In other words: if you acknowledge a flaw, it’s okay to continue indulging it. The rationale for getting up at inconvenient hours, taking time away a holiday ostensibly spent with friends and family, and putting up with enormous crowds of people is the financial savings. However, that rationale has worn so thin – it’s become so obvious that “Black Friday” is a net loss for those who partake in it (do any of them ever stop to wonder why, exactly, it’s called “Black Friday”?) – that the only way to continue to harm oneself is to pretend that one isn’t really harming oneself. In other words: if partaking in “Black Friday” really were harmful, that is what it would look like. No one actually does that, so it couldn’t be harmful (and proceed to evade the fact that the quality of life costs are no worth the financial savings – to say nothing of the fact that most of the purchases are not even legitimate wants or needs anyway, but simply concocted as a pretext to partake in the shopping itself).

The following commentary was already used elsewhere on this blog, virtually verbatim, but popular advertising is in such a deplorable state it’s completely appropriate to simply reproduce it here, in reference to this.

“A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls—with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship. A mixed economy has no principles to define its policies, its goals, its laws—no principles to limit the power of its government. The only principle of a mixed economy—which, necessarily, has to remain unnamed and unacknowledged—is that no one’s interests are safe, everyone’s interests are on a public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it. Such a system—or, more precisely, anti-system—breaks up a country into an ever-growing number of enemy camps, into economic groups fighting one another for self preservation in an indeterminate mixture of defense and offense, as the nature of such a jungle demands. While, politically, a mixed economy preserves the semblance of an organized society with a semblance of law and order, economically it is the equivalent of the chaos that had ruled China for centuries: a chaos of robber gangs looting—and draining—the productive elements of the country.

The only danger, to a mixed economy, is any not-to-be-compromised value, virtue, or idea. The only threat is any uncompromising person, group, or movement. The only enemy is integrity.” – Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Art imitates life… and over-the-top artistic humor provides the momentary relief of not having to believe life to be real. It allows the consumer to briefly tell himself “if it were real – if that were really the kind of culture I was living in, then that is what would be happening. But, because that is not happening, I must not be living in that kind of culture.” In this day and age this – this “service” – and not the qualitative superiority of one’s product – is what differentiates one’s brand from the competition on the minds of consumers. It allows the consumer to compromise his reverence for sportsmanship by letting him rationalize that all he has is a healthy sense of humor. These kinds of twisted thoughts – which Buffalo Wild Wings is exploiting and furthering here – are what allows a man to compromise in every other realm of his life, and to live the life of prey one minute and predator the next that a mixed economy demands.

Insurance is, essentially, risk management. All of life’s aspects – active and static – are constantly at risk of failure and destruction. Insurance companies provide their customers with the ability to exist in spite of that risk because they are assured that should failure or destruction occur, there will be no financial cost. Of course, by buying insurance – also an aspect of life – the customer is risking the possibility that he will spend money on something he may end up not needing (ie: the aspects of his life which are insured may not fail or be destroyed within the term of the insurance contract, and thus he will not need to exercise his contractual right to be reimbursed by the insurance company). The reason why a person buys insurance for one or a number of his life’s aspects is because he judges the risk of failure or destruction of those aspects to be greater than the risk of “wasting” money on insurance he will end up not needing. The only way this works – the only way this is beneficial (read: profitable) to the customer is if he assesses the aspects of his life which he wishes to insure correctly. If he assesses them incorrectly he will either buy no – or too little – insurance, suffer failure or destruction of those aspects, and then suffer financially as well because he will be required to correct the damage; rather than the insurance company. Or, if he assesses his life’s aspects incorrectly by purchasing too much insurance, he may suffer no – or too little – failure to those aspects, and then suffer financially because he will be paying for a perogative which he does not need.

