Found and Lost

(For a newer draft of this story, click here.)

The fog was so thick it formed droplets upon colliding with Brandon Hayes's windshield. He was traveling through unfamiliar territory listening to familiar music. Cars swarmed around him like so many bees in a hive. The evening rush hour traffic had begun when an unusual event occurred.

Brandon spied a dark figure with a low profile galloping from right to left between the traffic. His brain soon registered the figure as a small dog. He imagined the animal being struck, it lying maimed and whimpering in the middle of the street. He imagined it struggling to move and then its life being dashed out by a second strike. Repulsed at the prospect, he abruptly threw his car into park. Exiting the car to the sound of horns and entering the mist, Brandon knelt to the height of the animal. He held his arms open wide as`an invitation for the dog, which he now recognized as a miniature black Schnauzer. "Come on, boy!" he encouraged. The dog paused upon hearing the voice, looked towards its origin, changed course, and rushed towards him. A soaked and soiled red leash fluttered behind the dog. Brandon surged with joy at the sight. Upon scooping him up, Brandon lunged back into the car. The dog, as if understanding his role, crossed the console, sat elegantly upon the passenger seat, and looked forward. The car accelerated as Brandon considered what to do next.

The windshield wipers smeared the view clean. Brandon was immediately convinced of the need to find the dog's owner. "It's okay, boy. You're safe now. You're fine. It's fine now," he reassured. His right hand stroked the dog's head and back while his left hand steered. The dog's soft, black hair was prickly with evidence of a recent grooming session. The green and cream bow around his neck above his collar guaranteed as much. Brandon merged left, turned left, made a u-turn, and went straight towards the nearest parking lot. At a stoplight, he looked at the dog's collar. The silver loop where the leash was attached was devoid of identification tags. Disheartened by the newly discovered difficulty in finding the owner, he concentrated on meeting him or her in person. Brandon wanted to see a frantic person looking onward towards the street, calling out for his lost pet. When he entered the lot, he found no such person. There were no cars that presented themselves as likely candidates for a dog's escape. Brandon's blood pressure rose slightly. He wondered what to do next. All the while, the dog gazed forward unaffected.

Brandon looked to the nearby businesses. A barber shop, a grocer, a cellular phone store: the strip of storefronts held no promise at first. Further along, wedged in between a sandwich shop and a video game retailer, shined a sign for gourmet pet treats. "There we go. Is that where you came from, little buddy?" In the recesses of his mind, Brandon felt ashamed for using nondescript language to refer to his guest. Neither knowing the dog's actual name nor wishing to court attachment by giving a new name, he had no other recourse.

The schnauzer shifted his weight in response to the deceleration of his transportation. The breaks gave a weary, dull squeal as they stopped the car within the weathered lines of a parking spot. Brandon took the cold, damp leash in his hand. "Come on, boy." On command, the dog left his seat and leaped out onto the pavement. Salty droplets left by the dog's coat converged on the old, black leather behind him. The two traversed the parking lot. Mounds of grey-tan plowed snow along the curb looked as though peppercorns had been cracked over them.

An electronic tone sounded as the front door was pushed in. Brandon crossed the threshold after the dog, whose hardest tugging required the slightest tightening of Brandon's shoulder muscles. He advanced through the isles towards the cash register. The dog did not advance in such a determined fashion. The bouquet of baked goods filled the dog's tiny black nostrils. The stimulation excited him to the point of frenzy. His little black legs flickered about in response. He darted from table to table where the sundry items were woefully out of sight and reach. Dragging the tantalized dog behind him, Brandon addressed a woman behind the counter of the store.

"Hey, have you seen this dog before?"

The woman looked down with her brown eyes. She made a cooing sound towards the dog. "No. I can't say that I have." Disappointment welled within Brandon. She looked back up at him. "Why do you ask?"

