You can tell how stinky you are by how dry your ear-wax is — Wosret

Unfortunately there isn't anything you can do about it.

Feb 24, 2014 - Dry earwax, typical in East Asians and Native Americans, is light-colored and flaky, while earwax found in Caucasian and African groups is darker, wetter and, a new study shows, smellier. If you would describe yourself as white or black, your earwax is probably yellow and sticky.

Women actually like your BO if you're attractive. — Wosret

"Attractive" is a critical caveat. "Attractive" is very important in one's youth. It's important later on, too, but as one ages, natural attractiveness tends to go out the window. Lots of money is a perfectly acceptable substitute for any natural features one might wish for, however hideous the aged might have become. "Lots" = more than one knows what to do with.

Back in my salad days when I was young, fit, and/or reasonably attractive (Say, prior to 1990) I found that I had my best luck at my favorite cruisy gay bar if I hadn't carefully groomed (or groomed at all) for the occasion--like not removing all traces of my caucasian yellow, sticky ear wax. Could have been that I was more relaxed (fewer expectations) when just stopping in, unplanned. Or maybe it was pheromones. Maybe I had a certain apache vibe that other guys found appealing.

I also tend to assume that the consumer has some onus to educate themselves on such tactics, I even seem to recall being taught about propaganda and advertising in school. — m-theory

Usually, the education one might end up with is focused on the techniques of misinformation and certainly awareness can help one resist the implanted messages. One can become aware of shelf placement, of not very special offers, of the myriad tricks of packaging, brand promotion etc.

But the effect I am trying to point to is not one that can be resisted very easily. As soon as I am aware you are trying to get me to buy X or vote Y, I can resist. I can be contrarian. But the anxiety, the fear, the undermining, these remain as a residue, even when the resistance is total, and education and awareness is bang up to date. Not, though, that we punters can really hope to outsmart the armies of experimenters and experts dedicated to our manipulation.

It's extraordinary, really. Look at the depth of concern expressed in most of the responses on this thread about trivial bodily matters by supposedly sane and intelligent people. It's far worse than I had imagined; people are incapable of reasoning at all on the topic.

I am kind of at a loss as well.
I am not sure how to reason about it either myself.

I mean at some level I guess I realize that modern hygiene is more of a luxury than a necessity but I can't imagine not buying hygiene products as a boycott of the advertising methods employed.

I am also not sure if it is such a problem that, as a society, we should legislate and regulate the advertisement industry further.
It seems to me people are more concerned with other issues.

It seems to me people are more concerned with other issues. — m-theory

People, I notice are really really unhappy. And nobody knows why. We have more and more stuff and we are more and more unhappy, insecure, mentally ill, unstable, angry, depressed. And yet everyone wants to talk about fucking deodorants, and why I'm a hypocrite. I guess it's not really a problem after all.

I was just using that as an example.
I don't imagine a lot of people boycotting products because of the way those products are being marketed.

And I don't imagine the issue of psychological manipulation from marketing becoming a priority in politics.

I agree that people are unhappy and mentally ill, but to the extent that advertising methods contribute to this....I don't know it just seems to me like most people would consider other issues more important factors.

I'm content. The things I want, no one can sell me. The problem is pleasing other people, who are indeed extremely miserable, and in lala land about the dream world in which they'll someday live, and are in the meantime, living corpses. It's one thing to not believe that I need deodorant, or that it's all a scam, but it's another thing to not feel the ques of shame from everyone that believes otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Living_Corpse

I agree that people are unhappy and mentally ill, but to the extent that advertising methods contribute to this....I don't know it just seems to me like most people would consider other issues more important factors. — m-theory

Yes, and I'm one of them. Ads are a small part, an easily analysable manifestation of of this much bigger thing called scientific psychology which is a way of understanding and relating which is fundamentally manipulative and pervades human relations at every level, from politics to personal relationships. Treating people as objects drives them mad, and we are doing it to each other more and more. I wonder if it is possible to talk about this?

It's extraordinary, really. Look at the depth of concern expressed in most of the responses on this thread about trivial bodily matters by supposedly sane and intelligent people. — unenlightened

Yes; but, they're still human.

Treating people as objects drives them mad, and we are doing it to each other more and more — unenlightened

I'd invite you to start your life over as a female and then if you're still inclined to discuss objectification with that brain trust of the species we call The Philosophy Forum.. go for it.