The insurance company doing business with the customer must also make these assessments of his life’s aspects. If they assess them correctly, the amount damage caused by failure or destruction will reflect the premiums they received from the customer, and they will be able to reimburse him while also profiting themselves from the agreement. If they do not assess them correctly – if they ask him to pay too small of a premium – when the failure or destruction occurs, the amount that they will be contractually-obligated to pay to their customer will be more than they needed to receive from him and they will lose money. Similarly, if they overassess the risk of failure or destruction – if they ask him to pay too large of a premium – when the failure or destruction occurs, this fact will be brought to the customer’s attention and he will demand to renegotiate or stop going business with the company entirely.

In other words: it is in an insurance company’s financial self-interest to “get to know” their customers. To “treat them like people”, not “policies.” There is no valid distinction between the two. If an insurance company writes policies which does not take into account the “humanity” of it’s potential clients, it will fail.

Why, then, does Aviva present this invalid distinction between “people” and “policies” as if it were valid? The reason is two-fold. First, the public is soaked in altruistic and egalitarian sentiment (the phrase “Aviva is putting people before policies” is clearly an allusion to the popular anti-business slogan “people before profits”). Because most people in the culture are altruists or egalitarians, when a customer incorrectly assesses the risk of failure or destruction to his life’s aspects which he wishes to insure, and (voluntarily) buys the incorrect amount of insurance, the negative consequences of this are automatically blamed on the insurance company. Because the insurance company is “big” or “wealthy”, the average member of the public assumes that the insurance company is solely responsible for “getting to know him” (ie: the customer is not, to any degree, responsible for evaluating his own life and bringing that to the negotiations). In other words: the “big” and “wealthy” insurance company – because it is big and wealthy – is, according to altruism and egalitarianism, morally responsible for doing all of the leg work that is involved in establishing proper terms for a given agreement. Thus, if improper terms are (again, voluntarily) agreed to, and negative consequences to the consumer occur (and occur to the insurance company also, as is much more often the case than altruists and egalitarians wish to acknowledge), it is necessarily because the insurance company was “greedy”, “heartless”, “inhuman.”

But wait, Aviva is an insurance company. Why would they wish to perpetuate the misconceptions surrounding the nature of insurance caused by altruism and egalitarianism? The answer is the second, interrelated cause of the existence of this commercial: pragmatism in a mixed-economy. What Aviva is attempting to do in this ad is to appeal to the public’s short-term, unthinking, emotional urges in order to gain for itself new business in the short-term. They are attempting to portray themselves as a unique insurance company – one that exists not for self-interested purposes, but purely for altruistic and egalitarian reasons. By appearing to be a servant of the customer – as opposed to a partner with the customer in the “business” of managing the risks inherent in the act of being alive (an arrangement which they smear as being predatory on the part of the “soulless” insurance companies) – they hope to gain a short-term edge over their competition. They are trying to win the business of that vast portion of the public which believes that the primary purpose of having a business is to serve others, not oneself.

Why would a company like Aviva risk inculcating even more altruistic, egalitarian, anti-business, and anti-self-interest sentiment in the general public when, given the general public’s ability to influence public policy, it is not in their long-term self-interest to do so? The answer is that, from the perspective of just one company in a large industry, or just one industry in a large economy, there is no “long-term.” In a mixed-economy such as the one that exists today – where there are some freedoms and some controls – there is no way for an individual company like Aviva to know what the business environment will look like years, or even months, from now. In the future, they could very well be the victims of some new regulation or tax that benefits a competing business or industry or social segment, and so with that in mind, they are going to do whatever they must – up to and including distorting the very nature of the industry they work in – in order to make sure that it’s someone else who suffers right now.

The irony of all of this, of course, is that while Aviva in this commercial presents the false dilemma between producers and consumers in a relationship that is actually mutually beneficial, they are doing so precisely because the real dilemma that exists between “us” and “everyone else” in a mixed-economy pressures them to do so.

