August 4, 2022 • 42 mins
Today, the terms "citizen" and "consumer" are often used interchangeably by authors, journalists and politicians. To some experts, this shift has disturbing implications. But how important is a word? How did this switch occur, and why? In today's classic episode, Ben and Noel explore the implications of this strange, often unexamined, evolution.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Historians. Thanks as always for tuning in. This week
Are Powell noll Is out for a bit so Max
and I wanted to share a classic episode. Max. This
one is an oldie, but a goodie, and I believe
it's from Uh it's from before you started classing up
our show. Yeah, it's about a three years beforehand. This
(00:23):
episode was about five years old actually enough wow, and
from originally the end of ten. So yeah, a little
bit before I started with this show. Wow. Oh man,
I had no idea, honestly how long we've been doing this?
The time The time flies, right, So this this is
(00:45):
gonna be really interesting Max, to you and any of
our fellow ridiculous historians who haven't heard it because years back.
Got five years back, I guess now. I noticed something
really weird in a lot of the reading I do
for another show called Stuff They Don't Want You to Know,
And it was this over time the you know, back
(01:08):
in the day in previous eras, you would read political
statements or you read stuff from the government or Congress
about almost anything, and they would most often describe people
as citizens, right, which makes sense. You know, if you
work in Congress, then your employers are citizens. But something
(01:32):
funny happened along the way. The phrase citizens started being
used less and less often and started becoming replaced by
the word consumers, not just in uh not, you know,
not just in congressional statements, but in the news in
all sorts of reporting. Is this something that you ever
(01:53):
noticed or you ever clocked? Max? Okay, you gotta remember
I have a marketing degree. I studied all this stuff.
Oh yeah, I mean, I mean, we're all just objects
at the end of the day, aren't we. Now we're not.
But sometimes it feels like that way when you're looking
at reports or just some reason it's like seven percent
of consumers feel this way. It's like, oh, that doesn't
feel very personal at all, right, right, because those consumers
(02:17):
are in fact people, human beings. So without further ado,
in this classic episode, we are diving into what that
change is, how it occurred, and what it might mean
going forward. We hope you enjoy it. As always, we
can't wait to hear from you, and we'll be back
very soon with some brand new Ridiculous History. Ridiculous History
(02:43):
is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye. Welcome to
(03:09):
the show, Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ben. My
name is Noel. Citizen knowl that is citizen Noal, not
a consumer. Well, you know, I do consume quite a
bit of things, but I like to think of myself
more as a conscientious citizen of these here United States.
Noel and I just for peek behind the curtain. We
have been in the studio for a while today working
(03:32):
on working on a couple of different projects. Right. Yeah,
we have another show called Stuff They Don't Want You
to Know, and we just spent an hour and a
half talking about John F. Kennedy. So we're both a
little punchy, but hopefully that will translate into an entertaining
episode of ridiculous history. That's right, that's our show. There
we are. So we've had a crazy time, you know,
(03:53):
starting this show and looking at not just single historical
episodes in isolation, we've been exploring the context in which
these events occur. Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. And one
thing that I think fascinates both of us is how
stuff that would seem on the surface really small has
(04:17):
these universal, ubiquitous and important, uh implications. Absolutely, and that
is absolutely the case today with our topic of when
and why did America start calling its citizens consumers, which
is such a good question. And before he brought this
(04:38):
to me, I had never thought about this, Like I
it just slid by my mind, and I was reading
so many different stories, you know, news stories, essays, creative
nonfiction where people pundits, experts, authors use these phrases interchangeably,
which is kind of weird when you think of about it,
(05:00):
you know. Uh So, there was a recent opinion piece
that was published in a political newspaper called The Hill.
And in this piece, which is titled how Trump's immigration
plans hurt American Citizens Pocketbooks, the author Maurice Goldman criticized
the Trump administration's plans for crackdown on immigration by pointing
(05:24):
to the cost of building the infamous border wall, the
cost of hiring enforcement agents, the cost of reducing legal
immigration channels, but of particular interest for our purposes today.
Goldman used the phrase consumer in in the body of
(05:47):
the text in the title it's citizen, but he notes
you the consumer will pay for you know, the the plans,
the political plans if this wall and stuff goes to
and like you just said, I mean, is this an
issue of semantics or was this intentional? Um? And The
(06:07):
answer to that is pretty interesting. Um, it's hard to
say quite when this took place, but in the last
handful of years there has been an increasing tendency to
use the term consumer interchangeably with citizen. And that's even
when the conversation has to do with the economy. Yeah,
(06:29):
and again it's it seems like on the surface a
small thing, but political experts, growing numbers of political experts
are concerned with this, and they're arguing that the choice
of words signals a shift in how we uh see
ourselves as individuals participating in the United States, right, and
(06:51):
what our role is in American society. So the people
who are concerned are saying that this is moving the
individual will away from this idea of citizenship working with
others in collaboration towards some common, greater good right, and
toward something else. Yes, I mean that's much more selfish
(07:13):
and an individualistic and based on the acquisition of things
that can also be turned around applied to ideas or
the way our vote is almost equivalent to the way
we spend money exactly. And there's a professor named Jathan Sadowski.
(07:34):
Jathan Jathan j developed a list but just now no
Jathan like Nathan, but with a j. I know, I've
never seen that one before. I know that's a new one. Uh.
He argues that using the term consumer interchangeably with the
term citizen has quote become part of our default discourse,
the normal way we view society and people, And he says,
(07:57):
just look at the recent presidential election. The consumer versus
citizen language is often used with analysts and pundits talk
about elections, and this goes to the point that that
Noel highlighted voters are just consumers with preferences, and the
election is a marketplace of products to choose from. To
(08:17):
continue to quote, in the store, we vote with our dollar.
We are told that elections are functionally the same thing.
You just use a ballot instead of a buck to
cast your vote. This understanding of democratic processes as a
marketplace is just one more place where the citizen is
overtaken by the consumer. End quote. And both of these
(08:38):
words have been around for centuries and centuries right. The
word citizen dates back to the thirteen hundreds. Originally it
meant the inhabitants of a city. Yeah. The entry in
the Online Etymology Dictionary for citizen um says from site
citizen of the world translates in Greek to cosmopolites. Oh,
(09:02):
that's cool, that's a good one. On the other side,
the the evolution of citizen to mean what we take
it to mean today, a person who has both rights
in a society and responsibilities to that society. That didn't
come around until around sixteen ten. The term consumer arose
(09:24):
shortly after the original version of the term citizen. I
love the entry for that one in the Online Etymology Dictionary.
It says, quote one who squanders or wastes um agent
nown from consume in economic sense, one who uses up
goods or articles opposite of producer, and that dates back
to uh. Then it also says consumer goods is attested
(09:49):
from eighteen ninety um in consumers for a representative basket
of goods and services. And that actually is from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yeah, so that's these are These
are legit sources, and no one is saying that these
words just suddenly emerged like in nineteen seventy or whatever.
(10:09):
The Like many words in English, this is an evolving language, right,
It's a living language. So like many other terms, the
term citizen and consumer have undergone evolution over the years,
and the question is what what these mean today? Right?
(10:29):
According to Michael Munger, who is the director of the Philosophy,
Politics and Economics Program at Duke University's Political Science Department,
the word consumer, although it existed, as we had said,
for centuries, it didn't really appear in print until nineteen hundred.
And have you ever used done in a Google Ingram search?
(10:52):
I I only started because of this. Yeah, it's really interesting.