Amused by the realization of the queerness of the question he asked, Brandon took to explaining with a smirk. "I just found him. He was crossing the road out there. Poor guy was going to be hit I think."

The woman moaned with empathy. She maneuvered around the barrier and dropped to the level of the dog. The schnauzer rushed to meet the woman who was squeaking praise towards him. Her frizzy hair shimmied about her face as she complimented the dog on his distinguished appearance. "He must just have been groomed. This bow wouldn't have lasted long. I bet the owner is a woman. No guy would let his dog keep this frilly them on him, would he? Would he? No he wouldn't!" The dog was pleased by the intonation of her rhetorical questions.

The implications of the situation seeped into Brandon's thoughts. Once again, he wondered what to do next. As if on cue, the woman has a recommendation for him.

"There's a groomer just up the road. Let's give them a call. Maybe you escaped. Did you escape, huh?" After thumbing through the phone directory, she removed a cream-colored cordless phone from its receiver. After seven more electronic tones, she placed the phone on her ear.

While waiting, Brandon took stock of the recent events. He was surprised at his reckless behavior. He was fortunate not to have caused an accident. The roads were slick with a mixture of water and trodden snow. The fog restricted visibility. More reckless than the act of stopping was the assumption of responsibility at stooping down and calling to the dog. He was in no position to care for a dog. He still lived with his parents. His parents could hardly afford any more bills. There was an ordinance in his town against three or more dogs. It was unlikely a neighbor would report them, but all the same it was a possibility. He could not give the dog up, though. Brandon knew what happened to dogs that went to the pound. He stopped to save the dog's life in the first place, not to prolong it a few days.

He pushed the anxiety out of his mind by making a simple resolution. He would move out and care for the dog on his own if that was what it took. That was the proper thing to do. He thought about opening the door after work and calling to the schnauzer. A little being would prance towards him. It would please Brandon to do what was right. He wanted an excuse to move out and he inadvertently adopted one.

After dropping to one knee, Brandon took to showering the dog with affection. The dog accepted with pleasure. "Sit," commanded Brandon. The dog sat. "Good boy!" He rubbed the dogs back with both hands quickly. Another customer approached the two of them.

"What a good looking dog you have there. How old is he or she?" When Brandon looked up, he saw a woman with short blonde hair and a puffy jacket. Her face was framed with colorful collars on the wall behind her.

"I don't know how old he is. Not too old. A couple of years maybe. He's not mine, though. I just found him crossing the road."

The blonde woman's face became exaggeratedly despondent. "Oh, no! He could have been hit!"

"I know."

"Well bless your heart for helping. Poor little guy. Does he have any tags?"

"Nope."

"Oh no."

"What'll you do?"

Explaining his semi-formed intentions seemed futile. Brandon opted to lie, though not without reservations. "I'll put up a few signs and take him home in the meantime."

"Isn't that nice of you?" She looked to the dog and said, "You've got a real saint here," a jerked her head in Brandon's direction. She reached over and tousled the hair of the dog's goatee. Reestablishing eye contact with the young man, she wish him luck and retreated back to the aisle of organic dog foods.

The employee had been speaking to someone at the grooming business, but Brandon's divided attention prevented him from following the conversation.

"They said they hadn't taken care of a black miniature schnauzer lately." She paused. "And he doesn't have any tags."

"Nope."

"I bet he's hungry. Are you hungry, little fella?" The dog's tail waggled. "Yes you are." The woman reached into the pocket of her apron which hung on her thick abdomen and withdrew a dog treat in the shape of a t-bone steak. "Here you go."

The dog ate the treat with obvious relish. "You are hungry." She fed him another treat. "Are you thirsty, too? Who knows how long you've been out there running around. I'll go get you some water."

Brandon looked around while the schnauzer sniffed the nearby bags of food. Magnets with breed specific icons underneath the letter 'i' and a red heart were on a nearby wall. Other pro-dog trinkets and knick-knacks were organized beneath the register. A stainless steel over shone prominently further behind the counter where dog biscuits with whole oats and flax-seeds were baked. Brandon thought he would not be willing to spoil his surroundings with such decorations or able to spoil the dog with such treats.

