The gods. Part the One, of Twelve.

Yoknapatwapha. A cosmos.

(Faulkner never called it a campus.)

As someone who has no god, I spend a good amount of time thinking about gods. 

I think a lot about the Greek gods. I like very much the idea that as opposed to the muslim, christian or jewish god, the Greek gods are many and they are far from perfect. They are as flawed and jealous and petty as humans--just immortal, tremendously powerful and sometimes wise. I never got or could understand the unique "genius" of monotheism. So what. I'd rather have one cleaner for glass, one for furniture, one for tile, than one that does everything. 

Back to the greek pantheon. While I have no burning desire to disguise myself as a swan or a bull so I can have my way, I think often of Athena's words to Odysseus. Third-born and grey-eyed, Athena kicks me in my ass. Her words motivate me. 

Even Owen, my therapist of 91 years cannot expunge this line from my cerebellum. "Few sons are the equals of their fathers. Most fall short, all too few surpass them.” It drives me even in my dotage--a quarter century after my father's demise.

In any event, I've been thinking about gods and people. 

And the biggest problem with gods is when people start believing that they are gods. 

1. That they are better than others.

2. That the rules don't apply to them--their reality is truth.

3. That they face no consequences and take no responsibility.

When people, companies, "leaders," religions, nations,  begin believing in that trinity is when the world--large and small, macro and micro--becomes fuckupterized.

That's where we are today. When the non-tax-paying trillionaire freeloaders and grifters posit that they are better than others. Not just better cheats, thieves and gonifs. 

Some years ago, I read that when Roman generals returned in triumph from a giant victorious battle with countless slaves, with loot and gold, and with people bowing down to them, they hired someone to stand alongside them and keep repeating, "You are not a god. You are not a god." 

Beware the throne. 

That seldom worked. 

Most people when they amass power, no matter how small and idiosyncratic, start believing the trinity above. When Roman emperor Vespasian was dying of dysentery, his last few words were reported as, "Oh dear, I think I'm becoming a god!" I think many of amerikkka's current trillionaire and political class believe they are gods.

All that prompted me to write, not too terribly long ago, for a TedX talk in Lisbon, Portugal, something I called The Ten Humanments. Ten behaviors that might help you be decent.

Over the next eleven or twelve or twenty posts, I've decided to go through each one of my Humanments and explain what I mean by the behaviors I've identified.

 

It's never been harder to be a human.

It's never been harder to feel free, safe, among friends, part of something bigger. Today, you are odd-man-out if you smile at a stranger or help someone. I think the felon-in-chief might call you a "sucker." God knows what peat hegseth would call you. Likely a weirdo and a beardo.

They are well-armed.

Human. Right.

Encroachments on our human-ness seem to be coming from more angles than there are angles.

At work, we're made to do things faster than ever.

We're made to do things even when we know they suck.

Our controllers, whether those controllers are machines or private-equity orthodoxy or profit-maximizing anti-human forces or algorithms designed to eat up free-will, force us into a machine-mandated mediocrity take without give. You must comply. If not you are monopoly-banned. They control the jobs and you must obey. Especially if you want that rarest of human privileges, the right to health-care. 

So, or even alas, we work harder and harder and longer and longer to make things we have less and less ownership of and no pride in.

All-the-while, the lead story in what seems like about 75-percent of all news stories is that we can be replaced at any time. We breathe employment peril like coal miners inhale coal-dust. It's in our lungs and destroys us from the inside-out.

Machines in other words have become the pillars of humanity--they'll last. 

While people are regarded as drains on profit, in the parlance of fascists gone by, 'useless eaters.' We're protoplasm that interferes with all that matters. Profit for about a dozen people on top, and the frictionless hegemony of machinery.

But as Faulkner said in his Nobel Prize Acceptance speech from 1949--when humanity faced a different specter of annihilation, "I decline to accept the end of man." (Faulkner's 'man' was an inclusive man. Don't go damning him for being gendered. That sort of sectarian behavior only plays into the grasping hands of those on top. They've taught us and trained us and set us up to fight each other, so we don't fight them.)

The humanments are about declining to accept the end of humankind.