So you can actually like search for a combination of
words compared to words, and it will get ald track
it over time as it appears in uh this you know,
vast online collection of books that Google has digitized. And
starting in eighteen hundred and going to the year two thousand,
(11:14):
this in gram search tracks the use of citizen versus consumer,
and this is in fractions of so starting in eighteen hundred,
citizen is a clear winner, with consumer very very low,
just like a tiny fleck above zero percent. And then
as time goes on, starting in around nineteen ten to
(11:35):
be precise, there is a significant spike in citizen um
and then and as this is going on, consumer is
kind of rising. Then there's a crossover point in nineteen
fifty six, at which point consumer goes through the roof
UM and ending in two thousand. Consumer well above citizen
(11:57):
in terms of its use in literature. Right. Yeah. And
it's fascinating to see this in laid out in an
infographic form because Duel is absolutely correct. You can see
the the direct correlation. You can see the switch point
at which people from writers, authors at least started preferring
(12:22):
the term consumer to the term citizens, and now it's
used about three times as often. Uh. Monger theorizes that
this happened this, this change in the usage had largely
to do with the rise of progressive politics in the
twentieth century. And here's a quote from Monger quote. The
progressives primarily saw citizens as being helpless, trapped by large forces,
(12:44):
especially corporations, that citizens couldn't deal with. UM And he
attributes Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal social programs that came about
in the thirties, as well as Lyndon Johnson's Great Society
Effort in the sixties UM as reinforcing the idea that
participation in politics was mostly a way to just get
(13:07):
your share of the pie, you know, get a piece.
So it's it's less of a civic duty, it's less
of a what can I do for my country and
more of a what can my country do for me? Exactly?
And this increasing use of the term consumer doesn't just
apply to people who are writing about politics. It applies
(13:30):
to politicians themselves. And when we're talking about President Johnson's
Great society stuff in the nineties sixties, we are also
examining the rise of some things that would surprise the
average voter. Marketing, right, marketing, Yes, marketing, which means that
(13:50):
we are going to take a little bit of a
side trail into a man named Edward Burns and Edward
Berdz as know is a is a guy that you
and I have spent a lot of time on in
the past. Yeah, he's sort of the big grand Pappy
of marketing. And this idea of selling things to a
(14:11):
mass audience, including various methods from billboards, magazine articles to
later television think mad Men, you know the television show, Um,
the whole world that's depicted in that the Madison Avenue,
UM kind of ad agency universe, um. And it was
for sellers of products like breakfast cereals and cars and
(14:31):
anti perch prints all of these and modern things that
everyone just had to have. Um. And today you know,
we can micro target people's preferences, you know, using these
campaigns in this massive amounts of data that can be
analyzed much much, much more quickly than in the past. Uh.
And now it looks at individual voters attitudes and their
(14:55):
corresponding behavior, um and can kind of figure out why
might be the best way to actually reach them in
the same way as you know, appealing to somebody about
a particular type of microwave meal. Right, And that that
in itself, this is important for us to note that
in itself is not inherently a bad thing. However, it
(15:17):
is an important thing, and it is crucial that people
be aware of what is happening. To tell you a
little bit about Berne's Oh man, I'm so glad, you asked. Okay,
so Edward Berness, get this nephew of Sigmund Freud true story.
(15:40):
Can't be a coincidence? Be a coincidence? Right? Uh? Edward
Edward Bernese took a lot of psychological concepts and said, well,
how can we hesitate to use the word weaponize, but
maybe maybe apply is a better word. He said, how
How can we apply these concepts about how the workings
(16:03):
of the human mind and translate them into quantifiable, predictable,
real world results. How can we push people not only
to make the decision we want them to make, but
to make them feel that it is their decision, that
they have agency in this choice. He has done so
(16:26):
much stuff, So I really appreciate that you mentioned the
concept of breakfast, right, so before Edward Burnet's the typical
breakfast in the in the United States would be something
like a cup of coffee and maybe a croissant or
a cross, yes, yes, or a you know, a bagel,
(16:49):
a couple of pieces of toast, maybe some butter. A
bagel and toast. That's a lot of carbs, dude. Yeah,
you put the toast. It's a it's a it's a
toast sandwich. So you get the bagel and put the
toast in between. That doesn't sound very healthy, And that's
actually kind of the point, because what ended up being
foisted upon the American consumer was this idea of bacon
(17:10):
for breakfast, right, Yes, yeah, Edward Bernese, make no bones
about it. Is the reason that bacon became part of
the American breakfast because without getting too deep into it,
here's what happened. In the nineteen twenties, Edward Bernese was
approached by a company called the beach Nut Packing Company.
They're the people who made beach nut gum at the time, right,
(17:33):
But they did a lot of other stuff, and they
had a lot of other concerns, and one of the
big concerns was pork. Edward, they asked the guy, we
need to increase demands. We have all this trash meat
laying around. You know, how do we uh again foisted
on the American public, right, exactly just so? And he thought, well,
we could do the typical sort of advertisement at the time,
(17:56):
where we could just have somebody be like, hey, I'm
cool and where suit and get a nice die and
like bacon you should too, And that was, you know,
that was the approach that advertising used. But he did
something very different and he said, well, let me let
me conduct a quote unquote poll of doctors medical experts,
(18:18):
and let me let me twist the questions in such
a way that they will all end up agreeing or
appearing to agree that bacon is not only good for you,
but should be eaten by any person with half a
concern about their health early in the morning and give
them energy and its substantial And that's the thing. It worked.
(18:41):
It not only did it work, but it continues to
work today. Edward Bernese, who could be the subject of
his own show, right, he went on to uh tie
smoking tobacco with women's suffrage. He went on to help
support propaganda pushing the American public, citizens or consumers, whatever
(19:01):
you want to call them, into supporting a coup in
South America. And he continues to influence things today. This
is one of the correlations, one of the one of
the points at which people stopped thinking about the average
voter as a citizen and started thinking about them as consumers. Well,
(19:25):
it's the way, you know, politicians have to essentially market
themselves uh and and and dress up their platforms in
such a way that appeals to different voting bases. Uh
and A lot of it is based on entirely based
on rhetoric, which you could, you know, kind of equate
to something like ad copy where it's like, sure, it's
(19:46):
technically true, and it's it's backed up by science or like,
you know, facts, but at the end of the day,
it's this like packaged curated version of the truth, and
that is the way things are today, and the government itself,
in fact, is is actually judged as if it were
(20:07):
a business, a consumer business. The American Customer Satisfaction Index
actually rates the federal government on how people feel about
their interactions with how how they feel you know what
I'm saying. So there's Bernet's at work right now, and
it actually got a sixty eight percent positive rating in
twenty which was up from sixty the previous year. So um,
(20:29):
I'm gonna have be interested to know how how that
ranks today, Yeah, and the methodology behind it. People who
have a problem with this interchangeable use of citizen and consumer, uh,
They argue that there are fundamental differences between the two
roles in society and that they should not be confused.
(20:52):
So how about this. I want to outline some of
these proposed differences and see what you think. Sure, okay,
So is are an issue of morality. You know, earlier
we mentioned the concept of doing stuff for other people
for the greater good versus doing something for one's self.
