Rubber on the Road... or, how to save the world...

Originally posted April 2011

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Any who have followed my writings know how much power I think is actually tied up in the dreams people carry, the dreams they use to motivate and power their lives. When it comes to public dreams, the ones everyone can see in operation there is one group of people who make a profession of weaving those dreams, influencing the dreams a great many people hold on to as the thing they hope for, look forward to. The group I'm speaking of are those who write and produce the advertising that sponsors the entertainments to fill all those idle hours civilization has bought for us. They, more than any other single group, set and define what the world has for dreams, at least the kind you're likely to talk to your buddy about. So, I would propose that one of the very first steps to doing any good at all is to recruit them into the cause, seeing as how what needs doing really isn't going to hurt their chances of selling someone something anyhow.

Of course, all the world knows they are trying to sell you something, and all the world knows to ignore the product they're hustling, and of course this is just fine by the ad guys since they're working in second and third level symbolic associations anyway. (*chuckle* there is more applied psychology in advertising than in an anger management clinic, but anyhow…. ) One of the best places I can see, really and truly, to make a good beginning at saving the world would be to talk the ad guys into changing a couple of key attitudes, assumptions, about why people should buy things, give it a bit to dig, and see if that change in the advertising assumptions might not turn out to be a tail that wagged the dog for the good of mankind, instead of the other way around. Please, let me show you what I'm talking about, kind of just sit back and let it run for a bit, I'll explain what I'm hoping might happen at the end.

We're watching a car commercial, Chevy to be specific, since pretty much everyone knows the model I'm gonna be using for this example, the Corvette. There's this picture of a beautiful red machine, pure-d certified American muscle to make it a drivers race running heads up against anything in the world, and there's this wealthy looking fellow looking at the 'Vette, of course, and of course standing beside the wealthy looking guy is that same beautiful blonde we all remember from days of old, the one no one could ever find on the options list. (c'mon guys, work with me here, find your favorite blonde of all time, the one just way to hot to really be human, she has to be a goddess, find her and put her in the scene for me…)

She's dressed fashionably but not fantastically, but this time instead of having her looking like she's full ready to strip down and conceive triplets laying on the shaker hood covering that 600 horse bad-ass L88 big block that's going to make you the king of the street lets have her just slightly in the background, just a trifle off to the side, say teaching a little boy seated on the rear fender of the Corvette how to tie his shoe. Set her visually opposite the rolling list of the monster's truly impressive credentials. Now don't worry guys, there will be an ample glimpse of her cleavage as she's bending over to show the child, ample chance to see the curves of her figure when she lifts the child to set him on his feet and shoo him back towards his parents who are looking at a much more sane and sensible offering in the next slot down (the one Chevy really wants you to buy anyhow).

The child is midway between the two cars, truckin' on with that determination of a three year old who is really proud of his stride, and his mom and the blonde exchange glances. It only lasts just a moment, but it is the glance of equals, the young mother is not nearly so wealthy, not nearly so fashionable, and not in the least intimidated by the blonde, her pride and joy is coming to her… such a beautiful child being something the blonde, who really is a warm and wonderful woman in spite of how she looks would really like to have as well, a fact quite unknown to the rich looking dude who has been in the foreground all this while admiring the machine.

The rich dude now suddenly notices the child, looks past the blonde with a little smile at the mother scooping her child into a joyful hug. As the mother kisses her child's cheek his smile becomes very wide for just a moment, and in that moment the blonde also smiles, her eyes for the first time shifting to really look at the machine beside her as she nods her permission to own this work of mechanical art as a reward for the smile she saw directed at the mother and child, make it subtle-obvious, for the girls in the audience who read such things, that she's quite willing to trade. (now all of this up to this point has been background, the foreground voice and focus is still the ego-mania of the machine). Freeze fade the frame and go tricky, dissolve into a very low angle shot of that monster machine being made ready to prove itself… a full five seconds of the thundering fury and billowing smoke of such a machine warming the tires prior to racing, and during that five seconds we see but do not perceive subliminal images of the little boy, joined in the second frame by a little red headed girl, use some common element in her dress to indicate she is the child of those who bought the corvette, and in ten frames spread across the burn-out they grow to a beautiful maturity just as the driver releases the brakes and launches… voice over "Corvette… the future of performance." Car catapults over camera almost to quickly to see (yes, one of those will!), add over.

Do you see it? Do you see how to plant the association that all that truly awesome, heart pounding power you now command is not because you paid Chevy an outrageous sum of money to stuff an oversize, overheated engine into a slim chassis and balance the thing to outrun the solar wind, but rather because you took pleasure from something of a wholesome life event, a moment of contact and empathy between the woman of your life and the woman she secretly hopes to become? A moment of understanding shared between two women from opposite extremes of society ?

I should think it would take a minimum of a decade of such work, carefully, carefully converting the momentum of the thought "joy is to own a thing intimidating to your neighbor" into "ownership is the domain of those who care"… and as a perk you still get the Corvette, no reason not to (at least in this context… we'll work in the electric all wheel drive version that will outrun the L88 in the next campaign…). A decade of such work and there might be enough of a foundation belief on which to step forward, expand that thought to include larger and larger spheres of empathy… start small, primal… the immediate family… the warmth of that hug, that real love easily out-values even the best of things offered for sale.

I really believe efforts such as that will go a lot, lot further towards saving the world in the long run than any amount of shouting and picketing and protesting… shouting and picketing and protesting are what they expect you to do, what they want you to do, because… they've learned how to tune that out just as much as you've learned how to tune out a car commercial.

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Six and a half years since this first fell off the fingers to hit sand... and I'm hearing others starting to say the same things, voice the same concerns, look in the same directions. There yet may be half a hope of reversing the damages in time...
CDM.MMXVII