Social conventions are deeply imbedded in a culture - in every culture for that matter.  The ongoing convention in entertainment is enemies.  You’ve got to have enemies.  America feeds on fears.  I don’t know if you noticed, but we slipped from “Commies” to “Muslim extremists” as effortlessly as changing the typeface.  As the English writer Bruce Robinson said, “Hollywood is basically Yanks running from special effects.  From the infantile end of Scooby Doo, right up to the mainstream, it’s the same ‘ethic’ of fear.  There are monsters and madman and Arabs out to get you...and the only place there is no fear is in the ads.  The American Dream will become fear relieved by advertising.  Only in the ads will people enjoy security and freedom and peace.” 

The current election cycle has already spent something like $500 million on ads that promise "change is just around the corner."  The promise is that government will rescue people from the world’s woes; the woes of man.  When a child is frightened it runs to its mother.  When a citizen is frightened it runs to a politician, to government, an act which empowers that politician or government far beyond what it can actually perform.  Thus the parallel social convention of poor and rich people alike expecting constantly diminishing promises, which leads to more and more crime, divorce, infidelities, joblessness, drop outs, runaways, addictions, etc., etc., etc.

The social convention of election cycles, each one promising to heal the nation, put a chicken in every pot, a low-mileage car in every garage, a bright tomorrow, gets harder and harder to enjoin.  Like the comedian George Carlin said recently, "I just like to watch the whole thing play out, the whole end of civilization."  The more fear you can induce in the masses, the more control you’ve got over them.  And on and on it goes.  An awareness of this has caused me significant discomfort as I try to peddle my toilet kit via advertising and events.

I mean advertising is paid communication through some non-personal medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is obviously controlled.  The “message” is manipulated and influenced through a lot of skill in generating a bad taste in your mouth for someone or something, while moving you toward a product or service or personality that will solve everything.  I will say this, I’ve tried to cut out as much of the manipulation as possible.  I want people to see the global sanitation problem as common to all of us, to everyone on Earth.  Rich or poor, healthy or sick, all of us benefit if the Wild places get healthier.  Everyone is needed to save the remaining Wild places, or truly suffer serous environmental and psychological consequences.  See, there's the fear thing again.  I say this to you, if the Wild places were suddenly healthy tomorrow, I’d shut everything down and forget it.  But they’re not.  Still, I'm very uncomfortable with the whole concept of advertising even as I engage in it.  And that paradox of feeling is not going to go away.

Will Ultralight Wilderness Toilet Co succeed in producing a new convention through advertising regarding young and old alike taking responsibility for their own body wastes when using the Wild places?  I cannot see into the future, per se, but I can see that the remaining Wild places are getting sicker by the year.  I'm concerned that if I quit trying to convince people to behave responsibly [when using the Wild places] because I loathe the ad business, they will all simply die off and disappear.  It's a dilemma that I wrestle with everyday.