INSTALLMENT 58: 10 JANUARY 83

 

Ignorance ain’t no way bliss. It is a condition of extended infancy; it is balm for inactivity. Confucius tells us, “Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star.”

When the weight of knowledge grows oppressive, when the world is too much with us, we drop head into hands and think how much happier we would be if we were like those mythical drones we picture working on assembly lines, who know not…who know not that they know not…and whom we perceive to be always as cheery as bunny rabbits because they know not.

But that is another of the free-floating bits of distractive philosophy engendered and sustained by the paladins of the Status Quo to keep us from looting when the power grid overloads and the world is plunged into darkness. It is as much of a shuck as “Poverty is ennobling,” the line fed to aspiring artists so they don’t demand decent recompense for their efforts.

With all my soul I deny the dehumanizing subtext of ignorance being bliss. The ignorant are femur and cranium and sinew, even as we. They suffer and ache and yearn, even as we. They know they are beleaguered and unable to cope, beset by unfathomable Forces that keep them poor, that make the goods they buy fall apart before the time-payments are completed, that drive their children to bad street dope and Valley Girl dialogue. The only difference between those with wisdom and those without is that the former have an inkling of who is responsible for all that angst. The ignorant hurt just as much; they just don’t know who’s holding the hammer that keeps knocking them in the head.

Inexplicably, ignorance frequently does not produce the expected condition of humility; but rather a towering arrogance, in which state the uninformed clings to the justification of unknowledge like a doomed soul sinking in quicksand clutches a rotted vine. Ah’m an Okie frum Muskogee an’ damn proud tuh be as smart as a pencil eraser.

Trust me on this one: ignorance produces nothing even passingly close to bliss; what it encourages, tragically, is a condition of manipulability in the ignorant. Thus, when Ronald Reagan reaches an impasse with the MX missile, he employs the tactic of semantic pollution, renaming the weapon “The Peacekeeper,” and the malleable uninformed puff up with Hestonlike patriotism and simper their approval. The wool has thus been pulled over.

But the travail wrought by ignorance affects us in a hundred tiny ways on a personal level every day. In an effort to make the point on the most mundane level possible, consider this:

Several weeks ago I mentioned en passant that receiving resubscription hustles from magazines as much as a year before one’s previous subscription has run out…pissed me off mightily. It was one of those idle Erma Bombeck comments that I thought would get a cursory mumble of agreement from others who’d been likewise lumbered…but nothing more. Imagine my surprise at receiving a dozen cards from readers who were as incensed as I was. Apparently, it is an imposition that angers a great many of you.

So I did some checking with the subscription manager of a national magazine, who has been a friend of mine for many years. He asked that I not use his name, but this is what he wrote in response to my query:

“Renewals are the life-blood of magazine publishing. When the renewals are pouring in, our president walks around smiling; it makes his day. New subs are usually offered at a low discount rate just to hook the reader: we don’t make a dime on them. Renewals are where we get fat; they’re the best and easiest way to make money. They are the reason we exist.

“I looked you up in our computerized subscriber files and, as I suspected, approximately three times a year you receive what is called an ‘advance renewal.’ It tells you that we are giving you the opportunity to extend your sub and alleges that in this way you are being protected from inflation. That, of course, is bullshit. All our subscribers get those letters, regardless of when the sub expires. Nowhere does it say the sub is running out; but people get confused and think that’s what the letter must mean, so they just keep sending those offers back to us and they keep paying for year after year after year. We love. people who do that. We think they’re jerks, but we love them. Loyal subscribers. Some people actually don’t expire until 2003 AD. It absolutely convulses me: we probably won’t even be here then; not with the trouble we’re having getting available ad space filled. Damn television!”

He went on to explain that six months before a subscription expires, they start sending out regular renewal notices. If they get the usual money return for “advance renewals” from the blissfully ignorant, it will be between 2 and 3% of the notices sent out, which he estimated to be between 5000–8000 renewals at $24 a shot. And so, even if it’s only six months premature, it means his publisher can invest between one hundred and twenty thousand / one hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars in a money market account at 9 ½–10% interest.

Unless you wish to lay claims to being a philanthropist, letting someone else play with even twenty-four bucks of your money at those kind of rates, makes you a patsy. Ignorant. But how much bliss attaches to not being able to buy twenty-four dollars’ worth of food for the family?

He went on to say, “You’ll receive up to six efforts, each pretty much saying the same thing, just packaged and worded a little differently than the ones directly preceding or following it. The 5th and 6th efforts tend to sound a bit more dramatic, if not hysterical and panic-stricken; but people are actually paid a lot of money to write these packages for us.”

There is surcease from this hustle, fortunately.

Just send a note, along with your mailing label, to the circulation director of the offending magazine(s), asking to have your name removed from all mailing lists, mentioning in particular resubscription appeals. By law they must honor your request. Just don’t write the note across the front of a bill or renewal notice. Only a computer will see it.

Now that we’ve shone light into that corner of your ignorance—hoping that by arguing from the smaller to the greater you will perceive the value of taking note of the tiniest incursions into your privacy and well-being—we are ready to move on to the next annoyance: those ugly glued mailing labels that deface the magazines you want to keep for reference or rereading later. Those labels that obscure the fine art or expensively-commissioned photography that you are prevented from enjoying in an unmarred state, that if you try to remove leave the cover of the magazine adhesive with remnant glue that rips off the back cover of the next issue stacked on top of it.

From the smaller to the greater. Next week you will discover that something as seemingly unimportant as which cover—front or back—the magazine uses to affix the label is a manifestation of Big Business’s disrespect for you as a consumer.

Next week I will ask you to enlist in one of those small crusades that will do nothing more than improve your life in an almost imperceptible way. But it may give you a feeling of having some power, of getting a little more respect from those you support with your money and your loyalty.

Next week, for your pleasure, we begin the Addressee’s Crusade. Bring your grail and your lionheart.