Is Advertising Fundamentally Evil?

As I continue to read Buddhist Economics by Ven. P. A. Payutto (as previously mentioned, an excellent work), I come across more interesting things to think about.

One of them is whether or not advertising is evil.

Advertising stimulates economic activity, but often at an ethically unacceptable price. Advertising is bound up with popular values: advertisers must draw on common aspirations, prejudices and desires in order to produce advertisements that are appealing. Employing social psychology, advertising manipulates popular values for economic ends, and because of its repercussions on the popular mind, it has considerable ethical significance. The volume of advertising may cause an increase in materialism, and unskillful images or messages may harm public morality. The vast majority of ads imbue the public with a predilection for selfish indulgence; they condition us into being perfect consumers who have no higher purpose in life than to consume the products of modern industry. In the process, we are transformed into 'hungry ghosts,' striving to feed an everlasting craving, and society becomes a seething mass of conflicting interests.

Moreover, advertising adds to the price of the product itself. Thus people tend to buy unnecessary things at prices that are unnecessarily expensive. There is much wastage and extravagance. Things are used for a short while and then replaced, even though they are still in good condition. Advertising also caters to peoples' tendency to flaunt their possessions as a way of gaining social status. When snob-appeal is the main criterion, people buy unnecessarily expensive products without considering the quality. In extreme cases, people are so driven by the need to appear stylish that they cannot wait to save the money for the latest gadget or fashion -- they simply use their credit cards. Spending in excess of earnings can become a vicious cycle. A newer model or fashion is advertised and people plunge themselves deeper and deeper into debt trying to keep up. In this way, unethical advertising can lead people to financial ruin. It is ironic that, with the vast amount of 'information technology' available, most of it is used to generate 'misinformation' or delusion.

On the political plane, decisions have to be made regarding policy on advertising -- should there be any control, and if so, of what kind? How is one to achieve the proper balance between moral and economic concerns? Education is also involved. Ways may have to be found to teach people to be aware of how advertising works, to reflect on it, and to consider how much of it is to be believed. Good education should seek to make people more intelligent in making decisions about buying goods. The question of advertising demonstrates how activities prevalent in society may have to be considered from many perspectives, all of which are interrelated.

I've always felt like advertising was fundamentally evil. I've always hated how full of lies and nonsense it is. But what can we really do to stop it?

One ironic thing to note here is that even though the vast majority of advertising isn't in accordance with Dhamma, as it seems to perpetrate an illusion, or perhaps I should say delusion, one of the biggest supporters that I know of (who provides much of the support for one of the only Theravada temples in the US with an English-speaking monk) actually owns an advertising business. (This isn't really too shocking because artists tend to be interested in things like Buddhism, and advertising is one viable area that artists can get into if they actually want to make a living as such.)

Overall I don't see much that we can do about advertising in general except maybe truth in advertising laws that prevent outright lies, and education to help people understand how advertisers try to wiggle around these laws with various tricks to manipulate people. Perhaps some of the tricks could be outlawed, but it might be tough outlaw certain things like advertising that a detergent has "more super clean-o power than before" or something. About all we can do is try to teach people that "clean-o power" is some totally subjective quality without the objective empirical validity that the advertiser seems to be trying to suggest.

Even if promoting delusional ideas like "super clean-o power" is outlawed, it's pretty much impossible to outlaw images that try to suggest that buying a certain product makes everyone exceedingly happy with their lives to the point where they're dancing down the street. What are you going to do? Outlaw any smiling people in ads? Outlaw dancing in ads?

I really wish we had more critical thinking education in public schools in the US. Even if it weren't labeled as "Buddhist critical thinking class", critical thinking in general is quite Buddhist as evidenced in the Kalama Sutta. Even if we can't realistically outlaw advertising, there's no reason why we couldn't try to make people more resistant to being manipulated by it.

The problem is that politicians rely on advertising too, not just companies trying to sell stuff. Because of this, it's a conflict of interests for politicians to try to encourage people to think critically because then those people might think critically about what the politicians were saying and reject it.

So, it's tough to do anything about advertising in a place where the political system actually depends on advertising and where doing anything about advertising is against the interests of the politicians.

This means that it's probably always going to be up to us private individuals to try to teach people to think critically and be resistant to advertising manipulation. Even in purely communist countries that don't have "capitalist" advertising, they still have advertising in the form of government propaganda and, unfortunately, nobody can even attempt any sort of counter-advertising in that sort of environment due to censorship. Not only that, but if everything is owned by the government it's difficult for private individuals to even get any resources together to spread their message.

Ultimately I think advertising is really neutral. It's just mass communication, though frequently it's used for not-so-great purposes. But it could be used to promote Dhamma, for example, it just that it usually isn't.