As I understand history, when Ford revolutionized democratizing the new technology of the automoblie, he understood: you can't sell what can't be bought.

I feel that we need to think about this in the realm of ideas too. Advertising as communications and selling of the concept of economic hegemony in an age of Adolescent Capitalism is fundamentally flawed in one respect - its aim to sell what can't be bought … that is contracting ideals (vs. expanding ideals).

Examples of these unsalable ideals are individual power as power over others, lethargy as bliss, consumption-based growth (nature consuming accumulation vs. fruition) and the like.

Of course advertising, when it informs on useful products, can be marvelous and often quite entertaining. It just is doing humanity an IMMENSE disservice whenever it tries to sell what cannot be bought.

() On "expanding ideals": The idea that consumption-based growth is problematic has a parallel with different conclusions in the domain of ideas. Ideas are the most diffusive things in the universe, the universe's raw power. It seems like ideas SHOULD be consumed broadly for growth, whereas material consumption for growth is actually the ideal of a malignant cancer … and can be expected to induce similar deadly results.


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