If Don Draper Had
Been Caligula, Would He Have Written I’d Like to Give the World a Choke?
The car companies,
the fast food chains, the political parties pay for the ads; but
an objective observer might easily conclude that they were really sponsored by
the seven deadly sins. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to match up
lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride with the relevant products
and services—try it. It's fun. Meanwhile chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience,
kindness, and humility run public service announcements in the dead of night.
I have no particular brief for the virtues. As a man of regular habits,
most of them bad, I would cut a peculiar figure as a moralist; and having read
the Fable of the Bees back in
college, I’m well aware that the economy runs on vice. It’s surprising,
however, how seldom anybody remarks on the relentless campaign of anti-morality
we subject ourselves to every time we turn on the television or go on the
Internet. The flood of enticements to bad behavior does have serious aggregate consequences,
after all, especially for public health. Beyond that, what does it say about
the human situation that so much effort and money have to be devoted not to
satisfying desires but to creating them? Are we a bunch of geezers who have to be coaxed into swallowing a spoonful of soup because consumption has become too much of a chore? Is this situation an example of what the old writers used to call the dotage of the world?