Hi Eric,
i�m portuguese and saw in a national newspaper (P�blico) a good reference about this blog, so decided to check it out and the first article i've read was your's and you've got me hooked. Liked the direct aproache, with no decorations added and tottally agree with the exageration of the "feeling good society", it may have started with the best of intentions, to make us a more positive, because nevertheless we are what we think, but it became a commercial product. We should learn the ability of living in the midlle, not with too much nor with too little.

Fabulous!! I love your tone and dissection of "the secret" and "Oprah" mantras whose messages encouraging the development of inherent greed and selfishness have subsequently led to the rampant global economic crisis.

Balance of both success and defeat, demonstrated by the purest forms of nature, are a lesson for all of us.... and echoed so brilliantly by the Rolling Stones.....
"You Can't Always Get What You Want.....But If You Try Sometimes, You Get What You Need..."

this is a tremendous article....maybe a call to short IACI, however? I'd be curious to hear the author's view of online advertising specifically.

Nice commentary. Back in the 1920s, '30s and '40s there was social engineering, the idea that people have aptitudes and skills and thus need to find their fit in society - and vice-versa. Then in the mid 1960s the best part of this was supplanted by the Pepsi Generation. Dovetailing with the Civil Rights Movement and later feminism, Madison Avenue picked up on the fight against arbitrary discrimination and turned it toward the very different idea that one could be anything they wanted to be. However, collective action still largely ruled the day. Until the mid to late 1970s, that is, when the individualist impulse made its comback and the archconservative book, Looking Out for #1, helped catapult the "Me Generation" into front page news. Before that, virtually no one talked about "being positive" outside of science class; since then, it's been the dictatorship of the "Have a Nice Day" brigade. Hopefully, the era of inidividual and collective self-fulfillment is coming to an end.

Fantastic piece...I've been bemoaning the ''I'm so great, I deserve everything attitude" since my days as an academic. It's interesting to return from travels abroad to more communal cultures and watch the bloat, waste and selfishness here. As I tell my daughter when she comes home from her Hollywood private school complaining about some rich kid bragging...it's all changing, at the speed of light.