GRADUAL & SILENT SPEECH - The Pocket Internet

"GRADUAL & SILENT"

I am not much worried, professionally, about the future of advertising. This is because I am not much worried, professionally, about the future of anything.

I was born in 1915 and am perfectly able to read and interpret tables of life expectancy. According to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, I have 23.2 more years to live.

"...I do not think that you
should be worried personally
about the future of advertising."

And from the hints my associates drop from time to time, they don't really want me to stay around the shop for quite that long.

But I do not think that you should be worried personally about the future of advertising. And not, I hasten to add, because in some part at least you are probably economically dependent on some aspect of advertising. I am not much in favor of defending an occupation on the grounds that it provides employment. Buggy whip manufacturing once provided employment. I have never advocated protecting that industry on those grounds. I think you should be worried about the future of advertising, not because you are advertising people, but because the future of advertising may have a profound effect on the whole structure of society.

I think you should be unhappy and disturbed personally about the future of advertising. Not about the next five years or perhaps the next ten years, but in the long run. It is true, as Lord Keynes once said, that in the long run we are all dead.

"The values that we have
inherited from the past
were created by men who
did think long run..."

I wish that I had been present on that occasion. I could have pointed out to Lord Keynes that in the short run we're all thieves.

No generation of us ever created more than a very tiny bit of the fabric of society in which we live. The values that we have inherited from the past were created by men who did think long run -- even to their short run disadvantage. Now, we can grab what they left us and run. We can steal the long run benefits of the past, pocket the difference and tell succeeding generations that they can damn well lookout for themselves.

One of the greatest long-range benefits that we in this country have received from the past is freedom of communication. It is a privilege that we totally take for granted. Is, after all, freedom of the press not one of the guarantees of our Constitution? Sure it is. It has also been written into the constitutions of almost every country on earth. Even the USSR. It is never much of a problem for a government to pay lip service to freedom of communication. You simply assert that it is there and then bend every practical effort to make it impossible.

"There are more instances of the abridgement
of the freedom of the people by gradual
and silent encroachment of power than
by violent and sudden usurpation."

The best way to make freedom of communication impossible is to go about it gradually. James Madison, who had some experience with tyranny, put it this way:

"There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of power than by violent and sudden usurpation." (Go to page 2 of 3)

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