(21:13):
So one of the proposed differences would be that the
job of any consumer is to always choose what works
best for them in the marketplace, regardless of any other considerations. Totally, right,
that's what I do. I think that's that's also the
human condition, though, isn't it. You know? Yeah, But that
(21:34):
that there in lies the issue with this whole notion
of like being pulled away from the idea of being
part of a whole or being a member of a
team and going to a much more self serving attitude
that's kind of codified and bolstered by the use of
these these these words and the distinctions that they sort
of imply. I guess, right. Yeah, So then if a
(21:55):
by by this understanding, if this difference is true, then
by virtue of voting, a consumer is saying what will
make me better directly now, whereas the citizen would be saying,
what can I do to improve the world conditions for
(22:16):
everyone from my neighbors? Yeah, yeah, like a rising tide
carries all vestal, and a good citizen then would be,
in their own way kind of kind of heroic or
very moral, that's what it sounds like, right, And a
good consumer would be getting the best deal. There's another difference,
which is that citizens are comfortable with a degree of uncertainty.
(22:40):
I'm doing my best to help the group, the community
of the nation, et cetera. I'm not sure how it's
gonna work out, but I know my intentions are what
I believe to be good. Whereas a consumer says, you know,
if I'm if I'm paying for this service, whether that's
through time, whether that's through money, whether that's through exchange
(23:01):
of materials, then I need to be certain that this
transaction occurs, you know. So with with this idea, um,
there's the simplication that a citizen knows that society has
uh what HR departments around the world called areas of opportunity. God,
(23:23):
do you remember that one? Do you know how much
I love these corporate terms? Yes? Yes, synergy synergy is
their synergy and uh and cadences that's a new one,
making the rounds. Well, you know, the ideal holds up though,
because the concept then would be that you and I
and everyone who has a vote understands that we can
(23:46):
play a part in improving society and whatever way we
think it should be improved, right, and that these problems
will not be fixed themselves. And then the on the
other side, the concept of a consumer would be that
someone expects to purchase essentially a product or a service,
(24:08):
and that the people providing that product or service it's
on them to fix stuff. Right, So I voted for
you just do the thing, you know what I mean?
And uh, we we know that this is a very
very contentious thing. Well, let's go through a little business.
This is a ridiculous history. Um, let's just talk a
(24:29):
little bit about the history of the idea of humans
as consumers. There's a fantastic article by Frank Trentman in
the Atlantic that has a couple of great quotes from
the famous American thinker Adam Smith, one of which is
consumption is the soul, end and purpose of all production,
which was from his treatise I guess you could call
it The Wealth of Nations from seventeen seventy six. That's
(24:51):
a pretty famous quote. A lesser known quote from him
that really sums up this whole idea comes from seventeen
fifty nine, The Theory of Morals Sentiments Um, where he
kind of really hones in on the as Trentman puts it,
the social and psychological impulses that cause us to want
(25:12):
to get a bunch of stuff, little knickknacks, Patty Wax gadgets. Um.
And this quote again from Smith does a really good
job of summing all that up. He observed that people
wanted to quote stuff their pockets with little conveniences and
(25:33):
then buying coats with more pockets to carry even more
by themselves. Tweezer cases, elaborate snuff boxes, and other bobbles
might not have much use, but Smith pointed out what
mattered was that people looked at them as means of happiness. Um.
And he goes on to say that it was in
people's imaginations that these objects became part of a harmonious
(25:55):
system and made the pleasures of wealth grand and beautiful
and noble. And even you know, ancient Greek thinkers philosophers
from you know, Plato to St. Augustine Um, they kind
of condemned the pursuit of of stuff as as being
(26:15):
inherently wicked and self serving. Um. So there is this
history of the idea of being a citizen as being
much more important, and if it feels like throughout history,
obviously there there is that selfish impulse. But as a whole,
civilization and societies have largely maintained because of this notion
(26:38):
of you know, the whole is more important than the
individual parts, and that we're all banding together to make
a better life for everyone. Yeah. Right, and this leads
us to something a pretty interesting theory, uh that you've
probably heard of, which is the tragedy of the commons.
And the tragedy of the commons is this economic theory
(26:59):
that says, Uh, if you're in a shared resource system, right, so,
you're in a community where everybody has like a common
good it's called water, air, nine LPs. Who knows, just
like it's something for the people the way that you
and I typically order friess. Yeah. Um. The idea is
(27:22):
that when individual users are acting independently according to their
own self interests, they will tend to behave in ways
that deplete or spoil those common resources because everybody, everybody
wants their piece of the pie and would prefer not
(27:43):
to have to help create the pie. Right. And obviously,
so many people have argued uh, complex ideological questions based
on how to address this dilemma of individual wills trying
to improve society, to take a line from the Simpsons
(28:05):
to embigen society or two improve themselves, even if such
a thing might have dangerous consequences, right, or unforeseen consequences
down the road. And it might sound might sound, folks,
as if Noel and I are dwelling non semantics, but
(28:26):
we are not, because it turns out that science backs
this up. In a two thousand twelve study in the
journal Psychological Science UH, they found that choice of words
can exert a subtle influence upon how we see ourselves,
which then you know, naturally influences how we behave. So
(28:47):
in one part of the study, people who answered a
quote consumer response survey tended to express more materialistic, self
centered values. People who did a survey that was called
a citizen survey tended to behave in a more a
less selfish way. And another part of the same survey,
(29:09):
the researchers looked at subjects with gave them a hypothetical
situation where people um had to join together and share
water from a well, and they were labeled as either
consumers or citizens. And the members of the study that
got the consumer label tended to be completely distrustful of
(29:30):
their cohorts and just didn't want to share the water.
They just were a little crotchety about it, and they
did not feel as though they were on a team
or in partnership with the other subjects and just felt
overall less tied to or responsible for the experience, and
you know, well being honestly of their compatriots, as opposed
(29:52):
to those who were labeled citizens, who felt just the opposite. Right, right,
And now we we if we are called a name
or another, it tends to affect our behavior. Now we
see this article by Maurice Goldman becomes even more important.
I don't want to say insidious, but I do want
to say important, because you know, on some level it
(30:15):
might feel I don't know, condescending or diminutive to say, oh,
you are not so smart, right, you are easily influenced,
right if somebody, if somebody calls me a name, that
shouldn't influence my behavior already, but apparently it does. Apparently
we are a little bit easier to steer than we
(30:38):
would like to think. And this goes back to the
Bernese thing, right, the idea of a of a citizen
versus a consumer in terms of active versus passive roles.
Did you know that the I'm sure you've heard the
use of the term consumption um to refer to tuberculosis,
(31:00):
you know, so, I mean it was definitely had very
very negative connotations of going back to the Atlantic article
from Frank Trentmany as a section where he talks about
some of the history of the term consumption uh and
the as he calls it, the heavy burden that it carried.
And it was originally from the term the Latin term consumer,
which first presented itself in French in the twelfth century
(31:21):
and then into English and other European languages later. And
of course it meant as I said, with the etymological
um origins earlier, using up wasting kind of implied of
food or any other um consumable, I guess, for lack
of a better term um. But like I said, the
idea of tuberculosis or wasting disease being called consumption because
(31:45):
it had this inherently like it just eats you up.
And that was very much a sign of being irresponsible
and not looking out for the greater good of your
community or family, what have you, not being a good citizen.