The woman returned with a white plastic bowl full of water. The dog raised to his back legs upon seeing the bowl. "Well look at you! You are thirsty." Once placed on the ground, the dog lapped up the water in a sloppy flash. "You know, sometimes people put a microchip in their dogs that vets and shelters can scan. Maybe he has a chip in him."

The prospect of an adventure pleased Brandon. "Where's the nearest vet?"

After taking down directions on the back of a store coupon, Brandon thanked the woman for her help and kindness. "Let's go." With a little tug, the dog accompanied his caretaker back through the store. The same tone sounded upon their exit.

Miser

(For a newer draft of this story, click here.)

Rebecca watched the remnants of hummus harden in a white plastic bowl. Todd watched the last of the carbonation bubbles slip into the bottom of the two pilsner glasses on the coffee table. A faint smell of spice hung in the air from repeated use of incense in the apartment. A pronounced taste of garlic draped on the tongues of old friends as they sat at opposite ends of an uncomfortable futon couch.

"Do you think an artist needs an audience to be an artist?" Todd asked with a hand supporting his leaning head.

"I guess so. If you don't have an audience, you're more of a... hobbyist. Right? A hobby is something you do for fun in your basement or something. There's no audience down there." Rebecca responded with lips lightly coated with chapstick.

"I hope it doesn't. That would be a bum deal for a lot of people." Todd scratched his stubbled chin. "'Hobbyist' doesn't carry the same oomf as 'artist'." He pulled on the tattered cuffs of his khaki pants.

Rebecca following the motion of Todd's hands and looked towards his black shoes. She thought his black ankle socks looked nice. "Don't artists want to be seen or heard? What's the point of making art and not changing lives by it?"

"I just figured artists wanted to make art."

"And if no one sees or hears it?"

Todd shifted his weight further onto his left buttock and rested more heavily on the green and black back of the futon. "So what? It exists on its own. That's what's important." He looked past her towards the kitchen. A series of fading Polaroid pictures lined the frame of the passage way. His gaze traced them up, over, and down. He could only make out splotches of color. In one, he thought he saw a chocolate Labrador. He was growing frustrated at his friend's opposition. He thought she understood better. "This is just like the tree in the forest. Just because no one is around to hear it doesn't mean it doesn't make a sound. Of course it makes a sound. To ask the question of whether it does or not is a ploy to get you thinking about things existing beyond your perception. The answer is really clear cut, though, cleverness aside."

"But what do sounds matter if they're never heard? That's what the koan is getting at, right? Think about it. An asteroid slams into the surface of Mars and who cares? It sure makes a sound, but the sound is kind of in vain or something. Sound is for ears. Sound without ears is useless."

The corners of Todd's lips dipped slightly. He thought 'useless' was a telling choice of words. He shook his head in denial. "That doesn't mean there wasn't a sound. Utility changes nothing about facts. The facts are the facts." He looked at Rebecca who was looking to the right of his face.

The setting sun cast an orange tint onto Todd from the living room window. Rebecca was becoming uncomfortable with the tone of the conversation. She stared out of the window to see the adjoining building. Craggy brick and mortar interrupted the otherwise pleasant hue. A cat stirred on a second floor sill. Its tail flicked into the cream half-drawn blinds and set them fluttering. "A wasted sound."

"What if an artist can't get the attention of his audience? What if they're too busy? What if all the people within earshot are uninterested? What if they have headphones on or something?"

"Well, at least she's trying to make it public. She's closer to being an artist because she's trying." The cat left the sill altogether. Rebecca returned to her friend's face.

"That's non-sense. She's not closer. She's already there. She's making art."

Noticing Todd's face begin to redden, Rebecca cut to the chase. "You're getting flushed. What's your angle?"

