Category: History

Black Friday – A History

blackfridayBitching about Black Friday is like slapping Satan – nobody’s going to tell you to stop.  You can call Black Friday everything but nice, and not one person on this planet is going to say, “Hey!  Watch your mouth, you insensitive bastard!”  It’s weird, but the highest High Holy Day of our consumer culture has absolutely no cheerleaders.  Yet, even as you read this, millions of people all over the world are kicking each other out of the way to get at tech toys they don’t really need.  (Notice Black Friday never includes food.)

So, rather than rip Black Friday a new one (like everybody else) I’ve decided to offer a history lesson.  This is how Josiah Wedgewood invented our consumer culture and with it Black Friday.  (Originally written in 2012 and gently edited for 2019.)

Today is Black Friday.  It’s the day when half of America (and a lot of the world) lines up for hours, searching for an incredible bargain, and the other half waits impatiently to sell it to them.  To some, this is the seed of greed; to others, it’s capitalism at its finest.  Regardless, unless you flunked math, history and economics in high school, you know that without our much-maligned consumer society, our world would look markedly different from what you see out your window.  And most of us would have neither the energy nor the leisure to wax critical on the whole process.  However, did you ever wonder why people buy so much useless junk and literally kick other people out of the way to get at it?  The answer’s quite simple, really: Josiah Wedgwood had smallpox — and survived.

History does not always run on big events.  For example, one of the reasons Drake, Hawkins and the rest of Elizabeth I’s Seadogs kicked the snot out of the Spanish Armada in 1588 is their cannons were shorter.  Thus, they could reload faster and, therefore, held superior firepower over their Catholic adversaries.  A much overlooked detail, to be sure, but absolutely critical to the history of Europe and the world.

Likewise, Josiah Wedgewood’s bout with smallpox as a child, insignificant as it might be, was a decisive event that changed human history.  When Josiah recovered, he was apprenticed to his elder brother as a potter, but because his legs were still weak from his illness (a condition that lasted his entire life) he couldn’t work the foot-powered potter’s wheel for long periods.  Thus, he spent more time designing pottery, working with glazes and selling his wares than he did actually making them.  Unhitched from the daily grind of producing pottery, Josiah had time to figure out how to effectively sell it.

The story is long and quite complicated, but here is the gist of it.  Josiah’s business career coincides with the early rumblings of the Industrial Revolution.  James Watt’s steam engine was putting people power out of business and creating a whole new class of folks unfettered from the land.  This new urban class of managers, foremen, clerks, artisans etc. etc. were stuck in the “middle” — between the obscenely rich aristocrats and entrepreneurs and the virtual slaves from the mines and the factory floors.  Plus, unlike their parents, who had been practically self-sufficient, without land, this new “middle” class had to buy every necessity of life rather than produce it for themselves.  Essentially, Josiah’s pottery works had been handed a huge new consumer demographic that nobody had seen before.

Obviously, all these new people moving into the urban centres of Britain needed plates, cups, jugs etc. but that’s just the nuts and bolts part of the story.  What separates Josiah Wedgwood from every other guy with a lump of clay was his understanding of the market.  He realized that this new middle class was not living hand to mouth.  They had a modicum of leisure time and disposable income.  He also saw that they were willing to use this income to distinguish themselves from the poorer urban masses.  More importantly, even though they didn’t really have the coin for it, they wanted to emulate the social superiority of wealthy aristocrats and the new-fashioned nabobs of trade and industry.  Josiah simply thought outside the 18th century box and cashed in on this middle class social climbing.

Basically what he did was create unique pieces for his wealthier clients — and then mass produce less expensive knockoffs for everybody else.  Suddenly Harvey and Maud, the uppity couple from Pembroke Lane, could eat off plates and saucers just like King George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte.  Wedgwood even called it “Queen’s Ware.”  His Jasperware was elegant, expensive and exclusive, but anybody with enough shillings could afford a posh replica.  Plus, Wedgwood treated his clients as if they were upper class, by bringing the marketing tools of the aristocracy down to the middle class.  He used illustrated catalogues just like exclusive art dealers.  He had salesman who came to your home, written guarantees and free delivery.  Not only that, but he also produced objects of art.  Before Wedgwood objets d’art were the exclusive province of the upper class who could afford to squander money on trinkets and antiquities.  After Wedgwood, everybody had household ornaments.  He made Etruscan busts and Grecian urns that were well within the price range of even the most modest home.  The thriving middle class, striving to keep up appearances, bought this stuff by the wagon load.  Even today, his powder blue and ivory white Greek motif plates are recognized around the world, and many of us have these useless pieces cluttering up our shelves and coffee tables.

Josiah Wedgwood was the first person to sell the sizzle instead of the steak and make you pay for the garnish.  He understood how the middle class ego worked and, frankly, it hasn’t changed in over 200 years.  Those people who lined up this morning for the 80 inch television set aren’t buying solid walls of entertainment; they’re buying a physical expression of their success.  By recognizing this need and filling it, Josiah Wedgwood single-handedly create our consumer society in the late 18th century.  It’s been going strong ever since.  Today’s madness at Target, Best Buy and Walmart is just the latest incarnation of two centuries of marketing.

