Here we get to the crux of the issue.  The massive changes in British society over the last decades have been accelerated, and taken advantage of, by corporations and individuals wanting to make money.  Commercial opportunity has directly clashed with the UK’s inherited value system.  And commercial expediency has been winning.

This is how it has worked.  Whatever is new and ‘sells’ well is a passport to riches for the organisation doing the selling.  So, in order to get rich, the trick is to find something that people want to buy; and if they don’t want to buy it, then find a way of making them want to buy it!  Creating and satisfying our wants may seem to be morally neutral.  But, what if our wants are bad for us?  Or, what if our wants are bad for others?

Not all that glitters is gold

Just as scratching an itch (nice in the short term – makes the problem worse in the long term) is something we ‘want’ to do, but have to learn to resist doing, there is a general principle in life: that not all that we want is good for us, long term.  Wisdom, experience, advice – all these things create a climate in which we know how to resist what is appealing, but bad.

In the commercial field, a clear example of the problem is the lure of debt.  It is highly attractive, in the short term, to borrow to the hilt and buy that car, or sofa, or phone contract, or whatever and enjoy it now.  “Takes the waiting out of wanting”, as the advertisement used to say.  The Credit Crunch of 2008-09 has shown how, as a society, we were walking on thin ice in succumbing to this temptation; and so many individuals have suffered greatly as a result and will do so much more in the years to come.  Some have lost their jobs, others their houses, as the seemingly virtuous circle of borrowing against rising house prices turned nasty.   Bankruptcies and personal insolvencies have risen sharply, while failing banks, recession and a cash-strapped government have been the results at the national level.

Exploiting our weaknesses

Now, it is easy enough to see that the incessant advertising of easy credit (‘Buy now, pay February’, letters offering yet another credit card with your name already embossed on it – and so on) planted a temptation that led people to do what turned out to be foolish things.  ‘Temptation’ is an old-fashioned word, but with a very contemporary meaning: tempting others means exploiting their weaknesses.  The fact is that we do have many weaknesses – and that they are easily enough exploited.

Whose fault was over-indebtedness?  The honest answer has to be: partly ours (we were not wise when we might have been); partly the seller’s (we do expect financial institutions to lend responsibly – they used to say ‘no’ when they felt the customer could run into trouble; more recently, they frequently failed to do so); and partly the fault of a wider ‘climate’, in which debt was presented as being attractive, a boat not to be missed, and a lifestyle to be copied.

Very persuasive

So, we had commercial interests that were able to make a lot of money out of lending money to people (really a lot of money); we had a massive amount of expenditure going into the art of persuasion (think how much was spent on all those mailings – one might receive three in a day at its peak!); and all of this chimed in with our gullibility to make us sign on the line.

It changed our culture

Human weakness; money to be made; powerful persuasion; a climate in which Grandma’s adage (“put some aside for a rainy day”) got shouted down with “Buy it now!” – what drove all this was the power of advertising, which actually changed an aspect of our culture, from one of caution to one of reckless spending, releasing huge profits to those behind the campaign.

Don’t get us wrong.  The profit motive can be a powerful generator of progress.  Competition can deliver huge advances in efficiency and quality.  But in the field of values, it can ride roughshod over generations of experience and change a culture in less than a generation – and cause it to be shipwrecked pretty soon after that.

It looked fun

Other examples?  Binge drinking: promotional offers (“As much as you can drink”) are designed to attract more customers, make more money.  But they play equally on human weakness, the attraction of having a good time – and the presentation of that ‘good time’ as pure fun – thus blotting out the longer term impact of a rotting liver; and also glossing over the pretty major problem that we might end up doing things when drunk that we really didn’t want to do – and regretted doing.  So, presentation obscures reality and we are almost hypnotized to go with the flow, letting down all our defences in the process.  We know the human cost of this to be huge.

Or sex: a teen magazine with an article on “ten hot tips to get your boyfriend into bed” would undoubtedly sell well!  But would it be responsible?  What would be the long-term impact?  Sadness?  Unplanned pregnancies?  Abortions?  Fatherless children?  Deep hurt as “I thought he loved me” turned to a profound sense of rejection?

But it would make money along the way; and that has been the driver of so much of what has happened in the last 50 years.

Fueling addiction

High-pressure advertising works (which is why so much is spent on it, daily).  Much of it operates through the use of image, creating as sense of inadequacy if you don’t have the latest ‘must-have’ item or do the ‘must-do’ thing.  And it can create and then fuel addictions.  Human weakness is never as evident as in the field of addictions.  These include smoking (banning advertising and smoking in public places has actually worked), alcohol, porn (pressed on us from all sides), gambling (big budget advertising now), violent films, shopping…  And in all of this, there are vast amounts of money to be made, turning you on and then keeping you on, catching and imprisoning, manipulating and fleecing – and we are all potential victims.

Not funny

And the result of all this is great pain, frustration and a sense of failure and brokenness.  And, as money drives culture change, where what is right and wrong (and known to be such for generations) are supplanted by what is cool and attractive, our defences are reduced to the point that we are sitting ducks.  Meanwhile, society itself becomes increasingly shallow and thoughtless, living for the moment, ‘protected’ from any achieving any consciousness of the long-term consequences and the pain potentially stored up for so many people, just around the corner.

Society then remains in denial, because the advertising hype, the glossy shopping centres, the game shows with canned laughter – these all keep presenting a false but powerful picture of a nation just having fun.

Next: Can we go back?