Selling Short
I was complaining to God about the twin evils of sales and advertising, how they manipulate the human psyche to create useless needs and frivolous wants. He let me go on for a while I pointed out how they sow the seeds of endless dissatisfaction, just so they can make their quotas at any cost, heedless of the carnage they leave in people’s minds and the toll that takes on society as a whole.
But God told me, by way of analogy, that I was complaining that a starving dog will steal scraps of food from the table without bothering to look at why the dog was starving in the first place. He told me that advertising can let us know about things that will make our lives better, sometimes in frivolous ways but sometimes in ways both deep and meaningful. He pointed out how much I love to watch the trailers before movies, and yet those are just advertising. He told me that sales, that selling, can aspire to match us with the right solution to our problems, sifting through myriad possibilities to find the product that best fits our mental and fiscal needs, that will make our lives both better and easier.
In short, sales and advertising are noble pursuits.
It’s just that they get polluted and poisoned by our broken system of capitalism, which leaves some dogs fat and lazy and others diseased and starving.
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