And we would be remiss if we didn't just mention
for a second everyone's favorite fictional consumptive, which is Val
(32:06):
Kilmer playing Doc Holiday in Tombstone Bloody Rack. Yeah, oh man,
what does he say, who's who Huckleberry, I'm your Huckleberty,
I'm your h You're my Huckleberry romance, romance for the
ages and history for the pages, which rhymes but doesn't
(32:28):
really make sense if you think about it. So. Josh
Passek is an assistant professor of Communications studies at the
University of Michigan, and he he draws some conclusions based
on this shift. He says, it seems to underscore a
(32:51):
shift away from viewing Americans is having responsibility on our
political system and toward a more individualist view of what
it means to be a marry again. So, in his mind,
the role of a citizen is more active and the
role of a consumer is more passive. And in his mind,
these are two different things, right, They're not synonyms. He says,
(33:12):
your job as an American citizen requires that you fulfill
key democratic norms such as being informed, deliberating about political issues,
and participating in civic and political life. As an American consumer,
he says, your actions are relevant only to the extent
that they respond to economic incentives. The responsibility to be
(33:32):
engaged and participatory is not your own, but instead depends
upon a system that is oriented to bring you in
unpack that for us. Ben Okay, sure, I would love
to uh so again. The idea, the idea of citizenship
as a responsibility, right, like, I don't if you're a citizen,
you're not just supposed to show up and vote. You're
(33:55):
supposed to put some research time into it, right and
be be aware. And you know, let's I mean not
for nothing, It's true that most people don't know their
congressional district. Yeah, I mean, if I'm being honest, I
voted the other day and there were a whole lot
of names on the ballot that I was not familiar with.
There were some races that I had followed very closely,
(34:16):
and I knew what I was signing up for. But
you know, it's very difficult to be completely informed about
every aspect of the political process. But I guess what
the takeaway here is is that you know, just you
got to try to do your homework and then consider
beyond just you know, your personal stake, what might be
good for your entire community. Because you know, with names
(34:37):
that didn recognize on the ballot, if I had voted
for somebody just out of sheer, you know, randomness, what
what if I accidentally voted for a monster or voted
to keep an incumbent in power that had done bad
things for the community and then needed to be replaced.
You know. So, uh, if if I had gone in
with that consumer mentality about what's good for me, you know,
(34:59):
and and maybe I'm guilty of that, in a certain sense,
I would only know what directly impacted me, whereas if
I had gone in with much more of a you know, citizen,
good citizen attitude than maybe I would have thought about
more what would affect areas that don't even affect me directly.
But you know, it's a it's a dilemma, and we
are we are talking about the influence of behavior. Want
(35:21):
to be very clear that we're not We're not a
show that's going to like lecture people about politics. Yeah
for us, this is for us. This is a dilemma though.
It's a dilemma, and it's kind of a thought experiment. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
that's a good way to say it, because the question
then becomes, you know, is one uh somehow better than
the other or they just different. I would say that
(35:44):
they're different. I would say that everybody has played the
part of a citizen. Everybody's played the part of a
consumer at the same time. You know, you're not going
into uh rbs for instance, who is not a sponsor
of the show of just thinking like different is good
that he's still around. Yeah, they're still getting funny commercials.
But like, you know, nobody's walking into Arby's and saying,
(36:05):
you know, at the at the soda fountain or at
the little ketchup stand, no one's saying, like, what can
I do to make this ketchup stand better for everyone
who comes after me? Yeah? And you know, speaking to
uh past ex quote about you know, as an American consumer,
your actions are relevant only to the extent they respond
to economic incentives, meaning and sometimes those incentives are just
(36:29):
personal fulfillment and you know pleasure. Uh and your jobs
not to read state you already said, Ben, but your
job as an American citizen requires you fulfill key democratic
norms just being informed and deliberating about political issues. So
the idea that uh, there is this gray area or
this kind of like fusion between the notion of a
citizen and a consumer is potentially problematic for people making
(36:52):
choices in in elections that actually help others or that
if that affect the greater good, everyone's just voting for
you know what, we'll do good for themselves. And that
also plays into how politicians market themselves, you know, right right,
the same the same techniques that Edward Bernese pioneered are
(37:14):
now present not only in advertising, but are present in
a very real way in the political sphere. I gotta
tell you, man, did you ever did you did you
ever watch c SPAN? I mean, if if there's something
really crucial on, um, But no, I have not not
just watch it like my grandpapa used to them. Yeah,
(37:36):
I used to. I used to. Um. I used to
watch c SPAN with my grandmother as well. Um, when
Golden Girls wasn't on. She loved Golden Girls. Hehaw and
c SPAN beautiful woman. You know it seems like a
good mix. And uh and uh. One of the things
that got me was years ago we were watching c
(37:56):
SPAN at her house and uh, a congress person was
referring to a a bill they were trying to pass
as a product. And then they said, we're going to
get this product out at the end of this time frame,
and this product is going to you know, be great
(38:17):
for companies, all interested parties. Stakeholders, and I didn't understand
the term, because why would you call something like that
a product. You're selling it, You're selling it to your constituents.
And this guy, Frank Tripman, who wrote the article from
The Atlantic that I was talking about a little bit
um is a professor of history at the University of London,
(38:39):
and he wrote a fantastic book called Empire of Things
How he became a world of consumers from the fifteenth
century to the twenty one um and he thinks that
the blurred distinction between these two cohorts, which ultimately have
become kind of the same thing, consumer and citizen, make
it really hard for people to come together to solve problems,
which is a sin. Actually, what I was trying to
(39:01):
get out, we're both trying to get at ben Uh
And this quote, I think really sums it all up nicely. Quote.
Not all consumers see the world in the same way,
and hence concerted action is very difficult. That's what I
was trying to get at. Where you know, when you
have a politician that's marketing themselves to a particular voter base,
and the um the desires of that voter base are
(39:22):
kind of a conflagration of like different, uh sort of
self serving desires. So it's very difficult to like pick
out a platform or a thing or like to appeal
to all of these different you know angles and get
elected kind of requires some weird backwards logic and convoluted thinking,
you know, especially when so many of those interests might
(39:45):
be contradictory. Exactly right here we are, here, we here,
we are. But history doesn't stop here. I have to
wonder what future historians will make of this shift, which
again occurred without my knowledge at all. Like I did
(40:06):
not notice other than my spider sense tingling when I
hurt things laws referred to as products. It's totally washooshed
over my head. Man, I don't know. It's a little
insidious though, right, It kind of happens. It just sort
of kind of creeps in, you know, without you even realize. Again,
so are we citizens? Are we consumers? I think it's
(40:26):
a it's a choice we have to make. I mean,
obviously we're consumers when it comes to like, you know,
I like buying stuff. I like, you know, nice clothes
and things like that. But when you start integrating that
into the political process and how you vote as though
it we're spending money and as though you're being marketed to.
That's problematic, I think. And it's an interesting shift in history,
(40:49):
and it's more than a little ridiculous. It is, it
is more than a bit ridiculous. We hope that you
find this dilemma, lend this this interesting differentiation as fascinating
as we do. And we'd like to hear your thoughts.
So please write into us and let us know if
(41:09):
you think this is a a big deal, if you
think this is just relative, relatively small matter of semantics. Uh,
And most importantly, let us know if you have found
other linguistic shifts in your own experience, and let us
know what you think the implications of those might be.
