Materialism and Artifice

A few years ago, I heard Hendrick Hertzberg (I think that's how his name is spelled) present a lecture for the Presidentially-related series "Character Above All." Given at the LBJ SChool of Public Affairs in Austin (glad Texas lost to A& M last weekend--I've rarely had a weirder football experience. I rooted for A & M and Notre Dame--I must be losing my mind), Mr. Hertzberg gave his lecture on his assessment of President Carter's character (he had served as a main speechwriter in the latter two years of the Carter Presidency). One of the attributes that President Carter possessed and still possesses is an outright rejection of any form of artifice or, as Hertzberg said I believe, anything that resembled artifice.
I must admit being prone to that sort of reaction whenever I see or hear examples of what appear to me as false fronts for whatever purposes, usually in terms of "marketing" or "advertising" or trying to convince people that "all is wonderful, right, bright and just downright glorious" with whatever the "product" happens to be. Whether we are constantly bombarded with more and more examples of "marketing campaigns" (SIU is presently, as I recall, initiating a very expensive effort to attract students here from other parts of our state while simultaneously spending presumably scare dollars on campus entrance and directional signs, bowling alley repairs, Chancellor search processes and continuing neither to repair older buildings nor find funds to fully renovate the upper two floors of our Library) is probably a matter of perspective, but I think it's a fair statement that television programs which present images of smiling, happy workers at Company X may open themselves to questions about just how content their employees happen to be.
Perhaps, that being said, the certain company's atmosphere does create happy, satisfied people who make decent wages and have benefits that enable them to provide for their families. Perhaps presenting these happy people on a television network ("The Biography Channel" or, when I can stand the screaming "Boo-Yeah's!," ESPN are but two examples) reflect little more than the criticisms that Edward R. Murrow reportedly made nearly 50 years ago about superficiality and escapism or what Chief Justice Earl Warren (according to Ed Cray's biography from the mid-1990s) predicted about television's impact on the justice system if it ever got inside a courtroom. Given that Cray's book came out just as the OJ Simpson lunacy was reaching a climax, the words of Murrow, Warren and President Carter ring ever so reasonable once again. Those words, of course, do not simply connect with television and its impact on our culture. Artifice, theatre, decadence and unawareness deal with matters far more serious that whether employees smile at work.
We face, as scores of others have said and written, an ever-growing "Forrest-Gumping" of our population--although I'm not sure we ever achieved the heights of "an informed citizenry" that Mr. Jefferson originally envisioned. Fewer and fewer people, it seems, bother to read anything anymore. Fewer and fewer people, it seems, want to explore subjects other than what immediately surrounds them. More and more people want the "security of stuff" without realizing that one can never have enough stuff (or money or power or...) to assuage the basic anxiety that remains the root of the human problem. What's more paradoxical and frustrating is that an ability to understand these issues about ourselves is more readily available to more people than at any time in the world's history. What we do, as Murrow proclaimed and Warren warned and partly over which Carter lost re-election, is avoid, retreat and create an artifice of "There you go again," "It's Morning Again in America" happy faces.
Do I have a solution or even think that several solutions somehow magically "exist"? No. Do I think that directional signs in the face of under-repaired buildings is somehow even remotely an honest attempt to deal with the issue? No. What do I suggest? To paraphrase how my favorite American playwright--Eugene O'Neill--put it in Long Day's Journey into Night, "faithful realism" would be a nice beginning.