I Know How He Feels
Our family had gathered around the television to witness the arrival of Pope John Paul II in America. As we watched the Pontiff step from the plane and symbolically kiss the ground, my eighty-year-old aunt turned to me and confided, “I know just how he feels. I hate to fly, too.” –Virginia Spring
Stepping Backward
We are on the move from false certainty to true uncertainty.
Put It Out
A three-watt bulb has been burning in a northern California fire station continually for eighty-five years. General Electric would like to examine it—to make sure they never make that mistake again.
Absence of Music
The trouble with a lot of songs you hear nowadays is that somebody forgot to put them to music.
Sign of the Times
The big thing today is computer dating. If you don’t know how to run a computer, it really dates you.
Commercial Communication
In the first twenty years of an American kid’s life, he or she will see something approaching one million television commercials at the rate of about a thousand a week. This makes the TV commercial the most voluminous information source in the education of your child. These commercials are about products only in the sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales. A commercial teaches a child three interesting things. The first is that all problems are resolvable. The second is that all problems are resolvable quickly. And the third is that all problems are resolvable quickly through the agency of some technology. It may be a drug. It may be a detergent. It may be an airplane or some piece of machine, like an automobile or computer. The essential message is that the problems that beset people—whether it is lack of self-confidence or boredom or even money problems—are entirely solvable if only we will allow ourselves to be ministered to by a technology. Commercials teach these important themes through parables. In eight to ten seconds, the middle part comes, which is Hawaii or a new car. Then there’s a moral. The moral is nailed down at the end, where we are shown what happens if a person follows this advice. And the actor, of course, is usually ecstatic. One has simply got to wonder what the effects are on a young adult who has seen a million of these little vignettes. One has to ask, “What is being taught?” –Neill Postman
The Grass May Not Be Greener
I have had a few difficulties, many friends, great successes; I have gone from wife to wife, and from house to house, visited great countries of the world, but I am fed up with inventing devices to fill up twenty-four hours of the day. –Suicide not left by Ralph Barton, Cartoonist
Names
I went to a restaurant one day recently wearing a shirt with the designer’s signature on the right sleeve. As I stood in line to wait for a table, an elderly gentleman tapped me on the shoulder. Pointing to the label, he said, “Nice name.” Then, in a curious tone, he asked, “What do you call your other arm?”
Getting Everything to Come Out Even
I’m working as hard as I can to get my life and my cash to run out at the same time. If I can just die after lunch Tuesday, everything will be perfect.
Electronic Progress
A computer expert reveals that it would take a hundred clerks working for a hundred years to make a mistake as monumental as a single computer can make in 1/1000th of a second.
You’d Be Missed
If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
Let’s Talk Loud
The loudest sound known to man is the first rattle in a brand new car.
Candor about Advertising
Advertising deals in open sores: fear, greed, anger, hostility. You name the dwarfs and we play on every one. We play on all the emotions and on all the problems, from not getting ahead, to the desire to be one of the crowd. Everyone has a button. If enough people have the same button, you have a successful ad and a successful product. –Jerry Della Femina
The Simplified Life
A magazine cartoon shows a middle-aged lady talking to her boss at work. She says, “I’ve decided to simplify my life. Just send my paycheck to Visa.”
Look for the Music
Herbett Feis relates how George Gershwin was talking to a friend on the crowded beach of a resort near New York City. The sounds and shrieks of voices pierced their conversation. Clanking tunes ground out from the a nearby merry-go-round, while barkers and hucksters shouted themselves hoarse. From underground came the deep roar of the subway; beside them crashed the relentless tumble of the sea. Gershwin listened and then remarked to his friend. “All of this could form such a beautiful pattern of sound. It could turn into a magnificent musical piece expressive of every human activity and feeling with pauses, counterpoints, blends and climaxes of sound that would be beautiful. But it is not that. It is all discordant, terrible and exhausting—as we hear it now. The pattern is always being shattered.” It is a parable of our time. So many confusing sounds and noises, so much unrest, so much rapid change. But somewhere, in the midst of it, there could be a pattern emerging, a meaning coming out of it, and our job is to look for the music in the noise.