“I don’t intend to build in order to have clients; I intend to have clients in order to build.” – Howard Roark, The Fountainhead

This is an exceptionally beautiful commerical. It dramatizes a much-neglected, often denied, connection between the romanticized heroism of the past and the equally-heroic heroism of today (ie: it points out that our modern, technologically-advanced culture is not automatically going to remain simply because it exists). Perhaps it was British Airways’ intention to produce a commercial that was so abnormally romantic in nature – so “old-fashioned” – that it would grab greater attention by that fact alone, and thus it’s implicit message would be more widely disemmenated. In other words, the company was hoping to strengthen and regenerate pro-Western, pro-science, pro-business sentiment in the general public (and, in lifting up the public in this way, serve itself by making it that much more insulated from anti-business persecution). Wonderful. Given today’s culture, heroic, even.

Perhaps that was the intention, but if so, whatever proper thought it provoked was crushed by capping it off with the company’s motto. Even if “To Fly. To Serve” has always been British Airways’ motto, it never has been, is not, and never will be (if BA is to remain in existence) it’s essence. None of the men featured in this commercial – or in the longer version produced fifty years from now in some luminous future – fly in order to serve. They serve in order to fly – because they fly in order to live. “To live” does not merely mean to produce enough value to support one’s existence, it also means fully, completely embracing and loving the means by which one does so. Contrary to popular sentiment – the sentiment pandered to in the motto “To Fly. To Serve.” – there is no choice to be made between being materially competent and emotionally fulfilled. To enjoy working is proof that one enjoys living. It is only those who do not enjoy working – those who work in order to, for example, serve – that do not enjoy living; and in fact the reason why they come to regard the primary purpose of their their work as service to others is because they seek an emotional fulfillment that they are unable to otherwise have.

None of this is to say that serving (ie: trading with) others is impossible to the person who works for no other reason than his own personal enjoyment of the experience. In fact, in virtually all contexts, it is not only possible but preferable. In some contexts – such as aviation – it is even necessary. Obviously, without any customers, aviation of the sort featured here would be impossible no matter how much the men in the cockpits wanted to do it. This, however, is not a testament to the value of service to others as a moral ideal. Rather, it is a testament to the fact that self-interest – because in virtually every circumstance it is in harmony with, and serves, the self-interest of others – is what allows men to soar; both figuratively and literally.

“I’m not doing something like that to save money, so the economy cannot be that bad.” The appeal of these two commercials is that it allows viewers to escape for a moment from the fact that they might as well be doing such things.

Suppose for a moment that hamsters actually could be trained to row a tiny boat, and thereby generate electricity. Clearly, even if it could be done, it wouldn’t be worth spending the six months needed to do it. The amount of energy spent would be greater than the amount produced. That, after all, is the humor of the commercial. Similarly, imagine what would happen if a mother and father actually did kill their child’s pet fish for the sake of enjoying a sushi dinner. While they might very well enjoy the sushi, the displeasure they would get from seeing their daughter distraught at the disappearance of her fish (not to mention the anger she would have towards them if she figured out why the fish disappeared) wouldn’t be worth it. The humor lies in the “knowledge” that I, the viewer, would never do something like that – and thus it’s okay to laugh at the impossible.

But are such obviously stupid and inefficient (in the former’s case), or maliciously evil (in the latter’s) really impossible to the kinds of people who find these commercials appealing? Literally, yes. Virtually, no. The cause of intolerable electricity prices is not insufficient technology, or “corporate greed” – it’s politics. Things like appeasement in foreign policy which allows oil-rich dictatorships to extort Western businesses, environmentalism-inspired prohibitions on domestic energy production which artificially decreases supply, and general taxes and regulations upon business all drive up the price that the consumer pays for electricity. Similarly, the average middle-class family’s increased inability to enjoy “luxuries” such as sushi is not the result of some kind of new found powers of evasion on the part of fish the world over which is outsmarting fisherman, nor is it because of “corporate greed” – it’s because of rising prices on things like, well, electricity.

These economic conditions are the result of these things, but those causes have their own causes. The reason why politicians appease foreign brutes, treat polar bears as if they’re citizens with property rights equal to factory workers, and why they presume to know what the financial structure, quality standards, and general decision-making processes should be for every business under their jurisdiction is because every day people vote for the politicians who do these things. Every day people may not like the consequences, but they certainly support the intention behind them (ie: altruism).