The topic puts me in mind of a little astrological symbolism. Capricorn is often symbolized by a goat standing alone on top of a hill (usually smiling.) The image is of a state in which one stands apart from the crowd and sees how sheep-like most people are. They long to be told what to wear, what to listen to, who to trust, who it's OK to shit on, what to say, how to smell, what to believe, etc.

You don't really need any jarring commercials. Just whisper in their ears. Now if you reject this perspective, I have 11 others you can choose from.

One of my initial attractions to Kantian ethics -- as with many folks who set out to defend deontology -- is his second formulation of the CI:

Act in such a way as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of anyone else, always as an end and never merely as a means

Which, I think, is a good way for thinking about psychology. One of the question's Kant sort of "waffled" on was the question of anthropology (at least, philosophically speaking -- he was also a man of his times) -- you can find tensions within his philosophy between whether or not man himself can be the subject of knowledge, or if the nature humanity is one of the questions which reason is destined to both ask and never answer.

In relation to the OP, while usually we are other-focused on ethics, one thing that's interesting about the 2nd CI is that it is the humanity within all of us, including ourselves, which we are to treat as an end -- one common way of interpreting this is to say that we should respect both others and ourselves.

Which would mean thinking of us and others in some way other than how we think of objects, and relating to them in that way.

Or, at the very least, we should recognize -- ala the CI at least -- that we are already valuable as human beings, and deserve respect regardless of what our "empirical psychology" might be telling us about us or others.

What do you mean by treating others as objects?

Problem for the smart people who can resist advertising, by seeing through it, if they exist. Even if you can, others can't, and you can't always tell who can and who can't. So if your livelihood depends on working with others, and if it's a type of work where it matters what others think of you, then you either have to play the game too, or be conspicuous as someone who doesn't play the game - in which case you have to present yourself as a non-game-player in a way palatable to others. (One way out of this jam is to just be born with a lot of charisma, or money. If you look just pretty enough, you can also compensate by being (acting?) v kind (my strategy). If you don't, unfortunately, kindness becomes creepiness, unfair as that is. )

If you don't take a pre/post Fall view, then it's advertising and manipulation all the way down - just replace advertising with social organization based around shame. If the lion's share of our social behavior becomes consumption, then that's where the social organizers will focus (have focused, are focusing.) How do you get people to live together and work in concert without directing their behavior on a deep emotional level?

And more to the point: If you can't do that without this kind of thing, then do we have any more reason to gripe about it, then we do about the state's contractors fixing potholes a few weeks late? (Except of course that griping's good, because we get to let off steam, and not shoot-up the office, before going right back to it.) But really though, is the dream of not having anyone mould our shame and direct us to temporary respites a good one? Does anyone really want to try it out?

Moderators are here to kick out those who don't play the game (ie. buy the values of philosophy).

Intellectuals are here to shame us kids (ie the ugly and unformed) from grown up talk (ie. refined subtle ideas that pleasure you so).

Life is constant moral posturing, vying for status, tribal virtue signaling, work, work, work. Social pressure never lets up. No wonder people are unhappy. I can't compete with this stuff.

We live in a society where you are suppose to compete for your position. Nothing is assured. It's about winning, just like dipshit Trump says.

Maybe if I had a product to make me smell smarter, like a roll on brain deodorant stick.

Moderators are here to kick out those who don't play the game (ie. buy the values of philosophy). — Nils Loc

That kind of makes sense, considering it is a philosophy forum.

I hear you, but if you want a space free of moral and intellectual posturing, a philosophy forum is probably the worst possible place to look. Like m-theory said.

It's far worse than I had imagined; people are incapable of reasoning at all on the topic. — unenlightened

At some point I expect you'll be wanting to change your handle to "Bitter Crank".

I'd invite you to start your life over as a female and then if you're still inclined to discuss objectification with that brain trust of the species we call The Philosophy Forum.. go for it. — Mongrel

I guess I hear you saying that we are a bunch of heady males.

Probably.

The Century of the Self:

Sut Jhally - Advertising & the Perfect Storm:

It's extraordinary, really. Look at the depth of concern expressed in most of the responses on this thread about trivial bodily matters by supposedly sane and intelligent people. It's far worse than I had imagined; people are incapable of reasoning at all on the topic. — unenlightened

Selling stuff has been going on for a long time. IF there is anything different about what is going on now, (and I'm not sure there is) it's that there is more stuff to sell to more people, and more complicated ways of doing it.

