From: Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko (sasha1@netcom.com)
Date: Mon Jan 25 1999 - 22:54:58 MST
I would think that gift-giving is an extremely old tradition,
but much of these gifts came as personal services (I fix
your fence or feed you), or hand-made memorable things.
The idea that only brand-new, shrink-wrapped things are
any good, and that you should spend all your money to
buy these things of certain types for all occasions for
your colleagues, neighbors, relatives, friends, etc. etc.,
seems quite new and following from the commercial
culture. In Russia which I was so fortunate to observe
before the commercialization (though not quite shielded
from commercial memes) these tendencies were much
less pronounced.
Another reason for expensive wasteful activities, IMO, is
the mundane memetic pressure. Just like fish and peacocks
grow their tails out of all practical proportions, many cultural
traditions tend to exaggerate their symbolic messages, and
put extreme amount of effort into cultural rituals.
All advertising has to do is to guide this energy a little by
suggesting that wasteful practices should be based on
buying stuff (as opposed to physical activities, sacrifices,
and other non-consuming activities that find little advertising
interest). The conservatism of tradition seems to go
hand-in-hand with the conservatism of industry interests and
investments.
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Alexander Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
<sasha1@netcom.com> <sasha@media.mit.edu>
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