The Moon

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Fifty years ago tomorrow, a guy from Ohio stepped onto the Moon, and suddenly Earthlings became extra-terrestrials.  It was a spectacular accomplishment.  Everybody on this planet — from Brooklyn to Borneo — knew about it, and US president Richard Nixon got so carried away he called it, “the most significant event since creation” (fire and the wheel notwithstanding.)  But our species going to the moon was more than just going to the moon.  It was a blatant demonstration that humans can defy the natural laws of the universe (notably, gravity) and do whatever the hell we want.  We had the confidence, the ability and the audacity to hurl ourselves off this little blue marble, visit another celestial body and come back to tell the tale.  In your face, Mother Nature!

Neil Armstrong’s “One small step for man …” was the culmination of The Big Idea, an inherent human trait that has dominated our existence since long before Pharaoh Cheops decided he wanted to be immortal and asked his scientists, mathematicians and engineers to make it so.  Our reach has always exceeded our grasp — until we grasp.  Then we begin the whole process over again.  For example, the wheel is a magnificent tool, but inventing the cam which converts circular motion into vertical power was a singular act of genius.  Necessity may be the mother of invention, but invention itself is its own philandering father, propagating numerous offspring to find a new necessity and begin the process all over again.  Human history is a litany of necessity and invention — each progressively more complex and imaginative than the last.

The Lunar landing itself didn’t do much to change the lives of anybody, really.  (The slingshot of Space Race technology wouldn’t hit our society for a generation.)  The next day, most people simply went about their ordinary earthly business.  But we were all a little bolder, a little more self-assured, a little more hopeful.  After all, we’d just put a man on the moon: how hard could the rest of our problems be?  But that’s the nature of the Big Idea.  Its very soul is the notion that, when we concentrate our ideas and abilities, we can make the impossible ordinary.  That, once inspired, humans are capable of thinking beyond themselves.  And that inspiration is, by nature, selfless, righteous, and beneficial.  The Big Idea assumes the greater good.

Neil Armstrong didn’t just decide to go to the moon.  He got there because, in the early 60s, there was a Big Idea, and in 1962, President Kennedy went to Rice University and asked Americans to reach for the stars.

“We choose to go to the moon,” he said. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade …, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone …”

Seven years later, at Moon Base One, somewhere in the Sea of Tranquility, an army of NASA scientists, mathematicians and engineers made it so.

These days, it’s fashionable to embellish our human flaws and limitations, to scroll through our problems, upload our complaints and download our responsibilities.  We are the grandchildren of the Lunar Generation, connected by our machines, concerned and conceited with ourselves and comfortable with our own righteousness.  But history shows us that one day – someday – there will be a new Big Idea and the human adventure will begin again.

Fake News … Not New!

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These days, everybody and his friend is yipping about fake news as if millennials invented it last Tuesday, and … OMG! Ain’t it awful?  Well, here’s a real news flash!  There’s always been fake news, and this current crop of journalists and their Internet Overlords (If it isn’t trending on Twitter, it didn’t happen.) are just the latest incarnation.  I’m pretty certain some of the hieroglyphic accomplishments of the Pharaohs are embellishments, and we know for a fact that more than a few of the stories Herodotus (the Father of History) told were not necessarily factual.  The thing is Herodotus knew what every journalist since, discovers: the truth is a moveable feast.   Let me demonstrate.  Here are two sentences that say the same thing – except they don’t.

After extensive public dialogue, Mayor Quimby and his supporters have stepped up to tackle the homeless crisis in our city.

Bowing to extensive public pressure, Mayor Quimby and his cronies have finally stepped up to do something about the homeless problem that plagues our city.

See what I mean?

Two of the greatest purveyors of less-than-the-truth journalism were the 19th century dynamic duo of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.  They fought it out in 1890s New York to see who could grab the most readers (read “followers”) with clickbait headlines and salacious stories that would make BuzzFeed blush.  These two crazy kids were so good at manipulating public perception that Joe is now considered the Father of Modern Journalism (Yeah, he’s the guy the award is named after.) and Willie started a war.

But the Big Kahuna of fake news is Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches.)  This little ditty was published in 1487, just about the time Gutenberg’s printing press was radically changing European society (think: early Renaissance Internet.)  It was written to raise public awareness about the presence of witches in the world and offered some proactive advice on how to deal with them – notably, burning them alive.  However, it was just one clergyman’s (read: “influencer’s”) personal opinion, and it had no basis in fact or even the religious doctrines of the time.  It was disavowed by every authority on the planet from Martin Luther to the Pope (Even the Inquisition said it was hogwash!) but, unfortunately, the public fell in love with it.  Then, as the Reformation gathered steam and European society broke into two conflicting camps, Malleus Maleficarum became the go-to text to beat the other side with.  In those days, labelling someone a witch immediately discredited them and anything they had to say.  (Ring any contemporary bells?)  It was a bestseller for over 200 years, second only to the Bible, and was considered unassailable truth until the Enlightenment came along and said, “WTF were we thinking?”  Even today, many people believe in demonic possession and tons more believe that witchcraft is some ancient pagan religion.  (BTW, Wicca is no more an ancient religion than I am.  It was made up by a retired British civil servant, Gerald Gardner, in the 1950s.)

Yes, in the 21st century, fake news is serious, not because it’s there (It’s always been there) but because gullible people have immediate Internet access to other gullible people all over the world.  The problem is, back in the time of Herodotus, or even Joe Pulitzer, stupidity was a retail commodity, confined by geography.  These days, geography doesn’t matter, and stupidity is being traded wholesale in every corner of this big, round world.

The only solution is don’t believe everything you think.