In a never-ending effort to make consumption the centerpiece of every American's existence, marketers have succeeded in infantilizing adults ("kidults," Barber calls us). We're increasingly governed by impulse. No wonder consumer debt and personal bankruptcy have never been higher. Feeling dominates thinking, me dominates us, now dominates later, egoism dominates altruism, entitlement dominates responsibility, individualism dominates community, and private dominates public. Imagine having the ship of state guided by leaders elected by a nation of 12-year-olds. That, according to Barber, is what we've got.-- Review: Buyer Beware (April 8, 2007).

Benjamin Barber, author of "Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole" will be online to field questions and comments about his new book.

Benjamin Barber is an internationally renowned political theorist and the author of 17 books, including the best-selling "Jihad vs. McWorld."

Join Book World Live each Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET for a discussion based on a story or review in each Sunday's Book World section.

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Benjamin Barber: Hi Washington Post readers! glad to be with you today. I will answer the questions already in the pipeline briefly, so we can also chat and interact. Benjamin Barber

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Harrisburg, Pa.: How has this changed over recent decades? I remember TV commercials from the 1960s that told children to run and tell their parents to buy them things. Did this generation of young people grow up more commercialized? Are today's younh more commercialized than the youth of previous decades?

Benjamin Barber: We have of course lived in a consumer society for a long time. Remember Galbraith's AFFLUENT SOCIETY? and the concern with "conspicuous consumption"? That was a half century ago. But the totalizing of market society, and the ubiquitous marketing cultures and the targeting of children have all become far more pervasive in the last thirty or forty years. Particular since the "privatization" that came with President Reagan.

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Wheaton, Md: While I agree with your observation of society as being selfish, irresponsible, and baseless sense of entitlement, I disagree with your explanation. The markets didn't create this situation, it only revealed it.

Benjamin Barber: There has of course always been an element of narcissism and juvenile consumerism in America, but the "logic of capitalism" which requires that we buy far more than we need seems to be dictating and supporting infantilization in a way that is new. "Adult institutions" used to help us grow up. Now they work hard to keep us juveniles -- so we will go on shopping 24/7 rather than leading plural lives in many domains other than the mall.

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Richmond, Va.: Traditionally, religion has been peddled as a good that people were told they needed -- in its extreme form, for example, indulgences were sold to buy salvation. So how is the manipulation of today's consumers different from the "consumers" of the pre-consumer/democratic age?

Benjamin Barber: True -- religion had a utilitarian aspect, and indulgences were "sold." But the old Protestant ethos assocatiated with early productivist capitalism at least had the virtue of pusing an ethos of saving, deferred gratification (investment), hard work and praising altruism. Whereas the infantilist ethos today praises spending (we are the only industrial nation in the world with a NEGATIVE SAVINGS RATE!), impulsive acquisition, selfishness and a "gimme gimme gimme" mentality.

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Washington, DC: Thank you for your work, and for participating in this online chat. Your books were staples of my education in political theory at Franklin & Marshall College. My question: How could a business inform the public of the existence and merits of its products in such a way as to not infantalize adults?

Benjamin Barber: Thanks for this thoughtful question. You are right to suggest that advertising originally was intended to let people KNOW about products and services they might actuall need and want. And there is nothing wrong with Apple talking about the iphone, or Crest telling us about a new toothpaste. But the new marketing is far less about "information" than about selling a mood, emotions, affect. Take the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising exec who said "I love Head n SHoulders! it's all I use!" but hten confessed he'd been bald for a decade! The new braning is about identity rather than delivering useful products, getting us to love what we don't need.

Reverting to fact based product advertising would help, but it isn't really advertisingbut MARKETING that is the culprit.

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Van Ness, Washington, DC: We're in thrall to the worst aspects of capitalism. Yet how can we escape?