(41:30):
You can write to Noel and I at Ridiculous at
I heart meat dot com. But that's all. You can
find us on the internet to. Yeah, we're on the
social media. We've got a Facebook page Ridiculous History. Just
google that and and give us a like. And also,
if you dig the show, please check us out on
iTunes and write us a nice review. That helps kind
of boost the show and the algorithm and on that
(41:52):
and hopefully more people can discover it. Yeah, because we like,
you know, we like doing the show and we'd like
to continue doing it. So thanks for joining us for
this episode, and we hope to see you next time
on Ridiculous History. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(42:14):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Historians. Thanks as always for tuning in. This week
Are Powell noll Is out for a bit so Max
and I wanted to share a classic episode. Max. This
one is an oldie, but a goodie, and I believe
it's from Uh it's from before you started classing up
our show. Yeah, it's about a three years beforehand. This
(00:23):
episode was about five years old actually enough wow, and
from originally the end of ten. So yeah, a little
bit before I started with this show. Wow. Oh man,
I had no idea, honestly how long we've been doing this?
The time The time flies, right, So this this is
(00:45):
gonna be really interesting Max, to you and any of
our fellow ridiculous historians who haven't heard it because years back.
Got five years back, I guess now. I noticed something
really weird in a lot of the reading I do
for another show called Stuff They Don't Want You to Know,
And it was this over time the you know, back
(01:08):
in the day in previous eras, you would read political
statements or you read stuff from the government or Congress
about almost anything, and they would most often describe people
as citizens, right, which makes sense. You know, if you
work in Congress, then your employers are citizens. But something
(01:32):
funny happened along the way. The phrase citizens started being
used less and less often and started becoming replaced by
the word consumers, not just in uh not, you know,
not just in congressional statements, but in the news in
all sorts of reporting. Is this something that you ever
(01:53):
noticed or you ever clocked? Max? Okay, you gotta remember
I have a marketing degree. I studied all this stuff.
Oh yeah, I mean, I mean, we're all just objects
at the end of the day, aren't we. Now we're not.
But sometimes it feels like that way when you're looking
at reports or just some reason it's like seven percent
of consumers feel this way. It's like, oh, that doesn't
feel very personal at all, right, right, because those consumers
(02:17):
are in fact people, human beings. So without further ado,
in this classic episode, we are diving into what that
change is, how it occurred, and what it might mean
going forward. We hope you enjoy it. As always, we
can't wait to hear from you, and we'll be back
very soon with some brand new Ridiculous History. Ridiculous History
(02:43):
is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye. Welcome to
(03:09):
the show, Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ben. My
name is Noel. Citizen knowl that is citizen Noal, not
a consumer. Well, you know, I do consume quite a
bit of things, but I like to think of myself
more as a conscientious citizen of these here United States.
Noel and I just for peek behind the curtain. We
have been in the studio for a while today working
(03:32):
on working on a couple of different projects. Right. Yeah,
we have another show called Stuff They Don't Want You
to Know, and we just spent an hour and a
half talking about John F. Kennedy. So we're both a
little punchy, but hopefully that will translate into an entertaining
episode of ridiculous history. That's right, that's our show. There
we are. So we've had a crazy time, you know,
(03:53):
starting this show and looking at not just single historical
episodes in isolation, we've been exploring the context in which
these events occur. Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. And one
thing that I think fascinates both of us is how
stuff that would seem on the surface really small has
(04:17):
these universal, ubiquitous and important, uh implications. Absolutely, and that
is absolutely the case today with our topic of when
and why did America start calling its citizens consumers, which
is such a good question. And before he brought this
(04:38):
to me, I had never thought about this, Like I
it just slid by my mind, and I was reading
so many different stories, you know, news stories, essays, creative
nonfiction where people pundits, experts, authors use these phrases interchangeably,
which is kind of weird when you think of about it,
(05:00):
you know. Uh So, there was a recent opinion piece
that was published in a political newspaper called The Hill.
And in this piece, which is titled how Trump's immigration
plans hurt American Citizens Pocketbooks, the author Maurice Goldman criticized
the Trump administration's plans for crackdown on immigration by pointing
(05:24):
to the cost of building the infamous border wall, the
cost of hiring enforcement agents, the cost of reducing legal
immigration channels, but of particular interest for our purposes today.
Goldman used the phrase consumer in in the body of
(05:47):
the text in the title it's citizen, but he notes
you the consumer will pay for you know, the the plans,
the political plans if this wall and stuff goes to
and like you just said, I mean, is this an
issue of semantics or was this intentional? Um? And The
(06:07):
answer to that is pretty interesting. Um, it's hard to
say quite when this took place, but in the last
handful of years there has been an increasing tendency to
use the term consumer interchangeably with citizen. And that's even
when the conversation has to do with the economy. Yeah,
(06:29):
and again it's it seems like on the surface a
small thing, but political experts, growing numbers of political experts
are concerned with this, and they're arguing that the choice
of words signals a shift in how we uh see
ourselves as individuals participating in the United States, right, and
(06:51):
what our role is in American society. So the people
who are concerned are saying that this is moving the
individual will away from this idea of citizenship working with
others in collaboration towards some common, greater good right, and
toward something else. Yes, I mean that's much more selfish
(07:13):
and an individualistic and based on the acquisition of things
that can also be turned around applied to ideas or
the way our vote is almost equivalent to the way
we spend money exactly. And there's a professor named Jathan Sadowski.
(07:34):
Jathan Jathan j developed a list but just now no
Jathan like Nathan, but with a j. I know, I've
never seen that one before. I know that's a new one. Uh.
He argues that using the term consumer interchangeably with the
term citizen has quote become part of our default discourse,
the normal way we view society and people, And he says,
(07:57):
just look at the recent presidential election. The consumer versus
citizen language is often used with analysts and pundits talk
about elections, and this goes to the point that that
Noel highlighted voters are just consumers with preferences, and the
election is a marketplace of products to choose from. To
(08:17):
continue to quote, in the store, we vote with our dollar.
We are told that elections are functionally the same thing.
You just use a ballot instead of a buck to
cast your vote. This understanding of democratic processes as a
marketplace is just one more place where the citizen is
overtaken by the consumer. End quote. And both of these
(08:38):
words have been around for centuries and centuries right. The
word citizen dates back to the thirteen hundreds. Originally it
meant the inhabitants of a city. Yeah. The entry in
the Online Etymology Dictionary for citizen um says from site
citizen of the world translates in Greek to cosmopolites. Oh,
(09:02):
that's cool, that's a good one. On the other side,
the the evolution of citizen to mean what we take
it to mean today, a person who has both rights
in a society and responsibilities to that society. That didn't
come around until around sixteen ten. The term consumer arose
(09:24):
shortly after the original version of the term citizen. I
love the entry for that one in the Online Etymology Dictionary.
It says, quote one who squanders or wastes um agent
nown from consume in economic sense, one who uses up
goods or articles opposite of producer, and that dates back
to uh. Then it also says consumer goods is attested
(09:49):
from eighteen ninety um in consumers for a representative basket
of goods and services. And that actually is from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yeah, so that's these are These
are legit sources, and no one is saying that these
words just suddenly emerged like in nineteen seventy or whatever.
(10:09):
The Like many words in English, this is an evolving language, right,
It's a living language. So like many other terms, the
term citizen and consumer have undergone evolution over the years,
and the question is what what these mean today? Right?
(10:29):
According to Michael Munger, who is the director of the Philosophy,
Politics and Economics Program at Duke University's Political Science Department,
the word consumer, although it existed, as we had said,
for centuries, it didn't really appear in print until nineteen hundred.
And have you ever used done in a Google Ingram search?
(10:52):
I I only started because of this. Yeah, it's really interesting.