"Oh, I suppose I'm looking for a little reassurance," Todd admitted bashfully.

"You're taking a roundabout way of getting there."

"If I said it right out then you'd be likely to just build me up because you're nice."

"Because I'm your friend."

"Right. And that's not what I'm after. I'd like to be reassured by the truth rather than somebody's pity." Todd paused. He ran his fingers across the wrinkles of his pant leg. "A friend's pity."

"Fine. Then make your case and I'll pretend I'm a judge." She sat up. Her hair whisked behind her neck and a finger of her bangs settled over her right eye. Brushing it into place, she shut her eyelids.

"I keep thinking about this guy I once heard about. He worked some menial job all of his life. He was a janitor or something. He eked by, barely paying his bills. No one ever took any real notice of him all of his life. He was quiet. Didn't say much of anything. Didn't do much of anything by all accounts. Went to work. Punched in. Punched out. People figured he was simple. I never met him so I wouldn't know. Anyway, he got old and eventually died. When an appraiser went to his little house to see how much the bank should list it for, he found the usual things in an old guy's house. Dated furniture. Dusty drapes. A stale smell. There were probably some expired cans of soup in the pantry. All was as it should be until he took a look in the attic. When he poked his head in the attic and flipped on his flashlight, he discovered this huge cache of paintings. Oil on canvas. They were sublime. Landscapes mostly, some with storms, some with clear skies. Naturalistic stuff. They would bring you to tears. Apparently the guy worked his crap job and kept to himself by design. It left him enough energy to go home and paint most nights. Now, come on. Wasn't he an artist?"

"Why do you think about him so much?" Rebecca noticed an extra shine to Todd's eyes.

"Later. Answer my question."

Feeling awkward but not wanting to lie, she looked for a diversion. "I don't know. I'd have to see the paintings." Rebecca left to retrieve another beer. Todd tracked her exit.

"Why are you changing your tune? Earlier you said an artist needs an audience. Now you're saying there's something to the quality of his work."

The twist off top released a hiss into the air. She tossed the cap onto the table. It slid into the side of one of the glasses and rattled to a stop. "Well crap, Todd. It's complicated business defining things," Rebecca said before taking a sip. "Art probably involves both." Tasting the bright flavor of hops pleased her. "Did you want another one?"

"No, thanks. I'm fine." Upon feeling a tingle growing in one of his feet, Todd uncrossed his legs. He bent his left leg and laid it on top of the couch in order to keep facing his friend. "Let's assume they were really great paintings. Accurate depictions of landscapes--"

"Overdone."

"What?"

"Landscapes are overdone."

"So now the subject matter is important, too?"

"Probably."

"Some help you are."

"Sorry. I don't like how personally this academic conversation is for you. I was trying to get away from talk of artists and stick to art. Keep going."

"No."

"Oh, get off it. I'm listening." She took another sip. Her fingers felt slick and cold holding the bottle. She placed it on the table. Her hair drifted back across her forehead and she returned it with a swipe to its proper place.

Todd leaned forward and engaged her with eye contact. "Assume there is enough skill in the work and it has whatever subject matter you think necessary. Are you really going to tell me it's not a piece of art and that the old man by association isn't an artist?"

"I'm sorry, but I still don't buy it. You can't just horde it for yourself. Artists are generous; they aren't misers. That guy may have had all the talent in the world, but if he never shared it he's not an artist."

Todd leaned back. A small burp passed breathily between his lips. The taste of corn from the Colt 45 returned. "You can't just share your art. It's not that easy. Would you rather he stuck it on his front porch or something?"

"He had friends, didn't he? He could have shown his friends."

"That's all it takes--showing a few people?"

"At least the effort was made. Yes. I think that's all it takes."

Todd made eye contact with Rebecca. Her pupils were big in the poorly lit room and surrounded by hazel slivers. "Well damn."

"What?"

