10 Things I've Learned At Work I Didn't Learn at College

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(Also published on Medium, with slightly different words.)

I am the greenest of leaves when it comes to business expertise. Not only do I lack practical knowledge of the business machine, but I come at business from an idealistic consumer mindset. I'm fresh out of college, full of empty intelligence that I am just beginning to apply to practical ends. One of those practical ends is my job, which requires me use my writing to market products to a consumer base. It's for profit, but this doesn't scare my inner idealist. Why?

Because I have to pay my rent.

For the whole of my life up until this point, I mostly haven't had to pay for stuff. My parents gave me a ton of great stuff for free. For that reason, I could believe whatever I wanted about the good life, human nature, and morals. I have largely been an idealist. But after working in an office for just a few months, I am learning that it is hard to make money when you are an idealist. This is because you have to be a little bit evil to make money. Regardless of the reasons behind it or the process by which it occurs, you have to be willing to take people's money. And this brings me to my point:

People have to eat; therefore, businesses have to look for ways to make money.

I used to look at marketing and say, "This is just a bunch of lies that advertisers are telling me so that I give them my money, end of story." But that's only half of the picture.

The other half of the picture is that all those people trying to sell that product have lives that are full of hopes and dreams and unmet needs. The marketing that goes into selling a new product is a way of boosting profits, but those profits increase the chances that the employees who work for the company get to have a healthy dinner, send their children to good schools, and afford transportation and travel. In a way, when an ad convinces you to buy some shampoo that you don't really need, you're really giving a donation to a charity called "Carol the marketing director's children's college fund" without knowing it.

(You're also giving a donation to the CEO and the rest of the people who work there, and who knows what portion they take of the profits...)

The point is, everyone at every company has to eat (and pay bills or whatever), but instead of asking for charity directly, they are being creative, resourceful, and yes, 95% dishonest with you so that you will siphon some of your hard-earned cash to their bank accounts.

I used to call it lying, but now since I'm doing it to pay the rent I'll call it resourcefulness.

A problem arises, of course, when companies are so concerned about profits that they will sell anything to people. And, with good marketing, people will buy anything. Marketing is effective when it accesses the deep, emotional parts of people's souls. Most often, that means people's insecurities, fears, and secret wishes. To name a few:

1. Fear of death
2. Fear of rejection
3. Loneliness
4. Desire to be attractive
5. Social anxiety
6. Desire for belonging to a tribe
7. Desire for a sense of accomplishment
8. Background depression or existential boredom

When you know what drives people, and you know how to tap into those deep energy reserves while at the same time making them believe that you are acting in their best interest, you have 100% control over them.

(It's why people in close relationships often resort to emotional manipulation to get what they want; they can do that because they know their partner's insecurities and fears like the back of their hand. Is emotional manipulation just "marketing" to an audience of one?)

People in marketing, like me, don't have time to date all of their customers so that they can attach strings to their nipples and control them like marionettes. Instead, they do research: market analysis.

They do this to find their audience's nipples, so to speak, so they can start taping the electrodes. Once they have all the nipples covered with a comprehensive marketing campaign (which, I have learned, are planned for months before ever appearing to the consumer), they execute.

Or, should I say, they electrocute?

And, if everything goes according to plan, the electric current, so to speak, creates an influx of cash. The customers are happy because they believe they gain something from the product they purchase, the CEO is happy because her bottom line is fatter and juicier than it was last year, and all the marketers are happy because they get raises that year. Maybe after a few more campaigns they will have big enough salaries to send their kids to that private school...

You get the picture. Our economy works because marketers are good at increasing people's needs and creating cash flow. Here's the kicker, though: all of those marketers are consumers as well.

All marketers are also consumers.

Every person promoting an idea with clever marketing is doing so because they are hoping to meet needs given to them by other marketers. This creates an upward spiral of needs, a perpetual increase in our standard of living (another word for our "perceived needs"), and a hollow but booming economy driven by mass deception. Even the people doing the deceiving are themselves deceived.

In a way, marketers exist to dissatisfy people, and they pay their rent by making you unhappy. You could say that our economy is an unhappiness economy because, the more satisfied people are with their lives, the less likely they are to spend money to acquire some good or service. When people are happy, they feel they don't need anything. Obviously, this means they won't buy anything. That means that Carol the marketing director fails to increase sales, doesn't get a raise, and, down the road, doesn't get to send her kids to college. Poor Carol! But at least everyone else is happy...

Our economy is an unhappiness economy.

If everyone were happy in our economy, there would be no growth, no "business development," minimal sales, and a lot of impotent marketing. If everyone is happy, then it means no one is trying to steal anything from anyone. Marketing becomes purposeless because trades are honest and fair, and people are content with a simple life, where everyone eats the same spaghetti and meatballs. 

How far that is from our world!

I do not say this to criticize the United States because, to me, this is how the world works right now. This is how human beings are right now. We thrive on other people's suffering in a deep, important way that puts food on the table, pays our bills, and sends our kids to college. Our system honors the great manipulators as "successful," when they have only been the most willing to treat others as cattle and milk them for all they're worth.

But, as Nietzsche says, all great things exist to overcome themselves.

Our economy is a great machine with many parts, but if this machine sends enough people to college, eventually it will create a cultural critic strong enough to inspire a new vision of humanity. That person will show us a way out of "the way things are" right now. That person will show us an economy that suffers when its people suffer, that thrives when its people are content. It will change our concept of growth and our concept of business. And people will look back on this era as a dark age, a time when we didn't know any better, a time when we animals reveled in cruelty.

Or, maybe I'm just another idealist.