Will you be saying it with flowers this Valentine’s Day?

They can. Exactly the point. A choice everyone has.

Yes, but whether every young lady would agree with a rational approach. 💔

These days we must consider the LGBGTQ++. I am surprised at this comment. 🙁 However I expect to be moderated on Monday.

I do apologise. As a constructive suggestion, please select from these emojis: https://emojipedia.org/valentines-day/

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Perhaps I am a minority, duncan. I sometimes think, from all the publicity, that we are on the decrease.

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Is there an orientation that describes someone who objects to commercialism? I used to think this was normal.

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I suppose you could be an atheist – atheism is a non-prophet organisation.

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I hope I have resisted commercialism better than most, Duncan. It’s all about telling us what we should believe or do, and I hope it’s obvious that I’m not keen on that. It must be much harder for anyone growing up in the 21st century.

Who’s nicking my jokes, then?

Wavechange – Given that we have the highest ever university-educated population, in whom taxpayers have invested vast sums in the faint hope of cultivating open minds, are you suggesting we are getting an inadequate return on our investment and that people today are more susceptible than ever to commercial propaganda, a tendentious media, political dogma, and institutionalised stereotyping? Or have the goalposts been moved?

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I don’t understand your point, John. I had not appreciated that it was the aim of taxpayers to cultivate open minds through education. I think the main ideas are to help prepare people for employment and to do high quality research, a role that is often not appreciated by the public and the media.

I think it is fair to say that there is more commercial propaganda than in the past. When I was a lad we had one TV program without adverts. Now we have dozens, including ones devoted to marketing, and now we have social media too. I cannot make any informed comment on changes in institutionalised stereotyping or political dogma.

Well, if education doesn’t open people’s minds to alternatives, and inculcate a degree of scepticism in the rational assessment of possibilities, what does? I should have thought an open mind was a prerequisite for serious research, and I must admit that I thought that a questioning culture was one of the supreme benefits of academic study rather than learning by rote which would be adequate for many of life’s pursuits and many successful careers. It seems to me that society’s powers to discriminate intellectually are being suppressed by more mundane objectives. This is extremely helpful to the marketing and advertising industries.

I would agree with that, John, but your original point was about taxpayers’ expectations. A good researcher does indeed need to assess information objectively in their chosen field of study if they are to be respected but that does not imply that they don’t have political and other prejudices or subject to the influences of marketing.

Whether we believe that Valentine’s Day is too commercialised may not depend on our career choice.

Duncan: the IQ of 100 measurement is a theoretical average of the population. Given the difficulty of designing any test to measure intelligence, as we still don’t really understand what it is, most IQ tests only reveal a range in which an individual might be positioned. However, 100+ does not equate to ‘highly intelligent’; for that you need to be in the 125+ region just for starters, and as far as we can tell there’s little correlation between very high intelligence and what the Scots call ‘a canny sense’. In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest the higher the IQ, the lower the general capability. The one thing that does tend to identify the very highly intelligent is their awareness of how little they know. Often the very best students are worryingly insecure.

John: University education was, at one time, about teaching students to think. It still is, in the very best universities, with the central aim being to challenge the student at every turn. Sadly, there’s evidence that in the wholesale conversion of almost all FE institutions to Universities, that is no longer the norm.

In the older universities, teaching had strong links with research and still does. When the new universities were created, they generally lacked this vital link. Ian mentions the importance of challenging students and I strongly agree. Successive governments have pushed people who lack motivation and/or ability into universities and since retention of a high proportion of students is economically vital, degrees have been dumbed down in many cases. Perhaps we are a little off-topic.

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Duncan – You are right. We should never under-estimate the intelligence of the advertising industry and its ability to motivate consumers in particular directions, even at times by the use of counter-intuitive psychology.

To some degree everyone is suggestible in some way or other and can be persuaded to desire something if the right nerve is excited. The higher the profit margin on the product the more likely that highly sophisticated techniques will be employed to reach the weak spot in the customer’s susceptibility and penetrate any mental barriers to their acquisition of it. The high margin makes the extra effort worth while. As much attention as is given to stimulating the impulse to buy is devoted to defeating any resistance. A whole range of symbols, metaphors and associations are used to create an image that connects with the ideals of the target. Price has often been a sticking point that needed to be overcome but there are ways around this now.