"I was identifying with the guy because neither one of us are famous. But I see your point and now I don't feel as discouraged."

"You say it like it's a problem."

"Well..." Todd looked the the Polaroids again. "I guess it is. I got used to thinking it was out of my control. My failure that is."

"Fame has nothing to do with artistry. I'll give you that. But yeah, you can't just shove all the stuff under your mattress. What good is that?"

With a click from the thermostat, the whir of the air conditioner began. Todd paid attention to the low-level white noise of the fan motor. "It's safe," he conceded. "I should get going."

Rebecca got to her feet to stop her frazzled-haired friend. "Now, now. No need for that."

"I'm fine. Just feeling tired. I've been preoccupied lately, thinking about what I am and what I'm gonna do with myself. Sucks to have a knot you've been picking at for a long time untied so quickly by someone else. But, it's nice to be freed." Todd rose to his feet and pulled his shirt down. The wooden floor released a creak as Todd leaned over to grab his glass. "Thanks for the beer."

"You're welcome. I'll get it." Rebecca stretched out a hand a took the glass from Todd. It was warm. "Thanks for the visit."

"Welcome."

Consumption Assumption

A woman peruses the aisles of a bookstore. She is smartly dressed and moves with purpose. An elderly man approaches her and asks her to locate a book for him. The woman smirks. "Oh, no. I'm not an employee." The man cocks his head and after a brief pause, repeats his request. The woman turns towards the man again and explains more loudly, "I'm not an employee. You need to find someone else. Look for a person with a name tag or something." With the same tone and same words, the old man asks her to locate a book for him. Frustrated and desiring an end to the annoyance, she leaves her own pursuit behind and locates the book for him. She behaves like an employee.

Here we are witness to the power of persistence. A person is prone to redefine herself if she is persistently defined by others in a certain way. We have a name for the power of persistence in regards to defining ourselves: the self-fulfilling prophecy. Given enough repetition, a person is liable to go beyond playing a role and become the person the other insists she is. Even idioms capture the tendency (e.g., "Fake it 'til you make it.") Be called emotionally cold enough by other people and you are more likely to become emotionally cold. "But wait," you say, "You have stacked the deck in your favor. The woman you described could have ignored the old man, found an employee, or left the building." True, those are all possibilities. However, they are only viable if the old man ceases pestering her for assistance. If he continues to ask her—only her—for aid, if he follows her out of the bookstore and pleads with her all the while, she is all but forced to submit to the role of employee. "That is a very outlandish situation. What one person would follow a person around and insist she perform a task that she says is not hers to perform? A lunatic maybe, but there are few of those. Why do you waste my time describing a situation so rarely experienced as to be practically irrelevant?" Right you are to bristle at being subjected to such a worthless discussion. Worthless it would be if I was planning to discuss the suggestive power of a single person. What I am here concerned with is the suggestion of many, many more people—a suggestion that we all are exposed to on a daily basis.

Go out into the world. In what role do you find yourself most frequently cast? On billboards and buses, storefronts and signposts, taxis and telephone poles: the same role is addressed. The suggestion is inescapable. It is no use retreating into one's abode. In your home, in your magazines and newspapers, on your computer, radio, and television, before movies, and during sporting events: the same role is addressed. A person is likely to pass by a hundred living, breathing people without acknowledgment, but is often spoken to by the recorded voice of stranger addressing the role. A person could easily speak more with a representative of the role-purveyors than with his own neighbor. "Out with it. What role?" All of these suggestions effectively say, "You are a consumer. Consume this." Every individual is more frequently addressed as a consumer than anything else. Count the number of times a day you are asked for your money (for the sake of consumption) and it will far outnumber the times you were asked for your help, expertise, skills, or attention (for non-economic reasons).

