Donna Saslove And Simon Lugassy - JO LEE Magazine

THE MARVELOUS MAVERICK
Economy, New Values And Recovery
By H. Gail Regan
Toronto – Canada
My Canadian business depends on
a prosperous Canada and Canada
is economically dependent on
the larger, more productive, more
creative economy of the United
States. While Canada seems to be
finding its feet after the recession,
I have been worrying about the
stability of the U.S. recovery.
Coincidentally, my nephew gave me
Season 1 of the T.V. show Mad Men.
I did not identify with the characters
at first, but once Betts Draper shot at
some pigeons, once she demonstrated
that she could feel her anger and
fight back, I was hooked. When I
realized that underneath its tawdry
frivolity the show communicates a
significant message, I read the book
Mad Men and Philosophy to find out
how scholars understand its moral
drama.
Although the show illustrates modern
philosophy by quoting Ayn Rand
and enacting the thought of Friedrich
Nietzsche, the authors of the book
find the Mad Men characters shallow.
They see them as failed existentialists
rather than as the suffering front
wave of the new economy and
contemporary society. Their view
misses the depth of this brilliant
work.
What did advertising achieve back in
1959, the time period when the show
is set? It took ordinary products
and made them icons, enabling
corporations to create scale and
international presence. Advertising
made an essential contribution
to today’s globalised, creatively
destructive, competitive, designbased,
technologically innovative
economy.
In 1959, the American economy
was closed, industrial and military,
supported by traditional institutions
such as schools, churches and
communities organized by stayat-home
Moms. Institutions and
economy could be rigid, but both
were re-assuring and anchoring.
In today’s post-industrial economy,
where rapid change is necessary to
add value, attachment to employer,
neighborhood, family, even one’s own
identity, can be dysfunctional. The
new milieu is exciting and lonely,
conflicted, low in trust. The shift is
frightening and the men and women
of Mad Men human. The smoky,
boozy, adulterous haze they inhabited
was their ticket for the journey out
of patriarchy into the new world
of existential responsibility and
aloneness. Despite their personal
failings, they made this milieu
mainstream.
The more health-conscious, childtolerant
culture we live in to-day is
still their world. Institutions such as
media, shopping, travel and religious
sects support this world, but do not
provide the steadiness that traditional
institutions used to furnish.
Providing financial stability to a
dynamic economy with modern
values and institutions is no easy task.
I think I am going to worry for a
long time.
JL
Jo Lee Power 2011 15