This is neatly demonstrated in car adverts. They are shot in exotic locations. They exemplify freedoms and indulgence. They have nothing to do with the technical capabilities or performance of the vehicle. The engine is irrelevant; it is the cockpit that counts. They might feature a desirable – but non-essential – accessory that moves the purchase to a higher level of appeal. But essentially they are all about lifestyle. And for the generation that cannot afford to buy a home they offer liberation from parental oversight for a modest monthly amount. Values have taken the place of the cost. Nowhere is the on-the-road price of the car mentioned; it is morphed and massaged into a PCP [personal contract plan] craftily contrived to come in at an affordable level with a bit of a stretch. So with the new model you can be the envy of your friends, a person of distinction, a citizen of the future, and a stalwart of style. Impressionable? Gullible? Susceptible? We are but putty in the hands of experts in understanding the psyche of consumers and the power of aspirational marketing. Only by realising that and challenging it can we retain our independence . . . but some people don’t want to, or have been brainwashed by commercialism to feel insecure if they do, which is the extra – and compulsive – twist in the psychological manipulation.

Other philosophies are available.

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“Imagination is more important than knowledge” Albert Enstein.

Thinking outside the box has produced many a genius. Kids developing brains are doing this all the time (or should be). The more creative you are the more you are likely to be able to do this. See: wikihow.com – How to think outside the box.

Ignoring the off-topic warning – after all, St Valentine’s Day will have passed in a few days time – I feel I must say, about higher education, that we need to bear in mind that it is funded overwhelmingly by taxpayers, in both direct and indirect forms, who have no experience of it, don’t have relatives going through it, and might resent its cost and perceived self-indulgence, and are therefore entitled to be assured that it is producing for the benefit of the nation a cohort of highly intelligent [and open minded] people who can power this country to greatness through the years ahead. Whether those are justifiable expectations is another matter but I share Ian’s and Wavechange’s view that we have gone for volume rather than quality and as a result have secondary schools with poor teachers [as too many good ones have found a niche in academe] and too many graduates who are not fit for employment in the essential occupations.

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I suspect the mistake was made in the mid ’70s, when the forecasts for the educational level of workers required for the 21st C was grossly miscalculated.

Staying with original topic, there is nothing quite so blind as first stage love, or opportunistic for advertisers to take advantage of and feather their own nests out of someone else’s gullibility.

On the other hand, for couples whose relationships have stood the test of time, it is an opportunity to show their appreciation and devotion to one another through what sometimes can amount to quite difficult periods, but these are the couples who are less likely to be taken in by the advertising industry and will usually buy each other gifts that they know they will enjoy and not those presented by them.

John, there are some individuals who could be considered ‘smart’ which is not quite the same as intelligent, but the motivation behind these types is usually of a narcissistic nature where self interest is really the name of the game. You will find them in board rooms of large multinational companies where they have acquired a way in which to dupe everyone into believing they have the companies best interests at heart, when essentially, the reality is it is their own, but I am off topic again.

It seems to be the smarter graduates who go into advertising to help mislead the rest of the taxpayers who funded their education, and into finance, engineering (defames the profession) ever more complex “financial instruments” to confuse everyone, including themselves.

Nothing wrong in my view in happy couples using Valentines Day as a means to express their feelings. I’ll be doing it. Whether we fuel the card, flower and catering industries profits buying overpriced stuff is entirely up to them. Perhaps we should all keep open minds and closed wallets.

I’m unsure how you determine the “smarter graduates… go into advertising“. I have a friend who holds down a very senior position in a European ad agency and his initial degree was in Art. He’s very creative, and a very unusual person, with an outstanding sense of humour, but without defining what you mean by ‘smart’ I would say the ad industry is looking for creatives above all else.

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If you are heading off for a break shortly have a great holiday, Alex.

And Prague is certainly a romantic city.

😷

No thanks bishbut, they give me hayfever. 🤧

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You name does not suggest you are a lady ? But you could be ? What’s a name anyway ?