On Forming a More Credulous Union

From Gizmodo

“…Every single one of these consumer electronics companies should be approached as the enemy. They work for us. Hold their feet to the fire when they say their product is going to change even a small part of our lives.”
Joel Johnson, Gizmodo Editor Emeritus

Holy social conditioning, Batman. Sounds like crushing the Zeusworthy sense of superiority every single land owner had prior to the 18th century has also managed to liquefy our ability to control the people who work for us.

No, I’m not making some kind of management training course crib note statement here. I’m realizing from that little bit of wisdom that perhaps what our country has lost through the long and irreplaceable process of self-governmental socialization is the ability to control and dehumanize those who are truly meant to serve us. Yes, truly meant to serve us. Yes, dehumanize.

We need to strip the nice, shiny chrome coating that businesses have slathered on themselves to pretty up their outward image. Just scrape all that stuff off and reveal the little wooden boy beneath. Puppets. Tools. Objects. Possessions. Businesses, however massive, conglomerated, international or philanthropic they may be do not deserve the respect that the even most meager mendicant should be offered.

So how do we do that? Read everything Joel Johnson has said in that article. For all his use of hyperbole, mockery and freewheeling snarkiness, he has a lot to say about the underhanded trickery lies these businesses have been throwing our way for many decades. Just that one sentence, “They work for us,” throws me into an arm-pumping orgy of Hallelujahs and Amens. And I don’t even believe in God. That’s just how it ought to be. How it could be if we’d all quit listening to the hype.

There’s a clear cut conflict. You and I and everyone else have money. The very point of a business’ existence is to take it from us, by any means necessary. That’s how a business works for its owners. But: those sparkly little ducats in your pocket are yours to spend. You ultimately reward businesses with your money by purchasing the best made products from the most responsive companies. But you have to be vigilant! Just as much as your money is a privilege they have to earn, their compliance and innovation are a privilege you earn by being hard with them.

I see two root causes for the incremental gains that the supply side has taken.

First, advertising. Professionals in that arena might mince words or deny culpability, but adverts lie. They present the favorable and subvert the negative. There are laws requiring businesses to reveal a pretty staggering amount of information regarding their products—nutrition info, known side effects, safety ratings, gas mileage; the list goes on—but that doesn’t stop their presentation method from being 4pt. font, or an announcer who’s replay rate has been accelerated to level that would make Alvin and the Chipmunks accuse him of having no balls.

The medium is the message, right? The message that I get from that is that someone doesn’t want me to know that information. When someone doesn’t want me to know, I tend to start trying to find out. But not everyone has the time or sophomoric contradiction instinct that I do. I’m thinking about founding Iconoclasts Anonymous. What I mean is that advertising takes the average person’s busy schedule by the scruff of the neck and blasts a firehose full of pretty pictures at their eyes. We all fall victim to it once in a while.

So, the second thing is where the confrontational, sensationalist use of the word “dehumanize” comes in up on paragraph two. I think that tolerance and plurality and respect for others has become more and more open-minded and far-reaching with every year since probably the 1960s. This gives us things I would stake my life on, like racial, gender and sexual identity equality. It gives us things I’m ambivalent toward, like body-type tolerance, and it gives us things that make me scratch my head and go buy a burrito rather than think about it, like equal rights for animals, and tolerance for crazy religious beliefs. But really, the legwork for all that kind of stuff has been going on for centuries.

On May 10th, 1886, corporate entities became people in the eyes of the US court system.

Ok, switchback. I’m not saying that there have been any poor decisions made by lawmakers that need to be reversed (actually… I’m just not saying that now), but I do think that the social engineering that has gone on by our aggregate groupmind has led us to be so tolerant that we have a hard time treating businesses like they should be treated: as tools.

Push back against them however you can. Don’t buy without information, don’t keep buying things that break for no good reason, or don’t do what they’re supposed to. Listen again to what Joel Johnson says in that article. Consumers can only expect what the lowest common denominator is asking for—or failing that, if we don’t ask, whatever is easiest and quickest for them.

A lack of tolerance and a subjugated value for the lives of others is what makes slave holding and the violently oppressive aristocracies of the past and present possible. These days, even the uppermost echelons of consumers are settling for half-assed goods as often as not. I would posit a link between this behavior—civility—and what we get from our suppliers. You don’t need to be a dick to people to insist on better service, better products and advancements you can sink your teeth into. Vote with your wallet, as they say.

Make them work for us. This is a trick that seems to have been lost on the population at large. Perhaps to our overall detriment. The question of how to fix this, as always remains. But I think I have some ideas that I'd like to talk about later.