Since I work in advertising - more specifically the sort that uses video and aims to be shared online - I normally count myself among the most cynic viewers of such material… let’s just say sharing among friends is rare!

However sometimes you come across something that is so great that it doesn’t matter that it is advertising. In fact I wish all advertising would just be like this - how my live would be better for it (and for the 300 billboards and 20 TV commercials less).

It is of course Spike Jonze, and the inspirational bit is his new short film/branded entertainment; “I’m here” - a robot love story set in something that resembles contemporary LA. No more words, just watch…

Link: http://www.imheremovie.com/

For over 40 years, artist Art Garfunkel have been a vivid book reader, and on his website he has published a list of all the books he’s been reading over the years.

Despite the obvious self-expressionist motive of publishing a such list - it actually makes it possible for the curious to see the development of a character over a prolonged period of time - with favourites added to a separate list along the way. Almost everyone will find inspiration for their next Amazon visit here…

Link to Art’s booklist

To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self seems like the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society - how did the all-consuming self appear, who played a part, and in whose interests?

The Freud dynasty is at the heart of this compelling documentary. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis; Edward Bernays (Sigmund’s nephew) who invented public relations; Anna Freud, Sigmund’s devoted daughter; and present-day PR guru and Sigmund’s great grandson, Matthew Freud.

Sigmund Freud’s work into the bubbling and murky world of the subconscious changed the world. By introducing a technique to probe the unconscious mind, Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the precursor to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls, and society’s belief that the pursuit of own satisfaction and happiness is mankind’s ultimate goal.

I am sure there are endless examples of this being true - but the one that struck my mind was actually this year’s Cannes Lions Grand Prix winner “The Fun Theory” by VW (see below). As simple as it is, this campaign transcends the borders of advertising by showing that real behavioral change can be achieved by changing very small things and thereby making it fun. By this I am not implying that all bottle containers should be bottle arcades or one bin deeper than the other, no, I am simply introducing the idea that by focusing more attention to the small things, and to the experience, great social innovation could potentially be achieved.

How come no city planner have ever tried the bin, the staircase or the bottle bank arcade before?

Speech by Arundhati Roy on the 18 September, 2002 - 1 year before the invasion of Irak, 6 years before the global economic meltdown.

The Current Crisis—Causes and Consequences

The house of cards built on easy credit has finally come tumbling down, triggered by the failure of one of the most flimsy of the cards, subprime mortgages. We’ll look at the causes—it’s important to understand causes if one has any reasonable chance of analyzing the present and assessing the outlook—and weigh the likely outcome of our government’s actions.

Not to keep you in suspense any longer, we believe the bailout and associated actions, adding yet more credit to an economy already over-ripe with easy credit, far from solving the problem (i.e., getting banks to lend again), will make matters ultimately worse, by postponing the necessary adjustments, building up inflation, and destroying the dollar and its purchasing power, devastating savers and undermining the foundations of the economy.

This will be a protracted slowdown as corporations and households de-lever and attempt to restore some health to broken balance sheets. Nevertheless—to jump ahead to the critical conclusion for investors we’ll discuss next time—we are far beyond the time for wholesale liquidation, if it means selling quality companies well below their intrinsic values. It may be too early for aggressive across-the-board buying, but remember the words of the late, great John Templeton, who advised us to “buy at the point of maximum pessimism.”

What Brought Us Here?
It is critical to start by analyzing the causes of the problem, and assessing the likely outcome. Only by understanding that, can we hope to know what to do. So what brought us here, and what’s next? The root cause of our current problems is clear: excess credit creation over these many years. Too much money and artificially low interest rates always and inevitably lead to speculation and mal-investment. Whatever excesses there have been on Wall Street—and there have been many, as well as the abject ignoring of any sense of fiduciary responsibility—nonetheless, blaming “Wall Street speculators” for the mess is a little like blaming a drunk child when the parent left the open bottle in the playpen.