"Where's the harm in someone thinking he is a consumer?" you wonder. Before you dismiss me out of hand, do not misunderstand me. I am not blinded to the truth of life's necessities. All living creatures consume. Humans are consumers. What I desire for us is a more apropos appellation. To persistently refer to a person as a consumer is as imperceptive as calling an automobile a cigarette lighter: both emphasize one of the many capabilities. To make matters worse, both references are to one of their lesser functions. Although you may bicker with me about the proper function of people, whether they have one or not, we can agree that they have a capacity for much more than digestion. Of all the deeds a person can do, consuming is not the noblest.

To clarify further, I am not writing to change the ways of those who call us consumers. I lack a platform loud enough to dissuade them and am not entirely certain it would be good for us if I could. I rather am writing with the modest goal of giving you pause. I want to make a clear and present danger just that for us in the hopes that we might better defend against it.

Returning to discussion: on most levels, there is no harm at all. Part of the allure of being a consumer is the ease of playing the role. It is natural. We consume a great many things in the course of the day. To be a consumer, one needs only consume. When one is not consuming, one needs to prepare for consumption through working, investing, gambling, or stealing. The constrained definition acts on a person like a magnet waved over flecks of iron. Thereafter, all the separate parts orient themselves toward the one pole. How effortless to take on the day with such a facile purpose constantly asserted!

It is easier than this to be a consumer. Not only is there uniformity in purpose and ease in acting for that purpose, there is great ease in thinking for that purpose. We did ourselves and our progeny a great favor when we monetized goods. From that point forward, we could affix numbers to our potential and actual consumption. We could set fixed goals for our preparatory efforts. Consumption, upon translation into a quantitative system, became a blissfully simple pursuit about which to rationalize. Problems required no more complex tool than basic algebra. Now, a person knows exactly how many hours he must labor in order to consume the objects of his desire. There is no harm in this at all. Instead, there is aid. Though not physically painful, is not ambiguity painful? Through monetization, we have clarified so much. Could there be any harm in an anesthetic? It suppresses pain. Those partisans of consumption shout, "If only we could quantify everything humanly relevant! Until then, we ought only consider what is quantifiable if only because we are accustomed to the effort involved in such considerations. We have mastered the land of numbers. Whether it is a fiefdom or an empire matters not—it is all ours!"

I see you growing tired of my rhetoric. "Get back to the point. Where's the harm in someone thinking he is a consumer?" If there is harm in a person receiving another person's prescription, then there is harm in being defined a consumer. These definitive messages we call advertisements. They make goods and services known to all those in the producer's (i.e., those who make the goods or provide the services) audience (i.e., those for whom the goods or services are relevant). The purpose of advertisements is to inculcate desire for the product, be it from a pre-existing or newly-forged need. Whether due to a lack of discrimination in the medium, cost-effectiveness, or straightforward profiteering, the messages often reach people outside of the audience—those of us who have no need for the good or service advertised.

An example: A man hears that a good is available for purchase while driving to work. The advertisement speaks to him informally, addressing him in the second person. He considers the good, considers his need, and if the good is needed he considers further his potential to consume it. If the advertisement is effective, a desire is stimulated. Now, the man daydreams about using the good, imagines himself happy like the voice in the advertisement. He is primed to consume it. He is a consumer.

To find the harm in considering oneself to be a consumer, we need to understand the situation that so frequently brings about the consideration. In the foregoing example, we have two people: the speaker and the audience member. We have a communication from the former to the latter. We have the content of the message transferred to the audience member by the communication/advertisement, which assumes the the audience member is a consumer. The advertisement is the immediate cause of the defining, thus advertisement requires our attention.

