A love affair – with your money

A long time ago, when I was a much younger man, I fell in love and decided that I wanted to get married. And of course when I proposed to my intended bride I had a diamond ring in hand to legitimize the proceedings.

With me being a student and of very limited means at the time, the ring contained only a very, very small diamond, but I was honoring the engagement ring tradition as best I could. Everybody knows that a marriage proposal has to include a diamond ring or it’s not a real proposal, right?

It was something that I really didn’t give much thought to at the time, and I’m sure I assumed that the engagement ring tradition must have stretched back for many generations. It turns out that assumption was quite wrong, and that the link between diamonds and “true love” is actually the product of a genius marketing campaign that took place a lot more recently than I would have imagined.

As late as the 1930s diamond engagement rings were mostly seen a luxury enjoyed only by the very wealthy. In fact, the market for diamonds at that time was anything but robust. Large deposits had been discovered in South Africa, and the De Beers Company (which has long held close to monopoly power in the diamond market) found itself sitting on a big pile of shiny rocks that most people felt they could easily live without.

That, of course, would never do. And so they decided to unleash the power of marketing on an unsuspecting public. They hired N.W. Ayer and Son, the first advertising agency in the US, to disabuse Americans of the notion that their lives could have meaning without diamonds.

The agency got some of the big shots in Hollywood to start sporting their product. Newspapers began running stories on how diamond rings symbolized romance. They even sent lecturers into high schools to embed the link between love and jewelry into impressionable teenage minds. The master stroke came in 1948 when a copywriter at Ayer (ironically a female who remained single all her life) came up with the now-ubiquitous slogan “A Diamond is Forever.”

The campaign succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. In the span of a few decades, marriage proposals and diamond rings had become inextricably linked and De Beers’ profit margin grew from $23 million in 1939 to $2.1 billion in 1979. And by 1988, a young man like me looking to take a wife had nary a second thought about obeying the dictates of De Beers and N.W. Ayers.

Spying the man behind the curtain like this always makes me a little uncomfortable. I have to wonder how many of the things I unthinkingly follow as long-standing cultural traditions are actually carefully manipulated schemes deigned to control my behavior and separate me from my hard-earned cash.

The whole concept of Valentine’s Day immediately comes to mind. And the gift-giving frenzy portion of the Christmas tradition was undoubtedly dreamed up in some company’s boardroom as well. Really anywhere you encounter the idea that there is a “tradition” that dictates that affection should be expressed via the purchase of goods is probably something that was invented on Madison Avenue and was likely unknown to your great-great grandparents.

Don’t get me wrong – I am a fan of capitalism and advertising is an important part of the system. It’s just that there is something creepy about realizing how big companies can manipulate our collective consciousness in regards to things like love, family, and tradition in such a calculated manner.

I’m beginning to understand why people get more cynical as they get older. Unbridled optimism only seems to grow tall in a field of blissful ignorance. And as the De Beers obviously realized, it is best fertilized with a healthy portion of, well, you know.

You can’t upset me sonny, I’m old

Given the fact that I find myself getting a little older just about every day, I’m always on the lookout for something that passes for good news about aging. This week I came across a story about a study that was conducted recently at the Duke University Medical Center that might, depending on your interpretation of the results, qualify as a blessing of advancing age.

The study had some older folks (average age 70) and some younger folks (average age 24) look at some photographs, some of which had disturbing images. Later they hooked the test subjects up to brain monitors and asked them to recall the unpleasant images.

They found that when the young people brought the negative images to mind the emotional center in their brain was very active, but the older folks used the frontal cortex (where the higher level reasoning and problem solving occurs) to recall the same images. So the researchers concluded that a younger brain tends to react more strongly on an emotional level to negative experiences than a more mature brain. But why would that be the case?

The study hasn’t provided an answer to that question as yet, but I have a few theories based on my own life experiences. I can think of two reasons why a person gets less worked up about the bad things in life as they get older: experience and perspective.

