Foreword and Table of Contents:
Old Paradigm:
“We have to lower our living standards to protect the environment.” This notion is based on the idea that there is a direct inverse correlation between living standards and environmental responsibility.
A Major Problem with the Old Paradigm:
Under the Old Paradigm, we are encouraged to follow the same spending habits in the same way as we've always done, only we’re encouraged to do less of it. We’re given a false choice between premature death due to environmental pollution and premature death due to self-inflicted hardships.
Another Major Problem with the Old Paradigm:
Even if it worked, nobody is doing it.
Consequence:
We’re doomed either way.
Hint of a Solution:
Modern advertising and popular culture have distorted our concepts of higher living standards. Probably not one person in a hundred can give you a working definition of the term higher living standards—and that probably includes you. If you asked a hundred people to spend thirty seconds imagining themselves enjoying a higher standard of living, probably every one of them would imagine three things:
1. Things that are expensive,
2. Things that are extolled by popular culture, and
3. Things that have famous logos on them.
None of those three measures have anything to do with higher living standards.
What does? Two things: benefits and reality—or, to put the two words together as a single idea, benefits that are real and not just figments of your imagination.
New Paradigm:
By measuring living standards by actual benefits we receive, we can raise our standards of living, spend less money, make healthier choices, and become more environmentally responsible all at the same time. In this book, I compare more than thirty items that people commonly buy or want to buy. Depending on where you live or other personal factors, some comparisons may not apply to your situation; but most, if followed, will in many ways improve your life, reduce your carbon footprint, and leave a better environment for future generations.
This book is not about comparing brands and getting the best bargain. That attitude only narrows our thinking, narrows our options, and lowers our standards of living. Nor is it about finding “substitutes” for popularly advertised brands.
It’s not about brands at all. It’s about benefits. It’s about understanding why we want to buy something and looking beyond the limits of a few options contrived by advertisers and popular culture.
Here’s the secret that advertisers don’t want you to know: Nobody buys a product because he wants that product. He buys it because he wants a benefit that he expects to get from that product.
Advertisers have an in-house expression, “Sell the benefit.” Every advertisement mentions, or more often suggests, a benefit. The supposed benefit may be something the product couldn't possibly deliver, such as popularity. The supposed benefit may even be something that’s purely imaginary, such as becoming like a popular sports star.
Whatever the benefit, or supposed benefit, the advertiser gets the target consumer excited about a certain benefit; then he pulls a sleight of hand. He suggests that you can’t get that benefit unless you buy a certain brand of a certain product.
Very few people are completely fooled, because other advertisers are using the same scam to plug another brand of a similar product. Nonetheless, advertisers are partly successful in one respect: They've convinced people that they have to buy either that brand of that product or they have to buy another brand of essentially the same thing. That’s why simply comparing brands is a rigged game.
Rather than brand A or brand B, maybe what you really need is something very different from any of the advertised brands. What you really need may be something that you already have, although popular culture may have blinded you to that fact. (Think of MacGyver and Helpful Hints from Heloise.) For that matter, what you really need may be the exact opposite of what advertisers and popular culture has told you that you need.
For example, people sometimes buy portable players for stimulation. Do we really have a shortage of stimulation in our society? What we may really need is silence—freedom from constant stimulation.
The Twofold Path:
Instead of asking, “What brand should I buy?” it’s wiser to ask two other questions: “What benefits do I want?” and “What’s the best way of getting those benefits?” That’s the first part of the two-fold path.
The second part is reality: seeing things for what they really are and not as we’re told they are. This principle goes beyond questioning whether a claim is true, because advertisers rarely state a claim outright; they simply imply a claim. It then becomes necessary to identify the underlying assumptions behind what we’re presented and ask if the assumption is true.
Fully grasping the twofold path will require a great deal of elucidation on my part and a great deal of practice on your part. That’s why you’re reading this book.
© Gerald Wayne Mills, 1 May 2015, All Rights Reserved, Paradigmaclast
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