Reflections 13th February

Winter Walk. Blue Lias. Stockton, Warwickshire.

On my Mind

I found myself thinking about our addiction to deficiencies this last week. Perhaps it’s the gradual move away from the pandemic as the “fear du jour,” or maybe just an increased awareness, but whatever the reason it seems that our news and the accompanying narrative is about our deficiencies, the things we do not have or are not, promoted by those who would love us to see them as the route to short term salvation.

It feels like promotion of a form of collective ADHD in service of consumption going back to the work of Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud’s nephew) who used his uncle’s insights in the early days of “scientific advertising” to peddle cigarettes as “Torches of Freedom” by linking them to women's enfranchisement.