Mass Persuasion

With the rise of the Information Age came two of the most important inventions of our time; the computer and the television.  Both computers and televisions are easily accessible to most Americans, which makes these a technologies a perfect way for companies to advertise.  Americans are bombarded with thousands of advertisements every day, but we don’t realize how regular advertisement has become in our daily lives.  French sociologist Jacques Ellul thought that advertisement was the greatest assault to human dignity and that by allowing advertisement, television was creating a “mass man.”  We have become a society of people that are all programmed to want the same things.  The television tells us to buy things, so we buy them.  The advertisements we see on the television and our computers are only those of the companies that can afford to get their product or service advertised.  Therefore, we end up seeing advertisements for many of the same or similar products.  These advertisements tell us that we need these products, that everyone else has them, and that if we don’t get them we will certainly be unhappy with our decisions.  We are a “mass man,” we buy and want all the same things.  I believe Ellul though this was an assault of human dignity because the ads we see teach us that conformity should be looked at as a good thing.  We trade in our individualism for the assurance that we will be like everyone else and won’t feel excluded.  I understand Ellul’s position, but I think it may be a little extreme.  Americans can recognize when they’re seeing an advertisement on the television and if they don’t want to buy something they have to power to turn it down.