Is That Progress?
It only took the movies fifty years to go from silent to unspeakable.
Our Mobile Generation
I read recently of a man who lived in the same town in the Midwest all of his life—in fact, until recently he even had lived in the same house all of that time. He was satisfied that the town had all the things that he needed, so why move? Then one day he up and sold his house and moved into a new one—right next door! His friends were surprised that he had done this and asked him for the reason. He simply answered, “Oh, I guess it’s just the gypsy in me.”
Security in Flight
Whenever I am flying and I engage people in conversation, a confession is almost always forthcoming when they find out I am a psychiatrist. A few years ago, before all of the modern security measures were installed at the nation’s airports, a man I was sitting next to on a coast-to-coast flight told me, “You know, I used to be deathly afraid of flying. It all started after that man brought a bomb on board a flight to Denver to kill his mother-in-law. I could never get it out of my mind that someone on board one of my flights might also be carrying a bomb.”
I asked, “Well, what did you do about it?”
He replied, “Well, I went to one of those special schools for people who are afraid of flying and they told me there was only one chance in ten thousand that someone would be on board my flight with a bomb. That didn’t make me feel much better. The odds were still too close. But then I reasoned that if there was only one chance in 100 million that two bombs would be on board. And I could live with those odds.”
So I asked, “But what good would that do you?”
He quickly replied, “Ever since then, I carry one bomb on board myself—just to improve the odds.” –Dr. Jerome Frank
Bureaucracy
An office worker in a San Francisco company applied through channels for a job with a government agency in Washington. While he was waiting for a reply, the head of the agency heard about him from a mutual friend in California and hired him for the job. Several months later, while the man was working in Washington, a letter was forwarded to him from his old address in San Francisco. It contained his original application for the job he now held, together with a letter from the agency regretfully turning him down because he was not qualified for the position. Looking more closely at the letter, the man found that he had signed it himself.
Media Influence
A market research interviewer was stopping people in the grocery store after they picked up their bread. One fellow picked up a loaf of Wonder Bread and the man asked him, “Sir, would you be willing to answer a couple of questions about your choice of bread?” The man responded, “Yes, I’d be happy to.”
“Fine,” the man said. “The question I’d like to ask you is this: Do you feel that your choice of Wonder Bread has been at all influenced by their advertising program?” The fellow looked shocked and said, “Of course not. I’m not influenced by that sort of thing at all!”
“Well, then,” he said, “could you tell me just why you did choose Wonder Bread?” And he replied, “Of course I can! Because it builds strong bodies eight ways!”
Frivolous Dimensions of Modern Life
Bathrooms collect fads. Hundreds of things end up on shelves or in cabinets. They fill the corners and line the tub. Some of them make for interesting reading, when one has time to browse. Recently I was visiting in a home on a trip, and was in the bathroom. My eyes roamed to a plain plastic bottle which drew no attention to itself. The white label with simple black print read: “Strawberry Bubbling Milk Bath.” On the bottom of the same label in bold face black was NO FRILLS. How I cackled to myself at the utter, total incongruity. No way strawberry bubbling milk bath could be “no frill.” It seemed at that moment pure frill. Nothing more than catchpenny. Another way to snag an unsuspecting dollar. What a commentary on life, on aspirations, on self-deception!
The Fast Lane Religious Leaders
An ethics professor at Princeton Seminary asked for volunteers for an extra assignment. At two o’clock, fifteen students gathered at Speer Library. There he divided the group of fifteen into three groups of five each. He gave the first group of five envelopes telling them to proceed immediately across campus to Stewart Hall and that they had fifteen minutes to get there. If they didn’t arrive on time, it would affect their grade. This he called the “High Hurry” group. A minute or two later he handed out envelopes to five others. Their instructions were to also go over to Stewart Hall, but they were given forty-five minutes. After they departed, he gave the last of the envelopes with instructions to the third group, the “Low Hurry” group. They were given three hours to arrive at Stewart Hall. Now, unknown to any of these students, the teacher had arranged with three students from the Princeton University Drama Department to meet them along the way, acting as people in great need. In front of Alexander Hall, one of the drama students was going around covering his head with his hands and moaning out loud in great pain. As they passed by Miller Chapel on their way to Stewart Hall, they found a fellow who was on the steps lying face down as if unconscious. And finally on the very steps of Stewart Hall, the third drama student was acting out an epileptic seizure. It’s interesting that of the first group no one stopped, of the second, two of the five stopped, and of the third group all five stopped.