So you can actually like search for a combination of
words compared to words, and it will get ald track
it over time as it appears in uh this you know,
vast online collection of books that Google has digitized. And
starting in eighteen hundred and going to the year two thousand,
(11:14):
this in gram search tracks the use of citizen versus consumer,
and this is in fractions of so starting in eighteen hundred,
citizen is a clear winner, with consumer very very low,
just like a tiny fleck above zero percent. And then
as time goes on, starting in around nineteen ten to
(11:35):
be precise, there is a significant spike in citizen um
and then and as this is going on, consumer is
kind of rising. Then there's a crossover point in nineteen
fifty six, at which point consumer goes through the roof
UM and ending in two thousand. Consumer well above citizen
(11:57):
in terms of its use in literature. Right. Yeah. And
it's fascinating to see this in laid out in an
infographic form because Duel is absolutely correct. You can see
the the direct correlation. You can see the switch point
at which people from writers, authors at least started preferring
(12:22):
the term consumer to the term citizens, and now it's
used about three times as often. Uh. Monger theorizes that
this happened this, this change in the usage had largely
to do with the rise of progressive politics in the
twentieth century. And here's a quote from Monger quote. The
progressives primarily saw citizens as being helpless, trapped by large forces,
(12:44):
especially corporations, that citizens couldn't deal with. UM And he
attributes Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal social programs that came about
in the thirties, as well as Lyndon Johnson's Great Society
Effort in the sixties UM as reinforcing the idea that
participation in politics was mostly a way to just get
(13:07):
your share of the pie, you know, get a piece.
So it's it's less of a civic duty, it's less
of a what can I do for my country and
more of a what can my country do for me? Exactly?
And this increasing use of the term consumer doesn't just
apply to people who are writing about politics. It applies
(13:30):
to politicians themselves. And when we're talking about President Johnson's
Great society stuff in the nineties sixties, we are also
examining the rise of some things that would surprise the
average voter. Marketing, right, marketing, Yes, marketing, which means that
(13:50):
we are going to take a little bit of a
side trail into a man named Edward Burns and Edward
Berdz as know is a is a guy that you
and I have spent a lot of time on in
the past. Yeah, he's sort of the big grand Pappy
of marketing. And this idea of selling things to a
(14:11):
mass audience, including various methods from billboards, magazine articles to
later television think mad Men, you know the television show, Um,
the whole world that's depicted in that the Madison Avenue,
UM kind of ad agency universe, um. And it was
for sellers of products like breakfast cereals and cars and
(14:31):
anti perch prints all of these and modern things that
everyone just had to have. Um. And today you know,
we can micro target people's preferences, you know, using these
campaigns in this massive amounts of data that can be
analyzed much much, much more quickly than in the past. Uh.
And now it looks at individual voters attitudes and their
(14:55):
corresponding behavior, um and can kind of figure out why
might be the best way to actually reach them in
the same way as you know, appealing to somebody about
a particular type of microwave meal. Right, And that that
in itself, this is important for us to note that
in itself is not inherently a bad thing. However, it
(15:17):
is an important thing, and it is crucial that people
be aware of what is happening. To tell you a
little bit about Berne's Oh man, I'm so glad, you asked. Okay,
so Edward Berness, get this nephew of Sigmund Freud true story.
(15:40):
Can't be a coincidence? Be a coincidence? Right? Uh? Edward
Edward Bernese took a lot of psychological concepts and said, well,
how can we hesitate to use the word weaponize, but
maybe maybe apply is a better word. He said, how
How can we apply these concepts about how the workings
(16:03):
of the human mind and translate them into quantifiable, predictable,
real world results. How can we push people not only
to make the decision we want them to make, but
to make them feel that it is their decision, that
they have agency in this choice. He has done so
(16:26):
much stuff, So I really appreciate that you mentioned the
concept of breakfast, right, so before Edward Burnet's the typical
breakfast in the in the United States would be something
like a cup of coffee and maybe a croissant or
a cross, yes, yes, or a you know, a bagel,
(16:49):
a couple of pieces of toast, maybe some butter. A
bagel and toast. That's a lot of carbs, dude. Yeah,
you put the toast. It's a it's a it's a
toast sandwich. So you get the bagel and put the
toast in between. That doesn't sound very healthy, And that's
actually kind of the point, because what ended up being
foisted upon the American consumer was this idea of bacon
(17:10):
for breakfast, right, Yes, yeah, Edward Bernese, make no bones
about it. Is the reason that bacon became part of
the American breakfast because without getting too deep into it,
here's what happened. In the nineteen twenties, Edward Bernese was
approached by a company called the beach Nut Packing Company.
They're the people who made beach nut gum at the time, right,
(17:33):
But they did a lot of other stuff, and they
had a lot of other concerns, and one of the
big concerns was pork. Edward, they asked the guy, we
need to increase demands. We have all this trash meat
laying around. You know, how do we uh again foisted
on the American public, right, exactly just so? And he thought, well,
we could do the typical sort of advertisement at the time,
(17:56):
where we could just have somebody be like, hey, I'm
cool and where suit and get a nice die and
like bacon you should too, And that was, you know,
that was the approach that advertising used. But he did
something very different and he said, well, let me let
me conduct a quote unquote poll of doctors medical experts,
(18:18):
and let me let me twist the questions in such
a way that they will all end up agreeing or
appearing to agree that bacon is not only good for you,
but should be eaten by any person with half a
concern about their health early in the morning and give
them energy and its substantial And that's the thing. It worked.
(18:41):
It not only did it work, but it continues to
work today. Edward Bernese, who could be the subject of
his own show, right, he went on to uh tie
smoking tobacco with women's suffrage. He went on to help
support propaganda pushing the American public, citizens or consumers, whatever
(19:01):
you want to call them, into supporting a coup in
South America. And he continues to influence things today. This
is one of the correlations, one of the one of
the points at which people stopped thinking about the average
voter as a citizen and started thinking about them as consumers. Well,
(19:25):
it's the way, you know, politicians have to essentially market
themselves uh and and and dress up their platforms in
such a way that appeals to different voting bases. Uh
and A lot of it is based on entirely based
on rhetoric, which you could, you know, kind of equate
to something like ad copy where it's like, sure, it's
(19:46):
technically true, and it's it's backed up by science or like,
you know, facts, but at the end of the day,
it's this like packaged curated version of the truth, and
that is the way things are today, and the government itself,
in fact, is is actually judged as if it were
(20:07):
a business, a consumer business. The American Customer Satisfaction Index
actually rates the federal government on how people feel about
their interactions with how how they feel you know what
I'm saying. So there's Bernet's at work right now, and
it actually got a sixty eight percent positive rating in
twenty which was up from sixty the previous year. So um,
(20:29):
I'm gonna have be interested to know how how that
ranks today, Yeah, and the methodology behind it. People who
have a problem with this interchangeable use of citizen and consumer, uh,
They argue that there are fundamental differences between the two
roles in society and that they should not be confused.
(20:52):
So how about this. I want to outline some of
these proposed differences and see what you think. Sure, okay,
So is are an issue of morality. You know, earlier
we mentioned the concept of doing stuff for other people
for the greater good versus doing something for one's self.