Thus, the reason why these two commercials are expected to appeal to every day people is because every day people know, consciously or subconsciously, that it is they who are ultimately responsible for their decreasing standard of living (despite working just as much as ever before). Consciously or subconsciously, every day people know that if their children are unhappy, unfocused, unmotivated, and approach the thought of “the future” not with passion but with dread, it is because the conditions they created for their children dictate that that is how their children should feel.

These commercials allow such people, for the length of a few moments, to feel as if the connection between their philosophical (specifically, their moral) values and the practical, disastrous consequences of attempting to bring those values into existence doesn’t exist. The advertising agency which created these ads understands that in order to stand out from the vast array of experience the average post-modern person is exposed to – in order to be remembered – the ad must not simply be funny, or visually impressive, or informative. It must also touch a person deeply – on an emotional level. There isn’t anything necessarily wrong with that, of course (there is no inherent contradiction between one’s most personal emotions and the practical needs of one’s life; such as insurance), but in this case it is profoundly wrong. In this case, instead of the ad attempting to strike something good within people – and thereby have them associate the product being advertised with that emotion because it actually does compliment that emotion – what is being “struck” – what is being flattered and told that it’s good, is one of the most perverse and immoral emotions a person could have. An emotion which is, unfortunately, all too prevalent in today’s culture: the desire to escape moral culpability.

GM realizes that, currently, the vast majority of people make the decision to drive a gas-only car or a gas-electric hybrid based upon philosophical principle. That may change in the future – when the economics of it changes (ie: when, aside from social engineering in the form of income tax breaks, it actually does make practical economic sense to drive a hybrid) – but for now it is ideology which is the reason a person chooses one or the other. These commercials, then, are targeted at a specific ideological demographic: environmentalists.

Environmentalists, typically, see anyone who disagrees with their claims (or who is even just skeptical about them) as intellectually dishonest and of flawed character. Thus, to them, any and all opposition to their position comes not from a conscious, honest rejection of it – or even just a sense of honest uncertainty about it – but from the threat it’s truth presents to their personal shortcomings. This commercial, of course, exploits that sentiment – by caricaturing the opposition.

It has everything an environmentalists could ever want: the low-brow humor environmentalist-types expect all of their opponents to enjoy (how else could they reject or be suspicious of environmentalist claims if not because of a mental deficiency that makes them unable to understand them, and at the same time able to enjoy “toilet humor”?), the “off-base” claims environmentalists frequently hear from their critics that they’re only environmentalists in order to be fashionable or feel superior in some way (the father’s straight-forward, over-the-top, unprovoked delivery of one of these – because it’s delivered in such a way – somehow automatically proves that all such claims about environmentalists are off-base, and wipes out mountains of evidence to support them). There’s even some glib anti-Americanism to boot (the clerk’s “typically-American” petty selfishness when he says – without conviction, no less – “customers only. No gas, no bathroom”). The commercials end with the father proving that opponents or skeptics of environmentalism could never be honest, when he reverts immediately back to his half-baked, dogmatic anti-environmentalism ways (ie: when he forgets everything the man just told him, and gives into his moronic urge to mindlessly criticize environmentalists as hypocrites).

Environmentalists – because their beliefs are first of all based upon flimsy sciences, and secondly – even if the science were rock solid – it wouldn’t justify the political and economic proscriptions they advocate for the sake of it – need commercials like this in order to feel good about themselves. They need to feel as if they are the level-headed ones, and the rest of American culture are just a bunch of brainwashed buffoons mindlessly parroting slogans related to subjects they don’t understand in order to feel like they belong.

