those dollars result in a massive amount of sales – 7.1 trillion dollars in 2021. It might be painful to pull all those ads at once. Maybe what we really need, to begin with at least, is regulation that prevents any advertising that isn’t strictly informational: introducing the x, it does y, it costs z, it's available at blah. At least then we preserve the ability of companies to inform us about their products while also giving us a shot at preserving our home planet.
I’m going to hazard a guess that the idea of an ad ban is going to pick up speed in the next few years. I’m certainly not the only one thinking about it. There are a number of strong, well crafted arguments to just yank it - all of it. I’ll leave you with this one.
— Ty Montague
Into the brilliant abyss
Some people believe deep sea mining of minerals will be the only way to supply vital materials for producing clean energy, such as wind, solar and other powers and storing it in batteries. Others say that ocean mining is so dirty and destructive that it will cause much more harm than good. This fascinating podcast episode from Undark magazine describes the tradeoffs we make when we dredge minerals from the sea.
Imposter syndrome
Among those who worry that our current economic system is harming our society and environment, there is a professional class of pundits, systems thinkers, activists, and scientists. A useful bunch of people whose ideas -- electric cars are great vs electric cars offer false hope, for instance -- are sometimes in conflict. While I have an MBA in Sustainability from Bard College (where several of these professionals teach), I am not a scientist. My last math and science classes were in 9th grade. One of my dark secrets is that when it comes to energy, climate change and social and political upheaval, most of what I know I read on the Internet. Sure, I try to get the facts, but a lot of my opinions are based on intuition that arises out of self-taught knowledge and personal experience. I can not call myself an expert about the future, and sometimes, my lack of training leaves me feeling like an imposter.
Technically, imposter syndrome applies to people who are experts, but still don’t feel they are expert enough to have opinions or power in a certain situation. That’s not me. As a journalist, I’ve always learned topic by topic as needed to write a story — a temporary imposter. But most of us aren’t experts in everything we’re passionate about.
Even as we learn, I would like to claim our right to ponder, consider and offer opinions and solutions to what I deduce is impending global chaos, due to damaged material and energy supply chains, severe weather and political dysfunction. QAnon has ruined the phrase, “Do your research.” Yet I encourage everyone to research the opinions you hold, and examine the ideas of professionals you trust.
I’m not suggesting that paranoia is the way toward a solution to all the difficulties we face. Rather, I’m encouraging self-confidence, along with rational thinking about what the truth might be. We all are feeling the effects of living beyond our global means. We all have a right to an opinion (though none of us are obligated to shout it), and perhaps have a good chance of discovering important information.
Each of us, right now, should be searching for solutions to the economic disparity, political polarization and environmental savagery we all witness every day. With that in mind, watch out for the Dunning-Kruger effect, which happens when people overestimate how well they can do something -- the opposite of imposter syndrome. So do what you can, not what you can’t. I’ve sometimes overreached with ideas that exceed my capabilities. From that I’ve discovered that to be a hero, you’ve got to get things done.
— Stephen P. Williams