Critical to understand is that this is not a normal cyclical downturn. Such is triggered by tightening money and higher rates in a deliberate attempt to cool an “overheated” economy and restrain inflation. The resulting recession can be sharp but is typically short. Similarly, it is relatively easy to get out of a cyclical recession: do the opposite of what triggered it, that is, ease money and lower rates. But this is not a cyclical downturn; it is, rather, a secular de-leveraging contraction. Tighter money and higher rates did not trigger it, and easing money and lowering rates will not get us out of it. Au contraire. We currently have easy money and low rates, rates that are actually negative at the short end. And easier money and even lower rates, such as we’ve seen over the past year, have not helped. (Indeed, despite the Fed slashing the overnight loan rate from 5¼% to 2% in the seven months to April, rates in the real market—mortgage rates, credit card rates, etc.—actually increased and, of course, available credit contracted.) This is important to recognize.

Selling Begets Selling
Thus, this de-leveraging process is likely to be a protracted process as banks, other firms, and households restore health to their balance sheets. But such a process feeds on itself, as we have all-too-painfully seen this year. Companies sell assets to raise capital, which pushes down prices, which forces others to raise capital, pushing prices down further, which causes banks to contract credit. And as banks contract, small businesses have difficulties, reducing purchases, and so on. So much of the selling in the market has been forced (by financial companies needing to raise capital to meet ratios; by investor receiving margin calls, and funds getting redemptions). The waves of forced selling then cause panic among investors, leading to the very worst kind of selling, blind liquidation of thinly traded securities into down markets. This can, and has, driven prices down sharply and suddenly.

Will the Bailout Work?
The banks have no capacity or appetite for lending, which is why lower rates haven’t helped. And why, given that for investment banks to reduce their average leverage from 30 times to 20 times would require that $6 trillion of assets be sold, the government’s $700 billion bailout won’t change the picture either. (Another question: Do they buy bad assets at prevailing prices, in which case it won’t improve banks’ capital ratios at all, or do they defraud the taxpayer and buy back at above-market prices, as Paulson seemingly wanted to do?) It may plug a hole short term, but it doesn’t mean the banks open up and start lending again.

Washington is attempting to solve the problem by doing more of what caused the problem in the first place (and—greatest irony and travesty of all—with the very same people in charge who caused the problem in the first place, who encouraged the excesses, and who didn’t see the problem until too late). By trying to keep asset prices up, Washington is repeating the error of the 1930s and ensuring that the downturn lasts longer.

No parallel is precise, but we might look at what happened when Japan’s stock market and real estate bubbles burst at the beginning of the 1990s. The Bank of Japan slashed rates, down to ½% on long-term government bonds, and bought up bad assets from the bankrupt banks. (They didn’t open the monetary spigots, as has Washington.) Neither high interest rates of shaky banks have been a problem in Japan for many years.

But that didn’t cause banks to resume lending. Japan also increased deposit insurance (covering accounts in full until 2006.) That simply slowed the needed restructuring, and caused the banks to withdraw, as The Wall Street Journa l put it, “led to the establishment of zombie banks.” There has been essentially zero net capital investment in Japan in the last 15 years. Despite near-invisible interest rates and strong banks, Japan has been in either recession of deflation (or both) for most of the past 18 years. And Japan had one huge advantage over the U.S. today, namely that households had low debt and high savings.

It’s Not Pretty Ahead
Not only will current policies not solve the problem, they protract the downturn and delay the needed resolution. But they make matters worse by ensuring more inflation, already at a 17-year high in the U.S., adding another disincentive to save. Taxes will go up, further suppressing economic growth or chances of a recovery. The likely result is a severe case of stagflation

So the economy is likely to enter a recession soon, but it will be a long and painful experience coming out of it, a protracted period of sluggishness, with other economic problems. And the market, likewise, is likely to be sluggish for some time, though once we see some stability return, specific sectors and individual companies will recover sooner, while we will see short-term rallies.

Next time, we’ll look at the outlook for various markets, including, most importantly, the dollar, and then discuss how investors should act in the current crisis (clue: don’t dump quality companies below their intrinsic value into a declining market).