Maybe one of the reasons that the Good Samaritan was able to stop and help was because he had a more leisurely agenda, while the religious “pros” of Jesus’ day were living in the fast lane and simply had no time for interruptions. Their calendars may well have been filled with commitments that left them no leeway.
At the Crossroads
Civilization stands at the crossroads. Down one road is despondency and despair, and down the other is total annihilation. Let us pray that we choose the right road. –Woody Allen
Understanding Loudness
The amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity. –Arthur Schopenhauer
When Things Don’t Seem to Work
A young mother examined a toy rather dubiously, then asked the salesman, “Isn’t this rather complicated for a small child?” The clerk replied, “It’s an educational toy. It’s designed to adjust a child to live in the world today. Any way he puts it together, it’s wrong.”
The Human Scene
Perhaps you picked up your newspaper one morning and read an editorial that went something like this:
“The world is too big for us. Too much going on, too many crimes, too much violence and excitement. Try as you will, you get behind in the race, in spite of yourself. It’s an incessant strain to keep pace, and still, you lose ground. Science empties its discoveries on you so fast that you stagger beneath them in hopeless bewilderment. The political world is news seen so rapidly you’re out of breath trying to keep pace with who’s in and who’s out. Everything is high pressure. Human nature can’t endure much more!”
Was that editorial written last week or last month or last year? Believe it or not, it appeared in a newspaper called the Atlantic Journal on June 16, 1833!
Human Dilemma
This sign was seen at the desk of a country inn in Stow on the Wold, England: Please introduce yourself to you fellow guests since we are one big happy family. Do not leave valuables in your room.
Rock and Classical
Concert pianist Wladimir Jan Kochanski was asked if he liked any of the rock groups. He said, “One, Mount Rushmore.”
Logic of Flight
If God had meant for us to fly, He’d have put the airports closer to town.
VALS
According to William Meyers in The Image Makers, Madison Avenue’s most widely used categorization of people in our society is that suggested by SRI International’s VALS (Values and Life-styles). This divides people into five basic groups:
Belonger: The typical traditionalist, the cautious and conforming conservative. Archie Bunker is a Belonger; he believes in God, country and family. These are those who are the staunch defenders of the status quo (33% of the population).
Emulators: Not so set in their ways, a small but impressionable group of young people in desperate search of an identity and a place in the adult working world. They will do almost anything to fit in. They lack self-confidence and are discouraged about their prospects. They are into hedonism and finding solutions to their postadolescent dilemmas (about 15% of the population).
Emulator-Achievers: America’s materialists, have it made already—own a Mercedes, drink Dom Perignon, shop at Tiffany’s or Gucci’s. They are a bit frustrated, just below the top rung on the ladder. Though affluent, they are somewhat dissatisfied (20% of the population).
Societally Conscious Achievers: These are the flower children of America’s consumer culture. Baby-boomers, they care more about inner peace and environmental safety than about financial success and elegant surroundings. They are looking for personal, not necessarily professional fulfillment. They will try things from Zen to acupuncture. These are the gradually graying hippies. They shop for their clothes by mail from L. L. Bean, and have dropped out of the commercial rat-race to run antique stores. They have organic gardens and they hike in the woods. They are Madison Avenue’s toughest challenge (20% of the population).
Need-Directed: These are the survivors, those who barely subsist on low incomes. They are on welfare and/or earn minimum wages. Ad Alley ignores them because they don’t have much in the way of disposable income (15% of the population).
Meyers says that if you are going to communicate in the twentieth century—you need to know what kind of group you are trying to get through to.
An Uptight People
There is a harrassed, knife-edge quality to daily life. Nerves are ragged and, as the scuffles and shootings in subways or on gas queues suggest, tempers are barely under hair-trigger control. Millions of people are terminally fed up. –Alvin Toffler