Benjamin Barber: What the Post review did not really take up was the last part of CONSUMED, which discusses how we can retrieve the "public liberty" and public power associated with our citizenship in order to oversee, regulate and direct capitalism in healthy directions. Capitalist markets have always worked best IN PARTNERSHIP WITH DEMOCRACY. Since the eighties with Reagan/Thatcher style privatization and the war on government (which is actually a war on us, that disempowers us!), markets have dominated and government has been in eclipse. That 'un'balance is as bad as all government and no market (the vice of communism). It is the balance between Democracy and Capitalism that needs to be restored.

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Chicago, Ill: Ben -- What is the role of liberal education in preparing adults to think for themselves? What were the educational experiences in your life that were most significant and what were the qualities of particularly influential professors you think worthy of emulation? (I am still affected by Harold Fletcher and Joe Wall of Grinnell College and Al Rubinstein of Penn -- Jay Williams, Grinnell BA '67, Penn PhD, '76)

Benjamin Barber: Hi Jay, so good to hear from you (Jay is a fellow Grinnellian! see my coments on Grinnell during my encounter with Colbert on the Colbert Report -- on my website at www.benjaminbarber.org.) Yes, you are right education (and those special educators) are one key part of arming ourselves against marketing and consumerism. I suspect we all have teachers who have helped us to realize there are many important domains beyond the marketplace and consumerism. For others, the "educators" are special parents or a pastor or rabbi or imman. Or even a friend or mentor in the workplace who helps us see beyond the mundane and the material.

Nothing wrong with shopping and consuming.... until it becomes the only thing in your life -- which is what marketers hope to make it.

In a book called AN ARISTOCRACY OF EVERYONE I tried to draw the links between education and democratic citizenship. No wonder one of the reasons that democracy is under assualt is that public education is failing us (as we are failing public education).

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Washington, DC: I find that The Secret is a really interesting phenomenon that reacts AGAINST consumerism in a way that most thoughtful people find troubling. I'm so happy that some of my idiot cousins found The Secret because now they've accepted responsibility for their debt, but serious intellectuals are flabbergasted by the book's simplistic content. I mean, my cousins will never, ever be thoughtful, educated people, so why not give them something to settle their insanity? comments?

Benjamin Barber: Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't THE SECRET about how if we WANT things enough, we get them? So if you have cancer, and get get rid of it, it's YOUR fault, cause you didn't WANT to be cured enough? I may have it wrong, but that book seems to play into the arrogant narcissism of our times where if you only say, like a two year old, "I WANT IT! I WANT IT!" often enough, you will get it!

But forgive me for saying I'd rather talk about MY book Consumed than about Oprah's latest hit, the Secret!

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Raleigh, NC: The new issue of The Atlantic has an article on anonymous group suicide in Japan. David Samuels quotes Hideaki Anno, an animator whose work Samuels says has had the same cultural impact as Star Wars in the U.S., as saying Japan is "a country of children." Of course, Anno points to the country's defeat in WWII as the cause. But I was wondering if you've seen any of the same things you describe in your book in other countries or if this is uniquely American. If so, which countries and why?

Benjamin Barber: Thanks for the good comments about Japan. In CONSUMED, I talk a good deal about GLOBAL marketing, in Russia, India, China and elsewhere. Consumerism IS a global phenomenon. Remember when President Bush was in China, he demanded that the CHines stop saving (the old PUritan/capitalist virtue!) and start spending, just like us (the new infantilizing ethos of consumerism). So without question the pathologies I look at in CONSUMED are world-wide and spreading.

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Dayton, Ohio: Could you briefly contrast what you've written with works such as "The Cluetrain Manifesto", which argue that intelligent, adult consumers see through all the advertising, and will only patronize merchants who give us straight information, without the spin? Why have you come to such a different conclusion?

Benjamin Barber: Two things re: "intelligent consumers." First, there are always a few shoppers who "get it" and can self-restrain themselves, but many others do not an cannot (which may be why the AMA estimate we have between 10 and 20 MILLION shopoholics in the USA!) But second, and more important, is that whereas once upon adults had reenforcement from schools, religion, and government in dealing with infantilization and hyperconsumerism, nowadays, with privatization and the totalization of marketing, they find themselves alone.