Adrien Day

www.marketoracle.co.uk

Mass demonstrations should be distinguished from riots or revolutionary uprisings although, under certain (now rare) circumstances, they may develop into either of the latter. The aims of a riot are usually immediate (the immediacy matching the desperation they express): the seizing of food, the release of prisoners, the destruction of property. The aims of a revolutionary uprising are long-term and comprehensive: they culminate in the taking over of State power. The aims of a demonstration, however, are symbolic: it demonstrates a force that is scarcely used.

A large number of people assemble together in an obvious and already announced public place. They are more or less unarmed. They present themselves as a target to the forces of repression serving the State authority against whose policies they are protesting.

Theoretically demonstrations are meant to reveal the strength of popular opinion or feeling: theoretically they are an appeal to the democratic conscience of the State. But this presupposes a conscience which is very unlikely to exist.

If the State authority is open to democratic influence, the demonstration will hardly be necessary; if it is not, it is unlikely to be influenced by an empty show of force containing no real threat. (A demonstration in support of an already established alternative State authority – as when Garibaldi entered Naples in 1860 – is a special case and may be immediately effective.)

Demonstrations took place before the principle of democracy was even nominally admitted. The massive early Chartist demonstrations were part of the struggle to obtain such an admission. The crowds who gathered to present their petition to the Tsar in St Petersburg in 1905 were appealing – and presenting themselves as a target – to the ruthless power of an absolute monarchy. In the event – as on so many hundreds of other occasions all over Europe – they were shot down.

It would seem that the true function of demonstrations is not to convince the existing State authority to any significant degree. Such an aim is only a convenient rationalisation.

The truth is that mass demonstrations are rehearsals for revolution: not strategic or even tactical ones, but rehearsals of revolutionary awareness. The delay between the rehearsals and the real performance may be very long: their quality – the intensity of rehearsed awareness – may, on different occasions, vary considerably: but any demonstration which lacks this element of rehearsal is better described as an officially encouraged public spectacle.

A demonstration, however much spontaneity it may contain, is a created event which arbitrarily separates itself from ordinary life. Its value is the result of its artificiality, for therein lies its prophetic, rehearsing possibilities.

A mass demonstration distinguishes itself from other mass crowds because it congregates in public to create its function, instead of forming in response to one: in this, it differs from any assembly of workers within their place of work – even when strike action is involved – or from any crowd of spectators. It is an assembly which challenges what is given by the mere fact of its coming together.

State authorities usually lie about the number of demonstrators involved. The lie, however, makes little difference. (It would only make a significant difference if demonstrations really were an appeal to the democratic conscience of the State.) The importance of the numbers involved is to be found in the direct experience of those taking part in or sympathetically witnessing the demonstration. For them the numbers cease to be numbers and become the evidence of their senses, the conclusions of their imagination. The larger the demonstration, the more powerful and immediate (visible, audible, tangible) a metaphor it becomes for their total collective strength.

I say metaphor because the strength thus grasped transcends the potential strength of those present, and certainly their actual strength as deployed in a demonstration. The more people there are there, the more forcibly they represent to each other and to themselves those who are absent. In this way a mass demonstration simultaneously extends and gives body to an abstraction. Those who take part become more positively aware of how they belong to a class. Belonging to that class ceases to imply a common fate, and implies a common opportunity. They begin to recognise that the function of their class need no longer be limited: that it, too, like the demonstrations itself, can create its own function.

Revolutionary awareness is rehearsed in another way by the choice and effect of location. Demonstrations are essentially urban in character, and they are usually planned to take place as near as possible to some symbolic centre, either civic or national. Their ‘targets’ are seldom the strategic ones – railway stations, barracks, radio stations, airports. A mass demonstration can be interpreted as the symbolic capturing of a city or capital. Again, the symbolism or metaphor is for the benefit of the participants.

The demonstration, an irregular event created by the demonstrators, nevertheless takes place near the city centre, intended for very different uses. The demonstrators interrupt the regular life of the streets they march through or of the open spaces they fill. They cut off these areas, and, not yet having the power to occupy them permanently, they transform them into a temporary stage on which they dramatise the power they still lack.