Imagine if the situation were reversed. Imagine a man, in the parking lot of a home improvement store, loading energy-saving insulation into the back of his gas-guzzling SUV, when he is suddenly accosted by a snooty twenty-something in a Che Guevara t-shirt who claims, self-righteously, “whoa, what gives? By the looks of it, you couldn’t care less about energy.” When the man attempts to explain that in certain aspects of his life it’s in his self-interest be energy efficient and in other it’s not, he is interrupted by shrieking accusations of hypocrisy and insincerity, as well as threats to do more or face the consequences. What would this situation resemble? In a phrase: real life. This is the kind of thing average Americans are subjected to every day. Maybe not directly, face-to-face in many locales (although certainly in enough), but in virtually everything else. Their schools, the work places, their religious centers, the places they shop, the television they watch, the newspapers and magazines they read, etc, etc, etc. They fact that environmentalists – or leftists in general, for that matter – still believe that their ideas are not well into the main stream of cultural thought is one of the most perplexing phenomena of the post-modern era.

This commercial allows such people – those sanctimonious do-gooder environmentalists – an opportunity to absolve themselves of the secret guilt and embarrassment they feel for becoming the obnoxious moralizers they have become by allowing them to believe, momentarily at least, that they are the victims of such tactics, and not the other way around. Chevrolet, short-sightedly, is hoping that by providing environmentalists with that momentary release of psychological pressure they will endear themselves to such people, and end up selling some cars.

Regrettably, but just in case: this isn’t real. Nissan isn’t claiming it’s real. What, then, is the appeal? Is it that when you own a Frontier you feel as though you could do such things? You can’t, so what good is that? Oh, it’s supposed to make you feel that way about the things you can do? The Frontier is supposed to be a tool for your actual life. Fair enough, but then why not dramatize actual life?

The reason why not is because actual life isn’t appealing. Not in this culture. In this culture, life is characterized by two pervasive, subconscious convictions: nothing is worth doing unless there is a chance of being recognized by others, and life is a never-ending series of emergencies, failures, disasters. In other words, this commercial works because it allows experiences which don’t satisfy that need and belief (respectively) to feel as if they do satisfy them. In other words: Nissan is exploiting the average person’s inability to respond emotionally to real life by making him respond to his (unhealthy) desires for recognition and the avoidance of disaster – the very desires which caused his emotional impotence – all while hiding behind the pretense of attempting to inspire the consumer to feel proud of his actual life (ie: what is inspiring about the impossible – especially when, unlike in in actual fiction, every attempt is made to make this “fictionalization” appear to be real?)

Based solely upon it’s actual characteristics, there’s nothing overwhelmingly superior about Nissan’s pick-up truck (as opposed to Ford’s, or GM’s, or Toyota’s, et cetera), but if the potential customer feels as if there is something special, there’s a better chance that he’ll pick it. All Nissan must count upon for that to happen is that he will fail to realize that what’s “special” to him about The Frontier is not the truck itself, but the sensations he felt when he saw the commercial. In other words: he is being sold a kind of therapeutic flattery, and expected to pay for it by buying a particular truck which may not actually be best for his actual life.

It’s predatory, but it’s also short-term thinking on the company’s part. Nissan is concerned with making a sale now, and what they contribute to doing to the average person’s mind is beyond the range of balance-sheet prudence. The fact that such people will, over time, be less and less able to make rational decisions considering the facts and only the facts – and thus have less wealth to trade for things like automobiles, as well as more likely to support public policies which will make the production of automobiles more difficult if not impossible – is not something a highly-leveraged company like Nissan – with extremely small profit margins – can concern itself with. The tragic irony, of course, is that the only reason why companies like Nissan are in this precarious position, the only reason why they have to resort to this kind of advertising, is because the majority of the people in today’s culture already are damaged, and already have done exactly those things.

Why mock this? It’s in order to allow the customer to feel better about being complacent about today’s high and growing level of political oppression the individual experiences; and to not feel guilty about ignoring it by escaping into video games and the like. This same psychological phenomenon – which incidentally uses the exact same object of parody (the least Playstation can do is not just flat-out copy Ace Hardware only a few months after the latter’s ad is released) – has been written about elsewhere on this blog.