(21:13):
So one of the proposed differences would be that the
job of any consumer is to always choose what works
best for them in the marketplace, regardless of any other considerations. Totally, right,
that's what I do. I think that's that's also the
human condition, though, isn't it. You know? Yeah, But that
(21:34):
that there in lies the issue with this whole notion
of like being pulled away from the idea of being
part of a whole or being a member of a
team and going to a much more self serving attitude
that's kind of codified and bolstered by the use of
these these these words and the distinctions that they sort
of imply. I guess, right. Yeah, So then if a
(21:55):
by by this understanding, if this difference is true, then
by virtue of voting, a consumer is saying what will
make me better directly now, whereas the citizen would be saying,
what can I do to improve the world conditions for
(22:16):
everyone from my neighbors? Yeah, yeah, like a rising tide
carries all vestal, and a good citizen then would be,
in their own way kind of kind of heroic or
very moral, that's what it sounds like, right, And a
good consumer would be getting the best deal. There's another difference,
which is that citizens are comfortable with a degree of uncertainty.
(22:40):
I'm doing my best to help the group, the community
of the nation, et cetera. I'm not sure how it's
gonna work out, but I know my intentions are what
I believe to be good. Whereas a consumer says, you know,
if I'm if I'm paying for this service, whether that's
through time, whether that's through money, whether that's through exchange
(23:01):
of materials, then I need to be certain that this
transaction occurs, you know. So with with this idea, um,
there's the simplication that a citizen knows that society has
uh what HR departments around the world called areas of opportunity. God,
(23:23):
do you remember that one? Do you know how much
I love these corporate terms? Yes? Yes, synergy synergy is
their synergy and uh and cadences that's a new one,
making the rounds. Well, you know, the ideal holds up though,
because the concept then would be that you and I
and everyone who has a vote understands that we can
(23:46):
play a part in improving society and whatever way we
think it should be improved, right, and that these problems
will not be fixed themselves. And then the on the
other side, the concept of a consumer would be that
someone expects to purchase essentially a product or a service,
(24:08):
and that the people providing that product or service it's
on them to fix stuff. Right, So I voted for
you just do the thing, you know what I mean?
And uh, we we know that this is a very
very contentious thing. Well, let's go through a little business.
This is a ridiculous history. Um, let's just talk a
(24:29):
little bit about the history of the idea of humans
as consumers. There's a fantastic article by Frank Trentman in
the Atlantic that has a couple of great quotes from
the famous American thinker Adam Smith, one of which is
consumption is the soul, end and purpose of all production,
which was from his treatise I guess you could call
it The Wealth of Nations from seventeen seventy six. That's
(24:51):
a pretty famous quote. A lesser known quote from him
that really sums up this whole idea comes from seventeen
fifty nine, The Theory of Morals Sentiments Um, where he
kind of really hones in on the as Trentman puts it,
the social and psychological impulses that cause us to want
(25:12):
to get a bunch of stuff, little knickknacks, Patty Wax gadgets. Um.
And this quote again from Smith does a really good
job of summing all that up. He observed that people
wanted to quote stuff their pockets with little conveniences and
(25:33):
then buying coats with more pockets to carry even more
by themselves. Tweezer cases, elaborate snuff boxes, and other bobbles
might not have much use, but Smith pointed out what
mattered was that people looked at them as means of happiness. Um.
And he goes on to say that it was in
people's imaginations that these objects became part of a harmonious
(25:55):
system and made the pleasures of wealth grand and beautiful
and noble. And even you know, ancient Greek thinkers philosophers
from you know, Plato to St. Augustine Um, they kind
of condemned the pursuit of of stuff as as being
(26:15):
inherently wicked and self serving. Um. So there is this
history of the idea of being a citizen as being
much more important, and if it feels like throughout history,
obviously there there is that selfish impulse. But as a whole,
civilization and societies have largely maintained because of this notion
(26:38):
of you know, the whole is more important than the
individual parts, and that we're all banding together to make
a better life for everyone. Yeah. Right, and this leads
us to something a pretty interesting theory, uh that you've
probably heard of, which is the tragedy of the commons.
And the tragedy of the commons is this economic theory
(26:59):
that says, Uh, if you're in a shared resource system, right, so,
you're in a community where everybody has like a common
good it's called water, air, nine LPs. Who knows, just
like it's something for the people the way that you
and I typically order friess. Yeah. Um. The idea is
(27:22):
that when individual users are acting independently according to their
own self interests, they will tend to behave in ways
that deplete or spoil those common resources because everybody, everybody
wants their piece of the pie and would prefer not
(27:43):
to have to help create the pie. Right. And obviously,
so many people have argued uh, complex ideological questions based
on how to address this dilemma of individual wills trying
to improve society, to take a line from the Simpsons
(28:05):
to embigen society or two improve themselves, even if such
a thing might have dangerous consequences, right, or unforeseen consequences
down the road. And it might sound might sound, folks,
as if Noel and I are dwelling non semantics, but
(28:26):
we are not, because it turns out that science backs
this up. In a two thousand twelve study in the
journal Psychological Science UH, they found that choice of words
can exert a subtle influence upon how we see ourselves,
which then you know, naturally influences how we behave. So
(28:47):
in one part of the study, people who answered a
quote consumer response survey tended to express more materialistic, self
centered values. People who did a survey that was called
a citizen survey tended to behave in a more a
less selfish way. And another part of the same survey,
(29:09):
the researchers looked at subjects with gave them a hypothetical
situation where people um had to join together and share
water from a well, and they were labeled as either
consumers or citizens. And the members of the study that
got the consumer label tended to be completely distrustful of
(29:30):
their cohorts and just didn't want to share the water.
They just were a little crotchety about it, and they
did not feel as though they were on a team
or in partnership with the other subjects and just felt
overall less tied to or responsible for the experience, and
you know, well being honestly of their compatriots, as opposed
(29:52):
to those who were labeled citizens, who felt just the opposite. Right, right,
And now we we if we are called a name
or another, it tends to affect our behavior. Now we
see this article by Maurice Goldman becomes even more important.
I don't want to say insidious, but I do want
to say important, because you know, on some level it
(30:15):
might feel I don't know, condescending or diminutive to say, oh,
you are not so smart, right, you are easily influenced,
right if somebody, if somebody calls me a name, that
shouldn't influence my behavior already, but apparently it does. Apparently
we are a little bit easier to steer than we
(30:38):
would like to think. And this goes back to the
Bernese thing, right, the idea of a of a citizen
versus a consumer in terms of active versus passive roles.
Did you know that the I'm sure you've heard the
use of the term consumption um to refer to tuberculosis,
(31:00):
you know, so, I mean it was definitely had very
very negative connotations of going back to the Atlantic article
from Frank Trentmany as a section where he talks about
some of the history of the term consumption uh and
the as he calls it, the heavy burden that it carried.
And it was originally from the term the Latin term consumer,
which first presented itself in French in the twelfth century
(31:21):
and then into English and other European languages later. And
of course it meant as I said, with the etymological
um origins earlier, using up wasting kind of implied of
food or any other um consumable, I guess, for lack
of a better term um. But like I said, the
idea of tuberculosis or wasting disease being called consumption because
(31:45):
it had this inherently like it just eats you up.
And that was very much a sign of being irresponsible
and not looking out for the greater good of your
community or family, what have you, not being a good citizen.