The demonstrators’ view of the city surrounding their stage also changes. By demonstrating, they manifest a greater freedom and independence – a greater creativity, even although the product is only symbolic – than they can ever achieve individually or collectively when pursuing their regular lives. In their regular pursuits they only modify circumstances; by demonstrating they symbolically oppose their very existence to circumstances.

This creativity may be desperate in origin, and the price to be paid for it high, but it temporarily changes their outlook. They become corporately aware that it is they or those whom they represent who have built the city and who maintain it. They see it through different eyes. They see it as their product, confirming their potential instead of reducing it.

Finally, there is another way in which revolutionary awareness is rehearsed. The demonstrators present themselves as a target to the so-called forces of law and order. Yet the larger the target they present, the stronger they feel. This cannot be explained by the banal principle of ‘strength in numbers,’ any more than by vulgar theories of crowd psychology. The contradiction between their actual vulnerability and their sense of invincibility corresponds to the dilemma which they force upon the State authority.

Either authority must abdicate and allow the crowd to do as it wishes: in which case the symbolic suddenly becomes real, and, even if the crowd’s lack of organisation and preparedness prevents it from consolidating its victory, the event demonstrates the weakness of authority. Or else authority must constrain and disperse the crowd with violence: in which case the undemocratic character of such authority is publicly displayed. The imposed dilemma is between displayed weakness and displayed authoritarianism. (The officially approved and controlled demonstration does not impose the same dilemma: its symbolism is censored: which is why I term it a mere public spectacle.) Almost invariably, authority chooses to use force. The extent of its violence depends upon many factors, but scarcely ever upon the scale of the physical threat offered by the demonstrators. This threat is essentially symbolic. But by attacking the demonstration authority ensures that the symbolic event becomes an historical one: an event to be remembered, to be learnt from, to be avenged.

It is in the nature of a demonstration to provoke violence upon itself. Its provocation may also be violent. But in the end it is bound to suffer more than it inflicts. This is a tactical truth and an historical one. The historical role of demonstrations is to show the injustice, cruelty, irrationality of the existing State authority. Demonstrations are protests of innocence.

But the innocence is of two kinds, which can only be treated as though they were one at a symbolic level. For the purposes of political analysis and the planning of revolutionary action, they must be separated. There is an innocence to be defended and an innocence which must finally be lost: an innocence which derives from justice, and an innocence which is the consequence of a lack of experience.

Demonstrations express political ambitions before the political means necessary to realise them have been created. Demonstrations predict the realisation of their own ambitions and thus may contribute to that realisation, but they cannot themselves achieve them.

The question which revolutionaries must decide in any given historical situation is whether or not further symbolic rehearsals are necessary. The next stage is training in tactics and strategy for the performance itself.

from:

http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history//etol/newspape/isj/1968/no034/berg

Homo Ludens, or “Man the Playful,” is a book written in 1938 by Dutch historian, cultural theorist and Professor Johan Huizinga. Huizinga wanted to discuss the importance of a play element in our culture and society and suggests that the playful state is a key driver for human motivation and a necessary condition for the generation of human culture.

Play is a voluntary activity…having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of
tension, joy and the consciousness that it is `different´ than `ordinary life´

You may ask yourself why it is important to talk about having fun. It is interesting because as Huizinga points out it’s an activity that encourages us as humans to keep doing it. We train and become better when the rewards and encouragements are strong enough. First the baby crawls, then it walks. Especially at a young age we seem driven by some sort of mystical force to explore the world around us. We quickly acquire new physical and social skills and we learn what is needed to be accepted as successful in our culture. We experience ups and downs but continue with an almost endless appetite for life. Later on our curiosity normally becomes less spontaneous and we start to increasingly use analytical strategies to understand the world - some would say we grow up. With the words of Romanian poet, playwriter and philosopher Lucian Blaga, our culture’s life cycle goes something like this.