The humanments are about refusing to give into the gods of selfishness and empty profligacy.

The humanments are about refusing to quiet.

Refusing to fill out forms.

Refusing to have machines call us by name and to use the first-person pronoun for themselves.

The humanments are about refusing to become a machine and a line item.

The humanments are about refusing to accept false gods and their puniness.

The humanments are about refusing and declining to accept the end of man.

As Faulkner concluded his speech, "when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

That's what this is about.

Recognizing and rejuvenating our spirit.

Our spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

What will follow are rules I've learned--ways of living I've adopted.

So I don't become dumb and numb and no more.

Rules that let me give permission to myself to be angry, outraged, happy and in love.

Rules that let me be me.

A fucked-up, full-of-fault, fallible and sometimes frail human.
Who despite my sometimes frail has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance, so I do not fail.

One Humanment a day.

For much of the next couple weeks.

If I am semiotic about it, maybe ending on Thanksgiving.

If we last till then.

Advertising Advice from Gary Cooper.

If you're reading my blog, my guess is you're probably too young to know the great American actor, Gary Cooper. Today's recency bias somehow stops people knowing anything about anything that happened before last Tuesday. That explains a man with an eight-second attention span deciding on a whim to invade an eight-thousand year old civilization.

MATH INTERLUDE:

So far the pentafake estimates the non-war has cost us $48,000,000,000. It was begun to distract us from the 38,000 times tump was mentioned in a dossier essentially about child rape. So $48B divided by 38K mentions equals $1,263,157.895/distraction.

But back to the topic at hand.

To be fair, though I'm as old as basalt, Cooper was big before my time. I grew to love him because I love old movies. And Cooper starred in one of my top-ten movies of all-time, "High Noon." Maybe the greatest Western ever, or second, edged out by George Stevens' "Shane."

Cooper was famously "laconic." That is he didn't speak much. When people impersonated him as they did, usually the impersonations consisted of someone saying little more than "yup" or "nope."

This short scene between Cooper and Katy Jurado is a pretty good example of Cooper's style. As John Wayne said once as acting advice: "Talk low. Talk slow. Don't say too much." You'll see that wisdom in action, above.

So many people in our world today, in advertising and just about everything else, seem to be intent on being like everyone else. Months ago, I wrote in this space about Alex Murrell's excellent essay, "The Age of Average." 

Murrell writes,

What gets noticed in the world, and in advertising (which used to be part of the world) is standing out and being different. Not going with the flow and agreeing with the most senior person in the room. Not not questioning the dominant complacency. And never balking against following "best practices" when tautologically that means you're doing something that's already been done by someone else.

About two decades ago when Sheryl Sandberg's book, "Lean In," was on everyone's night-table (though I'd guess no one actually read it) about 98-percent of all planners used the phrase "lean in" in about 98-percent of all their sentences. 

I was in a meeting and one senior planner asserted that at night people go home, turn on the TV and "lean in" to watch. Everyone went along with that. It's like getting popcorn when you're at the movies. It's what you're supposed to do.

After a second, I could take it no longer.

I said, "I dunno, Andrea. I'm old. When I get home at night, I'm beat. The last thing I want to do is do. I don't want to lean in. All I want to do is watch the Knicks and lean the fuck out."

In any event, the other night I saw this clip on YouTube of Gary Cooper not following Gary Cooper-best-practices. It makes me laugh like very little makes me laugh.

It's funny what happens when you break character. 

It's funny what happens when you do something different.

It's funny when you call a dog a cat and a cat a duck and a duck a turtle.

It makes children laugh.

And even people.

Where I come from, laughing is good.

Though it's no longer best practices.

BONUS COOPER MENTION @ 1:06.

All You Can't Eat.

There was an article in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend about "all-you-can-eat" buffets. If you can get past the paywall, you can read it here.

Once many years ago, a young account person and I were sent out to Rochester, Minnesota to visit an Eero Saarinen-designed factory, where that once-vaunted and important company made servers. (It's since been sold.)

I was a bit of a celebrity in the IBM server cosmos in those days, and I had a long day the next day talking to engineers and filming the factory. (Agency relationship tip: Clients like when you visit them, understand and are interested in their business and offerings and make them feel valued.)

