“We want you to spend less!” That’s what Woolworths claims in their most recent TV ad campaign. Yes, they really said that.
Do they actually believe it, thought? Or is it just a piece of harmless advertising dumbspeak?
Frankly, if I were a Woollies shareholder I‘d be writing a complaint to the board: should they pay their ad people to encourage customers to buy less rather than more? But I’d be wasting my time.
Unless they’ve parted company with their sanity, they actually want you to spend more. That’s the reality. We all know that profit drives retail businesses, so why can’t they just say so?
Reminds me of those times when you try to ring a company or government department and get the usual automated message—“Your call is important to us.”
For most of us nowadays this is a weekly, even daily occurrence. Beaten into submission by years of electronic bullying we just hold on because we have no option, and wait, and wait.
Maybe our call is of some importance to them, but let’s get it straight: they'll answer the phone to suit their convenience, not yours. What the message actually means is, “We’re willing to do business with you, but on our terms not yours.”
It Starts With a False Sense of Kindness
It doesn’t matter if you’re waiting to see a doctor or ordering a hamburger, these signs are always there, threatening, and intimidating, making you reluctant to say anything that’s not cringingly polite.The signs are there, though, because a small but growing minority are losing their cool and their tempers, in their frustration at being downgraded by their society.
It’s all about becoming a kinder, more loving people. That at any rate is the theory, and we’re copping it from all directions, but particularly from the green and trendy left that so dominates public life.
“It’s all about love,” they'll tell us. If we demur or hesitate on any of the issues that so lead popular opinion—women’s health (also known as abortion), for example, or same-sex marriage, or climate change, or transitioning—if we depart from the accepted narrative on any of these things, then we’re just not very loving.
In fact, it won’t be long before someone accuses us of hate speech. And that can end up in court.
It’s a nastier world than it appears to be if you dare to think for yourself and follow your conscience on any of the many issues in which the secular world seems to have mislaid its moral compass.
Some readers will recall the 1972 Richard Adams novel “Watership Down,” about a community of rabbits whose numbers were mysteriously disappearing. Life there was good, and all your needs were met—if you didn’t ask questions. It was a good and popular read, a somewhat dumbed-down version of Orwell’s “Animal Farm” or “1984,” perhaps.
When the Truth Becomes Blurred
Today’s social environment is much more dangerous than that of even half a century ago. The old certainties of black and white, good and bad, right and wrong have become blurred.Post-modernism has rejected the notion of real and objective truth, so that “my” truth may be directly opposite to “yours,” yet both (according to the thinking of our age) are entitled to be treated as valid.
Generations have laughed at King Canute holding back the tides by the force of his will, and at the emperor who had no clothes, but today almost everybody is a Canute or a vain emperor: we each make our own truth and few dare laugh at us. In the sweet, sugary language of Walt Disney, “When you wish upon a star your dreams come true!”
Even more sinister is the threat of world government. Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum enjoys the support of many of the world’s wealthiest people and corporations.
It may not be the case that fewer people exercise more power and control more money than was the case a hundred years ago, but they appear to be doing so now with less moral compunction, and incredibly with greater acquiescence from the governed.
Too many people, particularly in the West, have become too passive in their acceptance of tighter regulation and control.
Signs of Pushback
Politicians such as Donald Trump and Javier Milei have offered some resistance to the prevailing trend towards centralisation of power. Trump is no moral hero, but the anger and loathing that he has attracted is disproportionate.The sins of a Clinton are lightly dismissed, those of Trump are always heinous.
Milei has been welcomed by huge numbers of his countrymen as a breath of fresh air and a spokesman for long-lost liberties, but we shall find the powerful closing ranks against him and the mainstream media, as always, will do their bidding.
People who believe in no objective truths are sitting ducks for bullying by the powerful.
Maybe it’s true that Woollies wants them to spend less, or that their call is important. They may not actually believe it, but it could be true, and hey, who’s to say whether it is or not?
I suppose we'll go on doing what we’re told to do by a benign governing class, and believing what we’re told by celebrity arbiters of popular opinion. But maybe there’s something in that Disney song after all—our dreams of a much better world might come true.