An example: marketers now call moms and dads "gate-keepers" who must be "removed" so that children can be targeted. The old time conservatives who used to say the state ("the nanny state") pushes parents out of the way to infantilize and target kids haven't said much about the marketing and corporate executives who do the same thing.

So all in all, I think to believe we can get out from under hyperconsumerism all by ourselves, with a little will power, is a little Panglossian, given thta it is the LOGIC of postmodern consumer capitalism that is pushing consumerism on us with a vengence.

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THX-1138: So are you pessimistic that we're stuck with it? What about those of us who refuse to play along - our lives will be fine, but the hoi polloi around us are ruined?

Benjamin Barber: it's not the hoi polloi vs. "us smart folks." Rather, as I said in my last answer, it is that all of the major forces of modern society -- corporate, government, religious, educational -- are working against us and making it tough to overcome marketers and consumerism. Which is why, though I am not pessimistic, I do think that consumers can't fix things by themselves. (I have a section of the book praising civic consumerism and corporate responsibility, but suggesting they cannot cure capitalism from the inside.)

Rather, as I wrote earlier, it will require that we reassume our common power and common liberty as citizens to oversee, regulate and redirect capitalism in a heatlhy way. Example? Bottled water. We have clean water from taps all over America, yet spend 10 billion a year on bottled water nobody can possibly be said to "need" in America. Yet at the same time, billions in the developing world do not have access to potable water at all. Capitalism could help! microloans to villagers to make hand pumps to get clean water from the water table. Entreprenurial endeavors aimed at using local clay to make filters for water, or sisterns to collect clean rain water. WIth a small part of 10 billion invested locally around the world in such enterprises, you coould help people survive AND give capitalim a real purpose again.

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Washington, DC: Thank you for taking my earlier question. A follow-up: If marketing rather than advertising is the culprit, then what law(s) should our government pass to resolve it?

Benjamin Barber: Well to start with, we should ban marketing to children -- say under four, but maybe under eight or twelve (or sixty!). We might insist on some relationship between offering hard information about products and marketing.

Also there are illicit stratgies like "buzz marketing" where teens are paid to PRETEND they are spontaneously enthusing about products given them by companies targeting teens. This is deeply misleading and could surely be regulated.

But above and beyond regulation, the real aim must be to restore a healthy balance between markets and democracy, and once again be sure than civic decisions (public decisions by citizens) trump private decisions (buying decisions by consumers).

Capitalism is supposed to serve us, not the other way around!

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Chevy Chase, Md: I'm a student studying political philosophy at American University. You wrote "Jihad vs. McWold" over 10 years ago and predicted the current global situation (crisis?). Ironically, President Bush claims that he is trying to preserve democracy and "export" it to Iraq. What do you make of this claim? What do you think will be the state of democracy in 10 years?

Benjamin Barber: actually I wrote the original Atlantic Magazine essay fifteen years ago! the book is now in 27 languages. But as you rightly say, one cannot export democracy -- especially not by force of arms. Imagine if we freed ourselves from the English and 1776 via French invasion of the American colonies!!! People must gain their own liberty. Democracy is in any case plural: there are many roads to many different kinds of democracy. Elections come last not first. All democracies must rest on a civic culture.

which is why (to relate your question back to CONSUMED) I am so disturbed by the eclipse of our civic culture by a narcissistic, acquisitive, materialist consumer culture that pushes citizenship aside.

In this sense, CONSUMED is first of all a POLITICAL BOOK about how to restore democracy and save both citizenship and capitalism (from its own contradictions).

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Alexandria, Va: What do you think will be the end result of the affluence trend? My friends and I have discussed everything from cultural backlash (decided this was unlikely), to economic recessions (maybe already beginning), to the fall of the Roman Empire. Looking back at other historical periods of excess (Victorian, etc) things seem to end in wars and recessions. Is this just a natural cycle that's ramped up because of technology?

