Metaphor Country

Religions as Brands, Brands as Religions

In today's Wall Street Journal, Naomi Schaeffer Riley comes down hard on James B. Twitchell's Shopping for God: 

Mr. Twitchell manages to reduce this profound idea to the dictates of basic consumer theory. Sacrifice, he says -- not least, tithing -- signifies value. The more you sacrifice, the more you visibly value the product for which you are giving something up, and the more you show other people that you value it, too. "Why do true believers sometimes puncture themselves, walk on their knees until they bleed, fast until they are skeletal or join a monastery and go mum?" Mr. Twitchell asks. "Brand allegiance."

And so on.  I'll spend some time with Twitchell but I basically buy Schaeffer's point that:

...consultants can only do so much, and the point of church outreach surely has less to do with improving "brands" than with saving souls. Mr. Twitchell concludes by noting that, "in the Land of Plentitude, the customer is king." Thus he asks: "Why should religion be different?" The answer to that question comes from another book.

And I'd add only this -- Twitchell is spending his time trying to turn religions into brands.  Whereas most of my friends in the marketing disciplines spend their days trying to turn brands into religions.

Feel like something is broken here?

Just possibly -- on both sides of the equation.

More thoughts on this soon.

More Housekeeping

Now that the Alzheimer's blog is up and running (click on "Dementia Nights" at left if you're curious), time to get this one back to its original focus, which is (was/will be) issues in communications.

Some of the other specialized topics will move offshore soon. 

Meanwhile, back to our regular programming, already in progress.

And Now, A Blog About Alzheimer's Called...

...the Alzheimer's Blog.  The Alzheimer's Blog!  The Alzheimer's Blog!!!

Sorry -- was thinking for a moment of the Gumbys introducing The Architect Sketch.  If you need a reference, click here and scroll down to the fourth cue.

The blog is actually called Dementia Nights and you can find it here.

The Alzheimer's narrative is getting fairly thick, and as noted earlier, I thought it deserved a space of its own.

Besides which -- here on Metaphor Country, we've got new territory to mark... ah... map... ah, you know what I mean.

So, for the moment, it's family entropy on Dementia Nights, and everything else over here.

Hope that makes sense.

Live From DC...

Yes, a change of venue.

Short version -- Mrs. Deconstruction (spouse) took a position with the SEC in DC.  So we've decamped.  Which explains the latest round of silence -- as pilots like to tell you over the PA in thunderstorms, it's been a little busy up here.

There's also the element of culture shock.  Details will almost certainly follow.

And because life still isn't rich enough or full of incident... the Alzheimer's blog will be up and running shortly.

Back later...