Buying In - (Page ix) buying in ix through commercial persuasion. It’s as if the fundamentals of human cognition were getting rewired, upgraded, and replaced as quickly as the latest BlackBerry variation. The only problem with this theory was that it did not match up particularly well with the realities of the marketplace that I was writing about every week in the Times Magazine. That disconnect—between the theories I was hearing and the behavior I was seeing—is what led me to write this book. I have come to see the mythology of the “new consumer” as counterproductive—both for marketers and, more important, for the rest of us. I do think there is real change going on and that it can affect everything from our sense of individuality to the way we define community (and how we balance those notions). But if you really want to understand it, then you have to start by understanding what isn’t going to change. This is the starting point in unraveling the secret dialogue between what we buy and who we are. The first section of this book, then, is about what I call “the Desire Code.” Cracking it involves a few steps. The first is figuring out why symbols matter to us, how meaningful symbols (logos included) get created—and how, even when we claim to be immune from such things, we often participate in that meaning-creation ourselves. The second is understanding that in the twenty-first century we still grapple with the eternal dilemma of wanting to feel like individuals and to feel as though we’re part of something bigger than ourselves—and that, most of all, we all seek ways to resolve this fundamental tension of modern life. The third is seeing how the desire— the need—to resolve that tension is at the heart of the stories we tell about ourselves. The fourth is coming to grips with who
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