On the Make

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Selling things or promises is our common national heritage, usually featuring a mixture of shameless persuasion and outright ‘cons.’ 

Most cultural observers note that Americans these days are perhaps better at selling stuff than making it.  It’s an understatement to note that we have a knack for marketing services and wares to each other.  Our economy is largely propelled by consumption.  And while we can still design elegant products like phones, cars and electronics, many if not most of their parts are made elsewhere.  On the other hand, selling them is something we still do well, sometimes too well.

Even Americans with modest incomes are drowning in stuff. There’s a store and product for nearly every budget.  One sign is the spread of the American idea of franchise stores, with familiar brands now in every corner of the world.  Think of McDonalds or Marriott.  Another sign is the common problem families face in finding places to store all of the things they have accumulated.  In most neighborhoods garages originally built to hold cars are now used for storage.  Especially in the West, the family car is usually relegated to the driveway.

Cultural historian Daniel Boorstin was among the first to offer a seminal account of the typical American “go getter” continually “on the make.”  (The Americans: The Democratic Experience, 1973). Our common heritage is selling and buying medicines, household products and goods that promise happiness.  CNBC’s popular reality show Shark Tank continues the trend and represents it in miniature. It features investors with cash whose hearts quicken when they hear a good sales ‘pitch’, often from strivers who have more optimism than judgement.  Some may be natural entrepreneurs.  But it’s equally likely that others are attracted to the idea of making a pitch as a pathway to celebrity.  Everyone knows the story of actress Lori Loughlin’s daughter, Jade, who used her ill-gained admission to the University of Southern California not to become a serious student, but because of the ego-boost of being a social media “influencer” on campus.  We can also look to the current President as an example the ultimate “man on the make.” Given recent evidence of massive business losses over the years, Donald Trump appears to have little talent for anything except selling his “brand.”  In this sense, his ‘cons’ make him less of an outlier then we might think.

 

The pitch is the thing; the product, not so much. 

Observing this long-running streak from the communication side makes it plain that little has changed since the days of P. T. Barnum, or the medicine shows that once toured the country.  Today, many students beginning their college careers are still enamored with the apparatus of selling as represented by ad agencies, public relations firms, social media, electronic media and other ways to attract willing buyers. In my own institution the fields of marketing, sales and communication studies easily attract more students than fields like engineering or education.  And while a professor of persuasion should delight in seeing communication as a subject of special interest, it’s apparent that this fascination often comes with less thought in what the content of a given message should be. The pitch is the thing; the product, not so much.  And so the campus television studio remains high on the list of places for future communication students to visit. The excellent library can wait.

Consider another case. A recent New York Times article described the rising popularity of entrepreneurial summer camps around the country.  Parents can now enroll their eight-year-olds for weeks of immersion in the business world.  Highlights typically include stops at a “personal branding station,” in addition to the chance for these youngsters to make their own television commercials for products they will presumably think up later.  If their fantasies eventually come true, they may design a campaign around some plastic thing they can pitch to the rest of us as a product “as seen on TV.”  The American love affair with selling continues even in the pristine woods and away from our screens.

 

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Easily the Most Common Communication Deficit

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Our constructed selves are mostly held together by a desire to assert identities intended to cast a shadow.  We want to be a presence; someone who is more cause than effect.

With its nearly infinite varieties, communication is usually about nuance.  Few challenges or strategies are foolproof or easily applied.   Even ‘best practices’ are usually contingent.  But this is not true if we seek an answer to at least one straightforward question.  When the query is ‘what is the most common deficiency most people show in their interactions with others?’ a firm response can given in two words: effective listening.  This is mostly because the mantra of our age is to first take care of ourselves. This may usually be good for our overall mental health, but it can be no surprise that our interactions reveal a common desire to bring most conversations back to ourselves.

This is an age where celebrity demands our attention; we routinely honor people who make their mark through whatever forms of validation we admire.  Our media is populated with these figures. And as more and more research is confirming, social media often function the same way, offering constructed displays of enviable lives. It follows that our own efforts at self-repair are motivated by the desire to offer versions of ourselves that will cast a shadow.  We want to be presence; someone who is more cause than effect; the one who is the source of attention rather than the one who attends.

Cameras were once used to capture the images of others.  Now they are often turned around to create ‘selfies’ that we can pass along the digital food chain.

And so communication between equals can easily devolve into exchanges that can best be understood as ‘taking turns.’  The preoccupation of self that defines our age plays out in the simple desire to be at the center of typical exchange, preferencing our judgments and conclusions over interest in giving others space to lay out what are often extended narratives.

The impulse to be heard rather than to hear is unevenly spread across the culture.  It seems strongest in adults, which is perhaps why so many young adults are impatient with offers of advice from older family members. The circles of influence for the young are smaller and tighter, leaving less of an appetite for giving time to parents who are ready to assert their authority and credibility.  We’ve even turned this pattern into a Hollywood trope: films about the lives of teens rarely allow parents or teachers to be the pivotal influencers they hope to be. Think of Greta Gerwig’s recent film Ladybird (2017).  Mom and daughter are mostly on different planets. Screenplays like Ladybird typically write older figures as foils more than resources.

It’s not that we don’t listen to anyone anymore.  Functionally, most of us spend large parts of every day in front of a screen that is asking for attention to spoken or written messages.  But this is ‘listening’ at its lowest gradient.  Peripheral attention to a figure in a video is qualitatively a long way from the more active listening that is often needed to produce a conversation that can be enlightening or even transformative.  Our excessive attention to packaged media requires only a passive kind of reception, setting us up to be frail listeners when circumstances demand so much more.