And we would be remiss if we didn't just mention
for a second everyone's favorite fictional consumptive, which is Val
(32:06):
Kilmer playing Doc Holiday in Tombstone Bloody Rack. Yeah, oh man,
what does he say, who's who Huckleberry, I'm your Huckleberty,
I'm your h You're my Huckleberry romance, romance for the
ages and history for the pages, which rhymes but doesn't
(32:28):
really make sense if you think about it. So. Josh
Passek is an assistant professor of Communications studies at the
University of Michigan, and he he draws some conclusions based
on this shift. He says, it seems to underscore a
(32:51):
shift away from viewing Americans is having responsibility on our
political system and toward a more individualist view of what
it means to be a marry again. So, in his mind,
the role of a citizen is more active and the
role of a consumer is more passive. And in his mind,
these are two different things, right, They're not synonyms. He says,
(33:12):
your job as an American citizen requires that you fulfill
key democratic norms such as being informed, deliberating about political issues,
and participating in civic and political life. As an American consumer,
he says, your actions are relevant only to the extent
that they respond to economic incentives. The responsibility to be
(33:32):
engaged and participatory is not your own, but instead depends
upon a system that is oriented to bring you in
unpack that for us. Ben Okay, sure, I would love
to uh so again. The idea, the idea of citizenship
as a responsibility, right, like, I don't if you're a citizen,
you're not just supposed to show up and vote. You're
(33:55):
supposed to put some research time into it, right and
be be aware. And you know, let's I mean not
for nothing, It's true that most people don't know their
congressional district. Yeah, I mean, if I'm being honest, I
voted the other day and there were a whole lot
of names on the ballot that I was not familiar with.
There were some races that I had followed very closely,
(34:16):
and I knew what I was signing up for. But
you know, it's very difficult to be completely informed about
every aspect of the political process. But I guess what
the takeaway here is is that you know, just you
got to try to do your homework and then consider
beyond just you know, your personal stake, what might be
good for your entire community. Because you know, with names
(34:37):
that didn recognize on the ballot, if I had voted
for somebody just out of sheer, you know, randomness, what
what if I accidentally voted for a monster or voted
to keep an incumbent in power that had done bad
things for the community and then needed to be replaced.
You know. So, uh, if if I had gone in
with that consumer mentality about what's good for me, you know,
(34:59):
and and maybe I'm guilty of that, in a certain sense,
I would only know what directly impacted me, whereas if
I had gone in with much more of a you know, citizen,
good citizen attitude than maybe I would have thought about
more what would affect areas that don't even affect me directly.
But you know, it's a it's a dilemma, and we
are we are talking about the influence of behavior. Want
(35:21):
to be very clear that we're not We're not a
show that's going to like lecture people about politics. Yeah
for us, this is for us. This is a dilemma though.
It's a dilemma, and it's kind of a thought experiment. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
that's a good way to say it, because the question
then becomes, you know, is one uh somehow better than
the other or they just different. I would say that
(35:44):
they're different. I would say that everybody has played the
part of a citizen. Everybody's played the part of a
consumer at the same time. You know, you're not going
into uh rbs for instance, who is not a sponsor
of the show of just thinking like different is good
that he's still around. Yeah, they're still getting funny commercials.
But like, you know, nobody's walking into Arby's and saying,
(36:05):
you know, at the at the soda fountain or at
the little ketchup stand, no one's saying, like, what can
I do to make this ketchup stand better for everyone
who comes after me? Yeah? And you know, speaking to
uh past ex quote about you know, as an American consumer,
your actions are relevant only to the extent they respond
to economic incentives, meaning and sometimes those incentives are just
(36:29):
personal fulfillment and you know pleasure. Uh and your jobs
not to read state you already said, Ben, but your
job as an American citizen requires you fulfill key democratic
norms just being informed and deliberating about political issues. So
the idea that uh, there is this gray area or
this kind of like fusion between the notion of a
citizen and a consumer is potentially problematic for people making
(36:52):
choices in in elections that actually help others or that
if that affect the greater good, everyone's just voting for
you know what, we'll do good for themselves. And that
also plays into how politicians market themselves, you know, right right,
the same the same techniques that Edward Bernese pioneered are
(37:14):
now present not only in advertising, but are present in
a very real way in the political sphere. I gotta
tell you, man, did you ever did you did you
ever watch c SPAN? I mean, if if there's something
really crucial on, um, But no, I have not not
just watch it like my grandpapa used to them. Yeah,
(37:36):
I used to. I used to. Um. I used to
watch c SPAN with my grandmother as well. Um, when
Golden Girls wasn't on. She loved Golden Girls. Hehaw and
c SPAN beautiful woman. You know it seems like a
good mix. And uh and uh. One of the things
that got me was years ago we were watching c
(37:56):
SPAN at her house and uh, a congress person was
referring to a a bill they were trying to pass
as a product. And then they said, we're going to
get this product out at the end of this time frame,
and this product is going to you know, be great
(38:17):
for companies, all interested parties. Stakeholders, and I didn't understand
the term, because why would you call something like that
a product. You're selling it, You're selling it to your constituents.
And this guy, Frank Tripman, who wrote the article from
The Atlantic that I was talking about a little bit
um is a professor of history at the University of London,
(38:39):
and he wrote a fantastic book called Empire of Things
How he became a world of consumers from the fifteenth
century to the twenty one um and he thinks that
the blurred distinction between these two cohorts, which ultimately have
become kind of the same thing, consumer and citizen, make
it really hard for people to come together to solve problems,
which is a sin. Actually, what I was trying to
(39:01):
get out, we're both trying to get at ben Uh
And this quote, I think really sums it all up nicely. Quote.
Not all consumers see the world in the same way,
and hence concerted action is very difficult. That's what I
was trying to get at. Where you know, when you
have a politician that's marketing themselves to a particular voter base,
and the um the desires of that voter base are
(39:22):
kind of a conflagration of like different, uh sort of
self serving desires. So it's very difficult to like pick
out a platform or a thing or like to appeal
to all of these different you know angles and get
elected kind of requires some weird backwards logic and convoluted thinking,
you know, especially when so many of those interests might
(39:45):
be contradictory. Exactly right here we are, here, we here,
we are. But history doesn't stop here. I have to
wonder what future historians will make of this shift, which
again occurred without my knowledge at all. Like I did
(40:06):
not notice other than my spider sense tingling when I
hurt things laws referred to as products. It's totally washooshed
over my head. Man, I don't know. It's a little
insidious though, right, It kind of happens. It just sort
of kind of creeps in, you know, without you even realize. Again,
so are we citizens? Are we consumers? I think it's
(40:26):
a it's a choice we have to make. I mean,
obviously we're consumers when it comes to like, you know,
I like buying stuff. I like, you know, nice clothes
and things like that. But when you start integrating that
into the political process and how you vote as though
it we're spending money and as though you're being marketed to.
That's problematic, I think. And it's an interesting shift in history,
(40:49):
and it's more than a little ridiculous. It is, it
is more than a bit ridiculous. We hope that you
find this dilemma, lend this this interesting differentiation as fascinating
as we do. And we'd like to hear your thoughts.
So please write into us and let us know if
(41:09):
you think this is a a big deal, if you
think this is just relative, relatively small matter of semantics. Uh,
And most importantly, let us know if you have found
other linguistic shifts in your own experience, and let us
know what you think the implications of those might be.
(41:30):
You can write to Noel and I at Ridiculous at
I heart meat dot com. But that's all. You can
find us on the internet to. Yeah, we're on the
social media. We've got a Facebook page Ridiculous History. Just
google that and and give us a like. And also,
if you dig the show, please check us out on
iTunes and write us a nice review. That helps kind
of boost the show and the algorithm and on that
(41:52):
and hopefully more people can discover it. Yeah, because we like,
you know, we like doing the show and we'd like
to continue doing it. So thanks for joining us for
this episode, and we hope to see you next time
on Ridiculous History. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(42:14):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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