Complicated, psychologically intrusive, and manipulative methods aren't needed to sell rutabagas and cabbage. Pork chops and beef roasts sell themselves to people who are capable of cooking. Transit companies don't bother to suggest that riding a bus is sexually enhancing. If you have to ride the big, stinking thing, you will, and they know that.

Because we live in a multinational capitalist economy where profit is the point, companies are driven to sell more of whatever they have. If it's toothpaste, toilet paper, or tampons, they don't just want you to buy their products, they very much NEED you to buy it. Hence, the intensity of the advertising methods--the propaganda of products.

5 largest advertising agencies and their 2014 revenues:

WPP Group, London $19.0 billion.
Omnicom Group, New York City $15.3 billion.
Publicis Groupe, Paris $9.6 billion.
Interpublic Group, New York City $7.5 billion.
Dentsu, Tokyo $6.0 billion.

These 5 companies are not raking in $57 billion because they employ cynical assholes with nothing better to do than to annoy people. Global advertising generated around $660 billion in 2016. Why? Because the companies that make trillions of dollars worth of goods need to unload market them at a profitable price.

Because corporations compete, they have to convince you to buy Proctor & Gamble soap rather than Unilever soap. It's in areas of stiff competition that the manipulative stops are pulled out. The main source of profitability is sales to consumers, and if they don't sell enough, they go broke. So it's us or them.

Proctor and Gamble introduced Tide™ in 1949. Since then it has been the leading laundry soap in the US. Is it #1 just because it gets clothes clean? No, indeed. There are a couple of dozen other detergents that will do the job reasonably well. Tide wasn't just manufactured and put in a box (or later a bottle). It was advertised as THE effective and reliable laundry soap to get clothes cleanest and brightest--a credit to the women who washed their clothes with TIDE.

Problem for the smart people who can resist advertising, by seeing through it, if they exist. Even if you can, others can't, and you can't always tell who can and who can't. — csalisbury

I would say it's not about whether you can resist it or not. That's a red herring. There is no resistance in the sense of being able to "see through". You can only try to avoid it. Seeing through advertising is relatively easy. If you did a poll to ask people whether they thought ads were honest, you would probably get a majority negative (but hook anyone up to an MRI machine and watch the effect of a given ad and I doubt you'd be able to tell the cynics from the pollyannas). In fact, thinking you can "see through" advertising is probably as good or a better result for the advertisers than knowing you can't if the former means you don't feel the need to reduce exposure.

If you don't take a pre/post Fall view, then it's advertising and manipulation all the way down - just replace advertising with social organization based around shame. — csalisbury

And what is it all the way up? Not all forms of socially organized shame-inducing are equal. If I must ingest a poison, I'll take sugar over cyanide. Emphasizing their chemical similarities isn't going to change my mind. It's not just advertising though, it's the whole media entertainment constellation which revolves around it. If it doesn't concern people that the only way this system can survive is through the creation of dissatisfaction and unhappiness, then it's done its job fantastically well, hasn't it?

The name that comes to mind is Edward Bernays.

I think I would add Unenlightened, that it's not just fear that is used. The whip is just half of the equation, the other half is the carrot. He who can escape both the whip and the carrot is a free man or woman.

I would say it's almost all carrot. But the carrot is rotten, and its effect is to impair our ability to distinguish the rotten from the fresh still further.

I'd invite you to start your life over as a female and then if you're still inclined to discuss objectification with that brain trust of the species we call The Philosophy Forum.. go for it. — Mongrel

I'm not suggesting that objectification began C.1900. Women have seemingly forever been dehumanised, black people for a long time. And your reciprocal dehumanisation of the (male) members of the forum is quite understandable. But I am going for it anyway, even as I inevitably fall into the pit I am pointing to.

In relation to the OP, while usually we are other-focused on ethics, one thing that's interesting about the 2nd CI is that it is the humanity within all of us, including ourselves, which we are to treat as an end -- one common way of interpreting this is to say that we should respect both others and ourselves.