Yet another metaphor for advertising.

In any event, the only restaurant near the dry-wall hotel we were staying in was a place called a paean to plastic trays, acid reflux and gluttony.  

😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀

[Borscht Belt interlude: Q. How can you tell when you're in the best restaurant in Rochester, Minnesota? A. You can leave your tray on the table when you're done eating.]

😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀

Until I went to an expensive resort in Costa Rica, all inclusive, and all inedible, I haven't gone to many all-you-can-eat places. Even the occasional hotel that has such an indulgent breakfast has very little appeal. I really don't need a plate with sixteen warmed-up scrambled eggs, three-quarters of a pound of bacon, yogurt, out-of-season fruit and four croissants. The problem is, you wind up taking too much because it's there for the taking. In fact, if you don't stuff your face, you'll probably feel like you cheated yourself out of something.

It's hard to eat like a human when you're offered in-human quantities. Even the most austere consumer is likely to indulge her Lucullan tendencies.

It occurred to me just now--and having glanced at the Wall Street Journal article above--that all-you-can-eat-ness is today nearly a perfect metaphor for the current course and speed advertising business.

Advertising is like all-you-can-eat buffets.

Nothing's very good, but there's so much of it.

So we pile more on.

While there's a bit of Yogi Berra in that, I think it's worth repeating: Advertising is like all-you-can-eat buffets. Nothing's very good, but there's so much of it.

Right now I'm struggling with a very big (for me) and very difficult client. 

I've worked with him for more than six years, and of late, have interviewed a dozen people affiliated with his company--from employees in a bunch of different disciplines, to private equity consultants, to clients, to affiliates.

It's painful.

Everyone sees the company in a different way.

And at the top of their voice.

Maybe it's that way with most businesses today. (I read somewhere that when Hilary Clinton ran for president in 2016, her marketing teams proposed to her 216 different taglines. That's not an indication of creative fecundity. That shows that you don't know what you stand for. Certainly, Clinton's winning tagline was as flat as a plate of piss. "I'm with her," means a whole lot of nothing and foists on the viewer a faux sensation that they're passionate about her, when most people--even those who liked Clinton, merely tolerated her.)

When I start with clients, I present something to them I call the Four Ds.

Before I do anything for the client, before I create any messaging, I have to answer the toughest, the most-important and least-commoditized part of my construct. I have to get the client to agree who they are, what makes them different and why they exist.

I believe about 99.879667-percent of all companies cannot do this or fail to do this or don't know they need to do this. (See Hilary Clinton above.)

For instance, I don't think anyone knows the difference between United and American and Delta. Or Hilton and Marriot and Intercontinental. Or Nissan and Toyota and Honda and Kia and Audi and VW and BMW. Or Publicis and WPP and Omnicom and Havas.

Adding insult to injury, since none of these companies and their agencies can do the most important of the jobs they need to do, they make up for their nothing-ness with quantity.

They don't produce the six messages a year that tell the world (and as importantly their own employees) who they are. Instead they spew out like Etna with diarrhea a lava eruption of un-differentiated molten crap and hope somehow something sticks, or somehow no one notices, or someone makes a ketchup filled running shoe and that gets their CMO some buzz.

When Charlotte Beers was CEO of Ogilvy, she propagated a line that I'm not ashamed to admit I often co-opt and rewrite. She said Ogilvy's aspiration was to be "Most-valued by those who most-value brands."

You don't see much today that's big, memorable, defining and enduring. You don't see much that fulfills D1.

If nothing else reveals itself, that's not a bad paradigm to steal.

For a copywriter: "To be most-valued by clients who most-value breakthrough work."

For a blogger: "To be most-valued by readers who most-value thoughtful discussion about things they're interested in."

For a comedian: "To be most-valued by people who most-value belly-laughs."

For someone on a dating site: "To be most-valued by people hoping to settle down with a mensch."

I'll find a way to do D1 Define for my client.

D1 Define will be strengthened by D2 Demonstrate.

I'll get well-paid and thanked for it.

I'll get incremental revenue, and maybe another six years of work.

I'll be damned if I'll serve an all-you-can-eat meal.

