“Have it your way right away.” “For all you do, this Bud’s for you.” And my favorite, “You deserve a break today.” Contradicting our parents, ad slogans encourage us to be selfish, and it’s killing our society. At least that’s what I thought until I went to Wikipedia looking for examples to make my case more convincing.
Instead, I found a page with about 800 slogans, the vast majority of which did not cater to selfishness as I expected. Most were cute or even described a product feature or benefit. And it wasn’t until I neared the end of the list, feeling increasingly frustrated at not finding the ammunition I wanted, that I realized my error. I had been so interested in making my point that I had almost failed to notice the evidence.
Oh, I still believe that we’re too selfish a culture and advertising doesn’t help, but I am reminded once again that we must always be open to the possibility that the evidence will invalidate our cherished dogmas, especially the pessimistic ones. If that’s true of ad slogans on a web page, it’s surely even more true of our Bible, which was designed to correct us.
1 comment:
You wrote:
but I am reminded once again that we must always be open to the possibility that the evidence will invalidate our cherished dogmas, especially the pessimistic ones.
See Andrew, I knew you and I weren't that different :)
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