David McElroy

Their voices were quiet, but I could tell the man and woman were arguing. She seemed calm and dispassionate. He was full of rage. They were sitting near me Monday evening.

His angry words got louder. Finally, he stood and glared down at her.

“I don’t care what you think of me,” he said loudly. “I don’t need you or your approval!”

And then he stalked out of the restaurant, never looking back.

I knew he was lying, but I have no idea whether he knew that. If he hadn’t cared about the woman’s approval, he wouldn’t have been so angry. He wouldn’t have protested so strongly. And if he really hadn’t cared what she thought of him, he wouldn’t be a normal human being.

I’ve been fighting this battle all my life. I don’t want to care what anybody else thinks about me. I don’t want my actions to be shaped by fear of being hurt by your disapproval. I’ve often lied to myself and I’ve sworn I didn’t care.

I don’t want to need you, but I do. I don’t want to crave your approval, but I do.

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For half an hour, I had forced myself to listen to something I cared nothing about. Hal and I were talking about some new technologies for capturing real estate sales leads from our website. He’s the owner of the realty company where I work and we talk about technology quite a bit.

But this time, the discussion was purely based on finding sales leads and automating the sales funnel to turn leads into clients. The technology is powerful and realistic. I suspect it will work for us. There’s a very good chance it will be profitable.

But the truth is that I simply didn’t care.

Hal has a sales background. In fact, he’s probably the best salesperson I’ve ever known. He enjoys the process. In fact, he gets excited about it.

But as we talked — and I tried to make myself care about what we were talking about — I suddenly had a moment of clarity.

I don’t care about making money, at least for its own sake. I care about ideas. I care about causes. I care about fighting a good fight for something I believe in. When that makes money for me, it’s a nice benefit.

But I’m never going to care about making money as an end in itself.

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Television commercials frustrate me. I don’t even own a television anymore, but I still stream football and basketball games on my MacBook, so I can’t escape all TV ads.

The culture we choose to allow around us teaches us what “normal” behavior is like in that culture. We’re rarely conscious of this, but culture shapes what children will become and it reinforces those cultural norms for adults.

Before mass media existed, we learned from the behavior of family, friends, associates and strangers around us. But once mass media arrived, that role was increasingly filled by movies, popular music, television shows — and now by social media.

Television commercials are one of the most important components of that culture. Huge companies pay smart and talented people a lot of money to manipulate us — to make us want to give them our money. They don’t necessarily intend to define what the culture is, but they do. In part, they define the culture and, in part, they also reflect what certain cultural elites force them to project.

Since I avoid most of what popular culture has become — because I believe the culture has become dangerously dysfunctional — it’s often jarring to encounter it. And I’ve been feeling that way lately when I see the “normal families” in these commercials.

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