God Is unwell

When Friedrich Nietzsche declared that god is dead, he wasn’t just talking about a religious god.

Nietzsche was talking about how all institutions are powered by their believers. If people stop believing in an institution, it will wither and die.

Yes, this goes for the Catholic church. But it also goes for big banking, big publishing and big advertising.

All these big institutions are becoming tapped out. They’re built on a mantra of growth, growth and more growth. What happens when they’re all grown up?

Take traditional advertising agencies. They were developed in the US by former military officers of the OSS after World War II to peddle airtime on the then new fangled medium of television. They’re essentially an American invention to serve American mass media to American consumers.

The processes, language, culture, values were all American as in white bread, mom and pop, and apple pie. All great for the 1950s and 1960s when postwar growth was pretty much assured.

But America has changed. The America that Republican voters wish to return to no longer exists. The past is gone.

The institutions are dying.