Cognitive Dissonance

Minor, but still, cognitive dissonance occurred. It was an ad about wind power, which I saw on the mentros on my way to the cubicle.

The ad was very well done, clear, crisp, eye catching, in a word, expensive looking.

It was styled as a cork board, perhaps the kind found in the employee break room, just to the side of a time clock. It was made to look like a big sign was thumbtacked to it, in bright yellow caution colors, saying: CAUTION: STOPPING WIND TURBINES WILL RESULT IN LOSS OF JOBS. 'Stuck' underneath the eye catching and large caution sign were a 'note' explaining more (which I was too far from to read) and a crisp beautiful snapshot of some wind turbines.

Why is this so odd, you might be wondering. It is odd because of the quality of the ad. One of two things is happening: 1) Big money is invested, or 2) Big talent believes in the cause. I would tend towards option 1, because of the message itself. Loss of jobs is usually the argument of government or political wranglers. It's inevitable jobs are lost if a company goes under or the flow of money is stopped, but loss of jobs is a symptom, and rarely the cause. I can only guess the small writing explained how I can prevent this disastrous joblessness from occurring. It would have made more sense to me to focus on the benefit rather than the non-benefit of non-doing. Because that wasn't the message, I feel that a good idea, wind power has been appropriated by big money, the people behind this political ad.

Similar, this is, in ways, to the appropriation of organic farming. The FDA simply must be in the middle of the whole process or it might find itself small and inconsequential, since organic farmers might potentially sidestep all the carefully constructed policies and procedures for the regular food. Thus, 'organic' eventually turned into simply another gimmick to market to consumers.