Benjamin Barber: I'm not sure I'd call it an "affluence" trend, though affuence (people having more than they need) is a big part of it. But another response to affluence would be for people to use their material wealth to pursue other things -- real religion, art, culture, recreation, family -- all things that you don't have to BUY once you have bought what you need.

I don't think we are simply looking at aonther cycle. Rather, capitalism is reached a crisis which -- if we cannot respond to it -- may devastate our civilization (and screw up capitalism itself!)

The excess here isn't a result of DEMAND (greedy consumers) but of SUPPLY (too many goods, too few 'needs'). SO capitalism needs to be put back on a track where it responds to real human needs and stops fabricating them.

The reason I am optimistic is because I already see a natural resistance developing -- espeically among the young. Alternative music, the religiou revival, renewed political and civic involvement by young people, all suggest that resistance can come from WITHIN.

I was surprised and pleased for exampler (see my blog today on the HuffingtonPost) to discover that my nutty interview on the Colbert SHow actually generated a lot of book sales. That young people watching COMEDY CENTRAL also buy serious books!

(Hope you all will do the Same!!)

We are almost out of questions but still have a few minutes?

ANY LAST MINUTE QUESTIONS YOU WANT TO ASK????

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Benjamin Barber: Final note: everyone is talking about IMUS today, but this kind of scatological bigotry is another sign of a dumbed down, juvenile society. Imus is only one of many many in the public domain from Howard Sterm and Rush Limbaugh to Paris Hilton and the gansta rappers who are supported by big corporations in their infantile behavior. Which is the point of my book. Puerility pays! Imus is not the problem. We are Imus!

So we need to figure out how to change the direciton not of Imus's dumb remarks, but of the consumer culture, backed by the big corporations, that let Imus and his ilk make big bucks.

To do that, we need to retrieve the power we have as citizens.

For more, see my blog at benjaminbarber.org, and please do buy my book -- it's the last pill you will take to get off your addiction to pills! (my justificaiton for marketing it!!)

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Pittsburgh, Pa: Didn't Vance Packard address some of these same issues back in the 1950s? Or is he forgotten now?

Benjamin Barber: As I said in an early replay, the isue of consumerism, conspicuous consumption and so forth have been as American as apple pie for a long time, and Vance Packard (eg. the Hidden Persuaders) wrote about it two gerations ago. So did Herbert Marcuse in One Dimensionsal Man in the sixties.

What's new is the totalizaiton of the market, and the reailty that the primary insitutions are supporing it.

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river city: I'm thinking of the tragedy of the commons and how people don't care about community resources any more, just their own property. That's lead to a drive for more acquisition of more property, spending 24/7 at the mall, as you said. Each individual only cares about himself. and people don't care about the suffering of other people. They only want to increase their own acquisitions at any cost to others.

If harming community property (the environment) had more costs, people would change their habits.

Benjamin Barber: You are right about how invisible the social costs of private behavior have become. One remedy is to do accounting that makes visible the social costs of private choices. (don't we understand that buying gas guzzling cars ends up making us dependent on mideast oil and hence susceptible to distraous wars like the one in Iraq!) so you've got a good point!

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Vero Beach, Florida: I admit to enjoying clever sales pitches, anything from Volkswagen commercials to Apple's elegant websites (where you can check out British and Japanese versions of their snarky commercials). On the other hand, I own a Ford and a Gateway.

Benjamin Barber: Here is my last point. We all like clever advertising, and the devlish comptence of the marketers only markets only makes their messages the more dangerous. Many of us think we enjoy but can avoid really being "influenced." but the evidence is that even people who "know" they are being influenced, actually do get influenced. For example you drive a Ford rather than a Hummer, but what about public trasnportation (or a hybrid?)

None of us are immune -- so we've got to change the conumser culture back into a civic culture.

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