The child is laughing: Game is my wisdom and my love
The young is singing: Love is my wisdom and my game
The old is silent: Wisdom is my love and my game

Blaga is probably trying to illustrate how the child learns and loves with a playful subjectivity, it experiments and are very open to the world. As we get older we settle on an acquired belief system and are passionate about things like love among many other. In the end we become old and wise. Our modern culture is in Blaga’s view a culture that gradually teaches us to choose wisdom and rationality over playfulness. We will of course mature as we get older, but it becomes very apparent with Blaga’s words that learning in our culture actually means learning how to interpret the world using our logic senses. Radically speaking we sacrifice the child in us along with our ability to be playful, spontaneous and subjective as to focus on other social aspects. At least that is the idea of not just Huizinga and Blaga but also a fellow named Keith Johnstone.

Johnstone began his career teaching kids at an elementary school, but later got involved in teaching improvisatory techniques at the Royal Court Theatre. He went on to develop many of the exercises used in theatre schools today to foster spontaneity and narrative skills. On emotion Johnstone writes:

“One day, when I was eighteen, I was reading a book and I began to weep. I was astounded. I’d had no idea that literature could affect me in such a way. If I’d wept over a poem in class the teacher would have been appalled. I realised that my school had been teaching me not to respond.”

Johnstone’s simple idea was that the key to unleashing creativity and self-development in his theatre students was to approach them in much the same way as he had approached his young kids at the first school where he was working. He believed that he and thousands like him had suffered an education that taught them to be primarily objective and analytical about their experiences, thus adding a layer to their experience of the world that in some way damaged their ability to be playful. If he could only bring them back to that playful state he believed he could push the boundaries for what these students could achieve. And so he did. His teachings went on to become world famous and so did many of his students. The amazing difference Johnstone noticed with his theatre groups occurred when they found their playful state and when they let go of their formal education. Suddenly the dialogue became full of emotions and felt real, the students quickly flourished both as a group and as individuals.

How was Johnstone setting his students free from their prison? Could it be that our formal education by focusing so much on our analytical and theoretical skills make it harder for us to connect to our subjective and childish side? Do we, at the same time as we learn, also lose other talents like spontaneity and creativity, and if so, what consequences does it have for us? As it turns out many of us suffer from similar diagnosis to Johnstone’s students. We grow up with the belief that our childish and subjective interpretation is somehow wrong and less valuable and that we should rather rely on our “adult” logic. It becomes our prison as far as it gradually detaches us from our own physical and emotional self.

That Johnstone developed these techniques for acting classes is very interesting. To be a good actor you in many ways have to be extremely successful in the social games we humans play. You need to be good to express emotions like love and anger and status in a group and you need to be able to communicate these messages clearly so that an audience understands them. Especially in improvisation theatre as Johnstone was working with social situations and emotions that the actors express is what makes or breaks the play.

Johnstone writes, by the end of his book, of how grotesque and frightening things are released as soon as people begin to work with spontaneity. They start producing very sick scenes: they become cannibals pretending to eat each other, and so on. But when you give the student permission to explore this material he very soon uncovers layers of unsuspected gentleness and tenderness. It is like if they at first were wearing an armour that sheltered them from showing their natural emotions, and by doing so they also suppressed a great deal of childish benevolence and tenderness.

In order to explain exactly what happens in the childish and playful act we need to look a bit to the right from Johnstone. Some 20 years ago, with an intention to explain happiness, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi started using the term flow. Flow described the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity – providing us with a very high level of enjoyment and fulfilment. Mihaly probably hadn’t heard of Johnstone and vice versa but in Johnstone’s world, flow is exactly the feeling of playfulness that his groups experienced and what had transformed them. Flow occurs when an activity provides just the right amount of reward and challenge and you feel absorbed in the activity. Focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself – not its purpose.