Which would mean thinking of us and others in some way other than how we think of objects, and relating to them in that way. — Moliere

I'm aware of the connection with Kant. I would say that Kant and Hume are the philosophical ancestors of psychology, speaking before the subject was claimed by science. These days, one is not worth talking to unless one has access to an MRI scanner. Perhaps the whole thing can be blamed on Hume's scepticism, which triumphed over Kant because Hume was an engaging fellow and great writer, while Kant was an impenetrable weirdo that I really can't bring myself to read, though I really should.

But the thing I want to emphasise from your post as a particular modern twist on the dehumanising process is exactly that it becomes self-referrential. Whereas we have commonly objectifiedthem (Jews, Blacks, Women, peasants, etc) psychology leads us inexorably to objectifyourselves. Human nature dissolves into nature with the death of god, and we ourselves are mere phenomena to be studied and manipulated and exploited along with all the other collections of atoms.

I'd invite you to start your life over as a female and then if you're still inclined to discuss objectification with that brain trust of the species we call The Philosophy Forum.. go for it. — Mongrel

:-} Where is Rush Limbaugh?

Women have seemingly forever been dehumanised — unenlightened

I disagree. It has largely been a matter of social class instead of gender. Poor women in the Roman Empire were dehumanised - as were poor men for the most part as well. Rich women though lived quite fine lives for the most part. Now the fact that a man abused a woman more frequently than a woman abused a man (if we're talking strictly sexually and physically here) was simply because men had such capacities available - they were generally physically stronger. If the women had been granted equal capacities, they too would have abused men. People have, and will always have a tendency towards immorality, but the moderns today don't want to accept that fact - they want to change it, which, although well-motivated, is ultimately impossible. Yes - life as a woman is definitely different than life as a man - but I don't necessarily take that to be bad - difference is only natural, it doesn't mean one is inferior or superior. Women have advantages that men don't, and men also have advantages that women don't.

Women need different skills to live happy lives than men do. That's all there is to say about it. Women depend on their social environment for example, much more than men do. The fact that some feminazis are looking for "payback" or "revenge" on men in today's world, because they have captured the reigns of power finally, seems nothing but idiocy to me. The whole scenario is in fact stupid.

What do you mean by treating others as objects? — m-theory

I'm not in a position to encapsulate it in a neat definition, but apart from Kant, Martin Buber talks about it in I and Thou. It is I suppose the ignoring or denial of the uniqueness of the individual and of their sovereign agency. But don't entirely hold me to that. And note the previous comment that we now objectify ourselves.

I'm not in a position to encapsulate it in a neat definition, but apart from Kant, Martin Buber talks about it in I and Thou. It is I suppose the ignoring or denial of the uniqueness of the individual and of their sovereign agency. But don't entirely hold me to that. And note the previous comment that we now objectify ourselves. — unenlightened

It's more about treating others as means to some other end that is the problem - that's what objectification ultimately is. Treating people as tools to achieve something. And both men and women do this - now and in the past - in different manners. Women manipulate men using their physical beauty, intellect and/or political capacity - or seek to do so - and men use their physical (or economic or political) power to control women. They're both dehumanising each other. Furthermore, this is one of my main arguments against sexual promiscuity.

Moderators are here to kick out those who don't play the game (ie. buy the values of philosophy).

Intellectuals are here to shame us kids (ie the ugly and unformed) from grown up talk (ie. refined subtle ideas that pleasure you so). — Nils Loc

Shame on you, Nils. ;) One is not dehumanised by being asked to wipe one's boots, nor by being shown the door if one starts kicking the dog.

Moderators are here to kick out those who don't play the game (ie. buy the values of philosophy).

Intellectuals are here to shame us kids (ie the ugly and unformed) from grown up talk (ie. refined subtle ideas that pleasure you so).

Life is constant moral posturing, vying for status, tribal virtue signaling, work, work, work. Social pressure never lets up. No wonder people are unhappy. I can't compete with this stuff.

We live in a society where you are suppose to compete for your position. Nothing is assured. It's about winning, just like dipshit Trump says.

Maybe if I had a product to make me smell smarter, like a roll on brain deodorant stick. — Nils Loc

The Chinese Daoists understood this better than everyone else. Virtue cannot fail to bring about worldly success - in the long run. Sure, you may die sooner than virtue could have brought you worldly success, but if you stick to it, you cannot fail.

People who engage in "moral posturing" and the like will be wiped out - in the long run. Their gains are the currency they contribute every day to finance their future downfall.