What can we say about the communication? It implies a course of action the person should take (e.g., "Buy our product."). In this way, it is normative. It states what one ought to do. The proposed course of action was taken into the man's consciousness and pushed out other possibilities. In the event that the communication was solicited or, by coincidence, spoke to a pre-established and unmet need, it benefits the man. The more likely event, however, is that the message is harmful. "Preposterous! How can mere words be 'more likely' to be harmful? They are not insults. They defame no one. Your imaginary man is at liberty to ignore the message." Yes, he can ignore the words just as you suggested earlier the woman could ignore the old man earlier. Sometimes our man now does as much. How often does he hear such messages, though? Are those messages not more frequent than the old man's demands? How often is our man distracted by them? They are after all designed to be distracting, to garner attention. Cannot the hearing of such messages be harmful? You would not suggest distraction is helpful when it is as ubiquitous as advertising, would you? The energy expended reclaiming one's attention could have gone towards continuing a better line of thought. A person could be learning a language, honing a skill, observing beauty, playing a game, reflecting on his life—to list only a few the the possibilities. Instead, he is interrupted or barred from beginning and must first fend off a message aimed at a consumer. He must immediately judge, "No. This is not for me."

What if he does not defend himself but instead lets it wash over him like so much clatter? "In one ear and out the other," you may think. You neglect to look for the residue. Communication is never so neutral. Every moment of consciousness alters the self like a glacier over the mountain. What alteration occurs as a result of ignoring? Desensitization. He spends so much of his time being passively assailed by advertisements that he is atrophied by it. He becomes accustomed to glossing over perceptions. Images affect him less. Sounds lose their potency. For the sake of what? Easiness. What takes the place of the skill of concentration? Nothing but a tolerance for boredom.

The upshot of the messages: "Indulge! Devour! Everything is grist for the universal mill, so be a mill of your own. Grind as much as you can before you die." What paltry fodder for the audience's minds! No wonder they are malnourished. Their minds have so little of substance to digest. Ironic how this talk of consumption starves a person. I am reminded of an old malady that shared a name with our subject. It was so called because of how the disease consumed one's ability to breath. Being a consumer is in itself consuming: it reduces a person down to her most basic functioning.

There is harm too in who relays the message—or rather how it is relayed. What interest do the others have in you? They have no loving interest. They are neither family nor friends. They have no collaborative interest. They are neither co-workers nor compatriots. Their interest in you is transactional. You have something they want and they have something they want you to want. "Is that not a collaboration?" It is a collaboration of sorts, but lowly kind. This sort of relationship, which is so quickly and regularly formed, consists of mutual use at best. Each side relates to the other to the extent required to gain access to what the other has. At worst, the use is lopsided and creates injustice through compounding power inequalities.

These strangers interacting must have an effect upon the character of the consumer. A person becomes accustomed to being used. She becomes calloused by the previous injustices. She becomes cold and frigid without being touched by the warm hands of beneficence. There are no flesh and blood hands associated with advertising. These messages are overwhelmingly disembodied. It is their very abstraction that makes them so far-reaching. One person could never contact as many people in all her life as the most obscure of advertisements can. Bleak is the life of a person who is solely addressed by advertisements.

"Recall earlier the other possible courses of action our imaginary woman could have taken. You left one out of your list: she could simply have helped the man without resistance. She would not be an employee but simply a helper." What an astute observation! There was no great risk of harm in finding a book for a man even if it is not one's job. Helping is an option that accomplishes the same end without requiring redefinition. One can help another in a store without being an employee. Can one be a person who consumes without being a consumer? What would it look like?

To resist the pervasive suggestion of others while doing what is necessary to maintain life, one needs to consciously and preemptively define oneself as something other than the suggested role. "I am a person who consumes, not a consumer. A consumer consumes for the enjoyment of it. A person who consumes does so in order to do something else—to sustain oneself and to achieve one's goals." See how dignity is retained by such resistance? The former feeds and thinks about matter alone. The latter feeds on matter and thinks of something better. Now when one is confronted by such advertisements, one can brush them aside quickly. They become trifles, laughable in their futile pandering to banality. They become the mutterings of senility, not to be taken seriously. "Bother someone else," you could say. "I am busy with a task of my own. I will not do as you want because I am not what you take me to be."