A good example of flow is in modern computer games, now an industry larger than Hollywood – where the playful interactive experience and its designed gradual rise in challenge and rewards are a key component in encouraging experimentation. Ironically computer games is one of the only things that can make us adults act as spontaneous children – just think of the Nintendo Wii or the millions of adults that play World of Warcraft pretending to be wizards and elfs at night time. It turns out Csikszentmihalyi by accident stroke on one of the key terms to understand much of the playful experience that Johnstone was trying to create in his adult students in order to set them free from their logical education. Together Johnstone and Csikszentmihalyi form a strong argument for the idea that great positive energy can be achieved from releasing our spontaneous and playful sides – even as adults.

We could possibly achieve much better results if we were aware of the armour we have grown up to wear. Fun and playfulness is not - as you should believe from most schools and universities today - the opposite of learning. It is in fact a key part of learning because it makes us dare moving beyond where we have been before. As Huizinga claims it might be one of the very things that makes us human at all.

The key argument for a childish approach to personal development is based on Johnstone’s ideas of removing the sense of right and wrong in the students mind during classes and rehearsal. Once faced with the realization of how deeply our formal education systems limit us Johnstone was able to release the students from their armours and by doing so he created a fun learning atmosphere where the students used each other and all their senses and attention to achieve development. The results remain stunning on many professional as well as personal measures - perhaps because Johnstone’s ideas of the human development through a playful theatre world reaches so deep in our soul.

Johnstone’s idea of using all our senses, spontaneity and playfulness in pushing the limits for what we can achieve as humans have since been widely adopted in modern educational theory. But what we agree are best at driving the incredible developments we experience in our society’s youngest stands in direct opposition to how our adult world insist on logic and rationality as its key components. When encouraged correctly the child and the theatre student will walk courageous through life without armour on, but as adults we often experience our armour - holding us back for just a second.

When have you last REALLY danced? When was the last time you painted something? What did you pick up and bring home from your last walk in the forest? When did you last make faces of people? The curiosity and playfulness of the childish mind unleashes a great deal of productive social experimentation yet as adults we often seem satisfied in the formal educational prison we create for ourselves.

“I don’t see that an educated man in this culture necessarily should understand the second law of thermodynamics , but he certainly should understand that we are pecking-order animals and that this affects the tiniest details of our behaviour”

- Keith Johnstone

Narcissism is said to be the Hysteria of the 20th century. Among other related social illnesses more and more people claim disturbance of self-esteem and a feeling of great emptiness. The “modern” narcissism however, seems not to be originated in the early childhood as once described by Freud, but to be enforced and constructed by society. Economical and technological changes, as well as changes in social values are all contributing factors to increased narcissism in post modernity.

“Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

The queen, in the fairy tale Snow white, values her “self” according to the mirror’s opinion. Not being the “fairest” is unacceptable, and she is willing to kill to change that. The mirror is of course a metaphor for the reflection of the self in other people, which is used by the narcissist to value his own “self” feeling. The narcissistic individual is disinterested in others and only acting for its personal advantage. Alice Miller describes the narcissist as constantly striving for grandiosity, which then is reflected in the admiration of others and so confirms superiority and raises the individual’s self-esteem. Through admiration and approval the uncertain self-worthiness is bolstered (Giddens, 1991). If the individual does not experience admiration, it is likely to suffer from depression and a feeling of severe emptiness, emerging from this low self-esteem. However narcissism is not as you should think about self-love but self-hatred (Giddens, 1991). The narcissistic individual has an empty self with no identity in its own. Thus the reflection of the self in other people is a search for self-identity and a way filling of the inner emptiness.

Admiration and approval that support self esteem is often achieved through the external image of the self. Society today is dominated by appearance. The invention of mass media has created new powerful sources for ideals and values and has become the single most powerful cultural influence on young people in western societies. Some of the strongest ideals are the body image, the sexual image and the status image related to economic success (Giddens, 1991).

