“Adbusters.”
As far as names go, this one is not too bad. Busting stuff is always fun, and honestly, who likes ads? Unless I have to use the bathroom or make a sandwich, I usually ignore them, or I am mildly annoyed to see about 20 of them in the last five minutes of a basketball game.
But Adbusters, who gave a campus presentation a few weeks ago and claims to be “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age,” thinks ads are a lot more sinister. According to its mission statement, Adbusters is “concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces” and “want[s] folks to get mad about corporate disinformation, injustices in the global economy, and any industry that pollutes our physical or mental commons.”
To this end, Adbusters sponsors several campaigns, including “TV turn-off week,” where people “leave their screens blank for one week and consider who’s been shaping the way they think.”
This sort of rhetoric undoubtedly sounds familiar to many on this campus. After all, the evilness of big bad corporations and their insistence on holding the little man down is the new gospel of the left and a belief increasingly embraced by excuse-makers of all political stripes. Declaring, “It’s not my fault – it’s Big [insert major industry here],” is easier to swallow then taking personal responsibility.
Take cigarettes for example. I do not smoke them and do not like it when people around me do. But I recognize that many people do not agree – a night in any bar in Madison will attest to that.
Most, if not all, of these smokers began lighting up with the knowledge that cigarettes are deadly but chose to take the risk. Yet if you believed the rhetoric of the anti-smoking crowd, the only reason people smoke is because “Big Tobacco” held a gun to their head. The truth is that smoking is a personal choice – blaming “Big Tobacco” is an abdication of personal responsibility.
“But what about the ads?” is the inevitable reply. “Big Tobacco spends millions on advertising – that’s why people smoke.”
Tell me this, have you ever seen a tobacco advertisement pick up a cigarette, stick it someone’s mouth, and provide a lighter to boot? Of course not – that first cigarette was a choice.
“Choice.” Now there’s an interesting word. Webster’s defines choice as “the power of choosing.” A more useful definition could be personal freedom – the right to decide to do what you want with yourself and your resources. That is a good thing, right?
Most people are quick to say “yes.” But far fewer are willing to accept personal responsibility, the other essential component of personal freedom. The two are inextricably linked. If we want the ability to decide what we want with ourselves and our resources, we must be willing to accept the consequences of our actions.
But Adbusters and other like-minded groups are not so fond of personal responsibility – it’s big bad corporations that shape the way people think and act. Thus, the efforts to bust ads – after all, if people cannot help but listen to them, then we best censor them.
This attitude, inspired by an aversion to personal responsibility, is antithecal to personal freedom. In effect, it calls for a limitation of the options and information available to us, reducing our opportunity to make fully-informed choices.
The reality is that someone needs to take responsibility for our actions – we do not exist in a vacuum. If it is not us, then whoever pays the price for our actions will attempt to limit our chances of doing the same action in the future. Businesses will discontinue products to avoid lawsuits or raise prices to pay for them. If the government is forced to take responsibility for our actions, then the government will have an interest in restricting our freedom, a pattern that has replayed itself throughout history.
If we value our personal freedom, it is time to take responsibility for our own actions. We control us, but if we are not held accountable, someone else will.
Benjamin Thompson ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science.