To be young is to constantly find novelty in life. The first time you get your heart broken, or get fired from a job, or face the death or serious illness of a loved one, it is an earth-shaking experience. After these things happen once, twice, then three times, the earth shakes a little less each time it happens. By the time a person reaches their 70s, a number of bad things have happened to them and it simply doesn’t rock their world like it did when they were younger.

Another reason we may get less and less emotional about adversity as we get older is an evolving perspective about what is important in life. To a young person aging and death are far-away, almost unreal concepts. But to a person over 70, mortality has become a familiar companion who has made his presence well-known in your consciousness.

How does that affect your reaction to life’s little tragedies? Well, once you realize that aging and death actually apply to you, many of the things that once seemed like serious problems tend to lose their emotional punch. You begin to really understand the import of the old “what difference will this really make when I’m dead and gone?” line of thinking.

A mature person realizes that there are a very few things in life worth getting upset about. The death or serious illness of a close friend. A major terrorist attack in your home country. Your house burning down. Those are real problems worth shedding tears over. But how many of those things are likely to happen to you in a typical day?

So your car won’t start, or someone made a snarky comment at your expense, or you’re having a bad hair day. If you’re 25, any of those things might be enough to put you in a bad mood. If you’re 75, you are probably thankful that you lived to see today, and you aren’t about to let some minor inconvenience spoil your appreciation of this fragile gift of life that has been bestowed on us.

It’s called wisdom, and it’s generally something that can only be purchased with time. Still, even young people might want to keep in mind that time worrying is usually time wasted. And trust me - you don’t have as much time as you think you do.

The burden of judgment

This week I did something I’ve never done before – I served as a member of a jury on a criminal trial. I have been called for jury duty a number of times over the years but was never picked to sit on a jury. I guess I figured I just wasn’t the type of person that defense and/or prosecution lawyers wanted deciding their cases, so I was a little surprised to hear my name called.

But this time it was called, and I thought I might relate some of my thoughts on the experience for your reading pleasure.

- This was my first visit to the “new” Houston County court facility and I have to say that it is a huge improvement over the cramped, aging structure in downtown Perry that I visited in my previous calls to jury service. There was plenty of parking outside the building and the inside was spacious and climate-controlled, luxuries not afforded to visitors at the old facility. Hats off to everyone who helped make this new and much-improved courthouse a reality, including the judge who issued a court order to light a fire under our local government to get to work on it.

- I would have to say that every employee I had dealings with during the process of serving on a jury – guards, bailiffs, lawyers, judges, and everyone else – were capable, conscientious, polite, and even entertaining on occasion. I have never had a better experience interfacing with any branch of our government.

- I have a very different perspective on our legal system after being involved with it so directly. Of course I was familiar with concepts such as a presumption of innocence until proven guilty and the right to have one’s fate decided by an impartial jury, but it’s quite another thing to see them put into practice by real live flesh and blood people. I am more grateful than ever to live in a country where the state does not have the right to deprive its citizens of their freedom until they have proven they have just cause to do so to a group of people who don’t have a personal interest in the outcome.

- Our justice system was designed by some very smart people and I don’t believe it could be improved very much. However, even the best system breaks down if all the people involved are not competent and motivated to do their jobs. When people rave about how our justice system is “broken” they are placing the blame in the wrong place. When the system fails it is because somebody somewhere dropped the ball.

- As far as my experience in the jury room goes, it was more stressful and nerve-racking than I could have imagined. There is a great deal of responsibility involved in playing a part in deciding whether or not another human being gets sent to prison. And on top of that, you have to come to a unanimous agreement with 11 other individuals on just where the truth lies in circumstances where there will almost certainly be some room for doubt on either side.

Frankly, I understand better than I did before why a lot of people would prefer to avoid jury duty if they can. However, as the judge reminded us at the beginning of our service, we have to ask ourselves if it was us or a close friend or family member who was on trial, or who had been a victim of someone who was on trial, would we think it was worth someone’s time to listen to the evidence and render a fair and carefully considered decision on the charges in question? And if the answer to that question is yes, is it fair to expect other citizens to take up that burden is we aren’t willing to do the same when we are called?