Burp.

Teetering on the Ontological.

Nemesis.

Universal truth. 

The world would be better of, you would be better off, the country would be better off, every agency you've ever worked for would be better off, if we would all take a moment in consider the ancient Greek concepts--the Universal Laws of Hubris and its inevitable companion Nemesis.

(BTW, Hubris is not to be confused with U-Bris, a failed DIY-home-circumcision kit I had as a client for a while.)

Ideas come and go.

We change how kids learn math and reading.

One generation decides that you must put kids to sleep on their bellies. The next avalanches in and decides kids should sleep on their backs. 

If you're of a certain age, a simple chicken egg has gone from absolute taboo to two-a-week to good for you and probably back again and again two of three times. 92-percent of my readers likely subsist on coffee and have likely engaged with the sorts of articles here:

These things come and go.

They are subject to trends, habits, and opinions. 

But some things, like Hubris and Nemesis are under sway of much more powerful forces. 

They are governed by Natural Law. The inevitability of the universe. As count-on-able as the tides, the sunrise, blowhard creative directors and bad airline food.

There are probably more academic, more Sophoclean definitions of Hubris. But given the state of education, attention and distraction today, I'll proffer this succinct vernacular one: Hubris is when you get too big for your britches. When you start believing your godliness. When you come to the (false) realization that your shit don't stink.

Likewise there are more technically accurate descriptions of Nemesis, the foe that always shows up. But I'll leave it, hopefully mnemonically, as this: Nemesis is your come-uppance. When you get what's coming to you. 

If you want a clearer, more entertaining depiction, you might want to watch an old Hollywood gangster movie, like "Little Caesar." The two-hundred and forty-six seconds here should     do it.

From Hubris to Nemesis in 4:06.

What brings all this on is an article I read in the Times on Monday from their long-time columnist, Frank Bruni. The Times' subject line says it all. And practically wrote this post for me.

Until this actually happens of course, it remains only an emanation devoutly to be wished. Nemesis--despite Bruni's optimism has yet to appear in the ballot box. The much-hoped-for "blue wave," might not appear, it might be abnegated by corruption, or some other lever of deceit might be applied. There are many--and they're multiplying. There's also the tumpian fascist specter of federal troops. Or the stalinist precept of "it's not who votes, it's who counts."

But none of that changes the fundamental cycle of how life has always been. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Everything that rises must converge. Or, most bluntly, rust never sleeps.

My mentor and friend, Steve Hayden, created Hayden's Mandala--a simple model that explains all of life. The surpassing art-director Marc Klein designed a site dedicated to Steve. You can find it, and so much more, here. (Thanks, Marc.)

Readership of this blog has, over the last six months or so, declined. I used to get about 80,000 readers a month, now I get little more than half of that.

I can attribute that to many things. 

I write a lot at a time when fewer people read. Or can.

I've been writing this blog for nearly twenty years and maybe people are bored. All I am, really, is a one-legged tap-dancer.

Maybe the great cosmic algorithm that rules all creatures great and small has changed and I'm left out in the cold.

Just as likely, I got too big for my britches and now payback is here.

That said, there's a way back from payback.

Do what you know how to do.

Again, as Hayden taught me: "The best revenge is a better ad." That is take your cuts. Keep your swing level. And as Wee Willie Keeler said, "Hit 'em where they ain't."

Or as was written in the great but unknown epic poem, "The Blackiad," the saga of a trout nicknamed Boston Blackie, by my grad school mentor Lipton Merriwell Sipps, PhD:

PS. Professor Sipps, mama ain't there.

In Praise of Copywriting.

When tump decided to invade Iran to distract from the 38,000 times he was mentioned in the epstein files, as someone who reads a lot of history, I proclaimed to anyone who would listen (no one) this imperial, racist adventuring would not end well.

My one-sentence summation was pretty simple.

"A man with an eight-second attention span should not invade an eight-thousand-year-old civilization."

That line takes me down two separate but related paths. 

One: There's a pithiness to it. Which leads me to conclude the democratic party should hire a gag writer. That is, they need--as all brands do--someone who can "on-demand" come up with pithy quips that lodge, disrupt, upset--and in Candide's 'best of all possible world's" might make a difference.

