Jun 07
18
The Right to Consumerism
I came across the following, while reading the fantastic new book by Al Gore, “The Assault On Reason”.
It is about Edward Bernays, the father of public relations – and of advertising.
“Bernay's business partner, Paul Mazur, understood the larger significance of the new techniques of mass persuasion. “We must shift America from a needs to desires culture,” Mazur said. “People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality. Man's desires must overshadow his needs.”
It has been my belief for some years now that one of the critical challenges that each of us must deal with nowadays is to be able to determine the difference between our needs and desires, so I was tremendously interested to read this quote.
Robyn, my wife said, after I read the above quote to her earlier this evening that we have gone beyond this now. The momentum of the change that was wrought by Bernays and Mazur has led to not only America buying into the cultural shift, but moving to a point now where we have a rights culture. Now Australian – and American – in fact all Western society – has moved to believe that they have a right to things. Straight past Maslow's pyramid of needs to a pyramid of rights.