Growing up today and you are constantly surrounded by mirrors, in form of TV, advertisings and press, telling us what is normal, right and accepted. The ones that do not conform to the ideals, feel uncertain about themselves, and even unaccepted. Self-hatred, a precondition for narcissism, is created. Looking for the self in pictures of the media, striving for acceptance through admiration, is today a socially constructed and almost “pathological” narcissism. In order to conform to the “accepted ideal”, women are often willing to starve themselves in, what they believe is, appropriate shape. It is suggested that anorexia is a culture bound syndrome, which reflects psychosocial pressure. The rise in eating disorders occurred synchronic to the invention of the Television and the increasing presence of mass media. We have a “window” to the world in which we are shown what is expected of us. Although the appearance on TV does not reflect the average appearance of a woman, it is taken as a measurement, and source for “norms”. The increase in severe social disorders like Anorexia thus shows all the characteristics of why post-modern narcissistic behaviour occurs, since it is a disorder emerging from a low self esteem and extreme striving for external admiration. But also other changes than body image has in post modernity influenced and enforced narcissism. Industrialisation introduced mass production and with it came consumer capitalism which plays a major role in deepening society’s narcissism (Giddens, 1991). The circulation of commodities and deep rooted belief in capitalistic logic gives the impression that this world is mostly a world of things. Through consumption the modern narcissist is told that he or she can achieve the desired image by assigning the attributes of goods and services to the self. By possessing these objects the “self” appears to be successful and happy to others. External objects are seen as reflecting internal reality and the self is defined in relation to these things, giving them the power to shape or re-shape their identity with external objects. Modern branding as such is not the business of selling goods as much as the image and life-style associated with them.
The idea that goods reflect social status emerged long before post modernity of course. Around the middle of the 18th century the status and occupation of people could be recognised by their clothes alone (Sennet, 1976). According to Sennet, narcissism as such is a direct long term result of evolutions in human culture (1976). Today however external images of identity is strongly emphasised and accelerated by media. It has become a regular thing to make ones “identity” visible through objects. The force is so strong in modern society that it is almost impossible not to value appearance as a significant factor of identity, because even though one is not seeking the admiration of others, there is an automatic response, giving an evaluation of one’s identity. Even if you do not agree in the current identity image projected by media and society, you have to dress so people can see you don’t.

Obsession about body image and identity symbols might be the most obvious example of how modern society provides an easy narcissistic fix to the problems of self-esteem and self-fulfilment, but it should also be questioned if working fourteen hours a day, six days a week, sacrificing family, physical and social life, reflects a healthy attitude towards ones true self. Success and wealth are often seen as an achievement of personal fulfilment; however, if achieved primarily for the acceptance of the surrounding world, it is rather a fulfilment of internal narcissistic pressures.

Sennet argues, that “In modern social life adults must act narcissistically to act in accordance with society’s norms”. Christopher Lasch further states that narcissism seems to be the best way to cope with modern life in general. Not only obsession with image, but narcissistic interpersonal behaviour is enhanced by modern social conditions. He describes these conditions as threatening for the emotional survival of the individual and disclosing the narcissistic conditions which are present in everyone. Globalisation and the loss of community have left the individual as “one in a million”, fighting for limited job vacancies and success at the workplace. Being self-interested and emotionally detached is of advantage in business environment. Especially in managerial positions the narcissistic character is favoured and often considerably successful.  Tougher competition from a global economy and the social pressure to be successful in monetary terms has created an army of lone warriors seeking an objective acceptance from the world rather than their own subjective one.

Postmodern society is bringing out narcissistic characteristics, enforcing existing “healthy” narcissism. Today’s mostly prevailing narcissism is not a psychological disturbance of early childhood, but an on-going socially constructed characteristic shared by members of most western societies. The empty “self” seems to be a mass symptom of the western society and is medicated with consumption and objective status symbols to fill the inner emptiness. Self-identity has perhaps always been related to appearance and achievement in the reflection of others, but post modernity and modern mass media have greatly increased the burden of the worldly mirror, and by doing so it has taken narcissism to a completely new level.

- Anonymous contribution

But I want to achieve more than that. I can’t imagine having to live like Mother, Mrs Van Daan* and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me!

When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?

I hope so, oh, I hope so very much, because writing allows me to record everything, all my thoughts, ideals and fantasies…

So onwards and upwards, with renewed spirits. It’ll all work out, because I’m determined to write!

Extract from Anne Frank: “Diary of a young girl”