Something struck me the other day listening to coverage of the goings on in Greece.
Namely that ‘the market’ – to which we all seem so happily in thrall – is in truth just a sanctioned adult expression of our repressed inner child.
And not the inner child we are urged to let loose every once in a while, so we can laugh and skip and take innocent delight again in the rush of just being.
Rather the impatient, unreasonable, relentlessly selfish part that we are taught early on to suppress so we can go on to become a responsible member of adult society.
It’s as if we all deeply resented being forced to give that up – the primal pleasure of throwing yourself to the floor and screaming ‘But I want it now!’ until someone gives in – and so have fashioned this adult version, ‘the market’, in which to indulge it anew – and this time ring-fenced from censure because it’s supposedly rational and to do with grown up stuff like economics.
There may well have been plenty of good reasons why Greece pausing to hold a referendum at this point wasn’t the best of calls. But the fact that the market wouldn’t have the patience to wait, that its need for certainty and gratification NOW had to be satisfied, shouldn’t have been one of them, should it?
We teach our kids to be patient, that ‘I want doesn’t get’, that ‘good things come to those that wait’ etc, etc – but whenever the market even threatens to stamp its little feet we immediately hand over the lollipop.
If so, perhaps the only route to true reform and recovery is to unmask ‘the market’s’ true psychic identity and then agree that, like the kid rolling on the supermarket floor, it needs to be taught some boundaries.
Now you might at this point be wondering, yes, but what this has got to do with advertising?
Not much, probably.
But it’s not really all about advertising right now, is it?