About a decade ago, I started trading linked-in messages with Rob Schwartz. Rob's a career coach now. Back then, he was CEO of Chiat\Day New York. (I might have his exact title and agency names slightly off. No one can keep up with corporate whack-a-merger and remember who's who anymore. Which doesn't matter anyway, since they're all the same.)

If I remember correctly, and I'm sure I do, Rob and I met at the Friar's Club on East 55th Street. A legendary, but musty place that was on its last one-liner at the time.

My first impression of Rob--I'm not one who goes gently into new relationships--was this: "Oh, he has the gift of quip." That is talking to Rob was a series of jokes, barbs, punch-lines and gags. Mixed in with intelligence, humanity and nice discernment.

 Philip Roth alluded to a more malign "gift of quip" in one of my favorite passages from his classic "Portnoy's Complaint." A scene I often show to gentiles who don't understand New York Jewish.

“My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn’t just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you’ve got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren’t only bombs and bullets—no, they’re little gifts, containing meanings!”

Rob has no mean in him. But you get the point. What's more, my phrase "Gift of Quip," was also an homage to the great John LeCarre, who said of his most famous creation, espionage agent George Smiley, "He has the gift of quiet." 

Leona Helmsley (a convicted felon) once said about donald trump, "I wouldn't believe [him] if his tongue were notarized." Politicians and brands should hire people who can write lines like that.

I do something for clients I call "The Nifty Fifty." Fifty funny attention getting ads that keep their brands top of mind and stop the scroll. The democrats currently besiege people with boring crap. There must be a better way to change minds and hearts and votes.

Two: The second path is more lamentable.

With everything today quick and shallow, nobody anymore knows anything about anything except that which is unimportant.

We can spend billions on a war and we know nothing about who we're fighting or why or anything vaguely related to the history of the region. 

As Simon Sebag Montefiore writes in his new book, "Cauldron," about the area we are constantly invading: 

“Today it seems irredeemably turbulent and explosive, which is why I have entitled this book, The Cauldron. The ingredients are beautiful and inspiring but also volatile, pyrophoric–and increasingly fissile. 

Its particular, disparate composition is the result of its tri-continental location as bridge and seaway, thoroughfare and crossroads; its very middleness makes it unavoidable for every local power that aspires to intercontinental influence and every planetary hegemon that seeks multi-domain power. Most of the empires who have conquered or influenced it–and what a list it is: Akkadians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Crusaders, Mongols, Turco-Mongols, Mamluks, Ottomans, British, French, Italians, Greeks, Americans and Soviets–have done so partly for its own sake but partly to reach, control or protect other places; once inserted and committed, they have each had to expend much blood and treasure just to keep control of this tinderbox, even for the shortest time. 

It is not a surprise that this region has been so shaped by these foreign invaders and colonists, migrants and settlers–such movements of people are the engine of all world history and of our present. Its web of peoples, sects and languages vividly reflects every empire that rose and fell here precisely because each tried to change it, to settle it, to shape it to their own designs and to serve their own gods. Even today, the politicians who send armies and jets into the region, and the activists who march in Western streets demanding interventions are both equal parts of that inescapable tradition.”

What I wouldn't give for a political leader, a business leader, anyone, who reads anything with an historical perspective or a point of view informed by more than a sound-bite or the latest outrage.

I suppose what I'm saying is a more than a little self-aggrandizing. But that's ok. What's a personal blog for if not at least a soupçon of feeding one's ego? 

But here it is: our world--our politics, our brands, the ad industry--culture itself--would be better off if there were more people who combined the "turn of a phrase" with an understanding of the world.

In other words if you could take what's meaningful and make it memorable. 

Like this, from Shakespeare's Henry V's 

We've gone too fast and too ugly from Lincoln's eloquence "last best hope on earth," to the tump's gutter, "We're the HOTTEST Country Anywhere in the World,"

That's a Gibbonesque Decline and Fall as depicted by Wile E. Coyote, a cliff and maybe an anvil.

83-seconds of amerikkan metaphor.

That's what happens you when you don't hire a copywriter.