Conformity and Marketing, Part Three

Quote of the day:
“A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours.”
--Milton Berle

The growth in emphasis on the precision science of marketing has made it increasingly difficult for those who are eccentric, even if only slightly.

With conformity becoming both more necessary and more difficult, and these people unable or unwilling to keep up, they have become outcasts.

To manage in our world, the eccentric person must either tolerate lots of misery, put their loved ones through constant misery, or submit to isolation or, in extreme cases, institutionalization or medication.

In a way, this is what Thoreau meant by “lives of quiet desperation.” It is a sort of grinding unhappiness that tears at one’s humanity and neutralizes the best characteristics of human nature.

These characteristics include intense longing, the creative impulse, and openness to joy and pain. They enable us to know real fulfillment and realize that life is very, very good indeed.

It is through these characteristics that we rise to our fullest and best selves.