Increasing numbers of young people, and in increasingly sophisticated and enveloping ways, and as a result of the education (read: indoctrination) they receive, the example set by their elders, and the structure of the adult society they will soon enter, are choosing the manipulation of others as their means of survival (as opposed to the manipulation of physical matter). Such a “career choice”, however, does not provide for authentic self-esteem and genuine happiness. No matter how much prestige or “fun” or material wealth they may have already achieved, they remain unhappy. No matter how much more they plan to acquire in their adult lives, they remain aware that they will never be happy.

This commercial is expected to have wide appeal precisely because it allows this sort of young person a respite from that secret unhappiness. It allows him to “get out in front of it” by comparing his actual self and his actual deeds to the person and deeds portrayed in the ad. Because the culture has not degraded quite so much that obvious, crude manipulation of this sort can work (and thus is not attempted), the receptive viewer of this ad is able to conclude: “that is what a manipulator looks like, and that is what a manipulator does.” This, of course, allows him a moment’s relief from his own uneasiness through the unspoken conclusion “I don’t do that, I must not be a manipulator.”

Such a young person may gain sway over his peers, access to opportunities and/or physical wealth precisely because he is skilled at making something as trivial as the direction of one’s shoe laces into a referendum on a person’s soul (and many today do just that) – and he may dream of one day being able to take that knack for exploiting the pretentions and insecurities of his authentically knowledgable and productive betters into the “big time” of politics or the arts or the media – but it’s ironic that the only type of person this ad – which was made by grown-up versions of that type of person – will work on is precisely the type of person who is supposed to see cynically through it.

This is denial by means of hyperbole. America is no longer governed by laws, but by men. Most of the “law” is ever-changing to meet the desires of whatever group is dominant at the moment, and even the unchanging parts of the “law” are only enforced not because they’re the law, but only because to not do so would cause so much chaos that those in power would lose their grip on that power. As such, Americans already do live in a “state of chaos.”

What are they doing about it? Virtually nothing. Most are striking the upper most twigs, some are attacking some of the more substantial branches, and virtually no one is striking the root. Most are content to pretend as if it’s not happening, and to go on living as if the disruptions and burdens placed upon them do not exist so long as some degree of what was possible before those disruptions and burdens are there to distract them.

The appeal of this commercial is that it allows people like this, living in a culture like this, to escape the unshakable knowledge that things are how they actually are, and that their reaction to it is what it actually is. This repressed, inarticulate awareness manifests itself as dull, diffused – but chronic – emotions of fear and shame. State Farm knows this, and is seeking to capitalize upon it.

The message this commercial sends people – particularly compartmentally-rational, economically fastidious men – is the message that their indifferent reaction to the culture is appropriate because it just isn’t “that bad.” “That (the visuals in the commercial) is what it would look like if it were actually bad; and that how I would react if I were actually a desensitized, jaded, cynical, cowardly person. None of those things are what I’m seeing in real life, so these feelings I’m having are unfounded.”

Of course, this commercial won’t actually shake those feelings (only the correction of the real world’s problems will do that – and only a passionate interest in understanding and solving them will to that), but it does provide a moment’s relief from the knowledge that this is tantamount to what is happening to the country; that every day otherwise-decent people are letting it happen. The destruction, obviously, may not be as abrupt and acute as what happens in this commercial – in actuality it is imperceptibly gradual and spread far and wide – but it is happening, and on the whole it is as destructive. The same could be said for the apathy, cowardice, intellectual dishonesty, and willingness to be bribed: it may not be shown in a few large, dramatic events – and it may not be concentrated in a relative few conspicuously disgusting individuals – but it is there in virtually everyone, slowly working it’s way down into the core of everyone’s being, and it’s effects will be the same as if such events did happen and such individuals did exist in the world.

Why are large, respected, relatively-financially-stable companies like State Farm – who sell products which will always be in demand to one degree or another – willing to resort to such tactics in order to get a short-term edge on their competition and make a quick profit? Don’t they realize that further inculcating complacency will only ensure an even more chaotic cultural and political landscape, and thus an even more anti-business environment in the future? Perhaps they, too, need to believe what they imply to their customers.