Hummer Owners Claim Moral High Ground To Excuse Overconsumption, Study Finds

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090921162156.htm

Note the last paragraph. It could explain the common reaction on DU to stories about smoking or obesity.

From the article:

They investigated various Internet expressions of anti-Hummer sentiment, but they were equally interested in the ways Hummer owners framed themselves as "moral protagonists" in the ongoing debate over consumer values. They conducted in-depth interviews with twenty U.S.-born and raised Hummer owners and found among these consumers an equally strong current of moralism.

"As we studied American Hummer owners and their ideological beliefs, we found that they consider Hummer driving a highly moral consumption choice," write the authors. "For Hummer owners it is possible to claim the moral high ground."

The authors explain that Hummer owners employ the ideology of American foundational myths, such as the "rugged individual," and the "boundless frontier" to construct themselves as moral protagonists. They often believe they represent a bastion again anti-American discourses evoked by their critics.

"Our analysis of the underlying American identity discourses revealed that being under siege by (moral) critics is an historically established feature of being an American," write the authors. "The moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090921162156.htm

That reminds me of story back in the 80s, when my late husband was a Union Pipefitter. Every winter he would buy CarHartts for his job, because he worked outside in the frigid air at his job. Carhartts were the only kind of clothes any of the working guys wore, and they kept them warm. They are rugged, very warm coats and winter garb btw .
One winter in the early 80s; he went to the small town outlet in our small town in ILL, and came back without Carhartts...he was shocked.
The clerk at the store told him "We havent gotten the shipment of Carhartts in this month, the company is shipping to Chicago and the cities first..."

Evidently, the Carhartts were being bought up BY YUPPIES IN HUMMERS. Not to keep warm, not to work at a real job, no, these were little CEOs businessmen with "frontier fantasies"...they were driving around Chicago wearing their Carhartts and driving their Hummers attempting to look like rugged men...Faux Frontiersmen.

So, the real men who actually NEEDED the Carhartts had to wait for the YUPPIES to fulfill their latest GQ fantasy.

This seems to be the same stupid thing.

... who wear Carhartts, but they are also a favorite among urban construction workers, who are a much larger market than Hummer drivers.

Ron Reagan wealthy types experimenting with their latest fantasy.
I hope its changed. Obviously the Hummer fantasies havent changed.

They got real popular after "Urban Cowboy". Hummers weren't made in the 80's.

that would explain it.

After They were sold as fast as they could make em. But Hummers weren't available until 2003.

The H1 Hummer was available in the mid to late 90s. Granted, not a whole lot of people had them because they were incredibly unwieldy and extremely expensive, but you could get them for a price. Der Governator was the first in the U.S. I believe to own one.

They were made prior to that but weren't commercially available. they were 100,000. I worked with someone who bought one. He still has it. It's his only vehicle. It get's better gas mileage than my 3/4 ton PU truck.:mad:

Turbo diesels tend to be pretty darned efficient, relatively speaking anyway. They need to be for military use. Sometimes gas stations aren't always easy to get to in the desert.

With the new ULSD fuel providing clean emmisions EU based turbo diesels are now invading.

Half the vehicles in Europe are efficient turbo diesels. That's what has taken over after years of fuel prices 2-4 times ours.

The fuel mileage of a hybrid or even better, with none of the complicated mechanics of a hybrid drive, the maintenance expense, or the declining efficiency of batteries over time and expense of replacement.

And you can run on bio diesel.

I've been seeing high mileage turbo diesel ads all over TV from euro car makers lately.

Hopefully this won't turn into another market change Detroit doesn't react to until it's too late.

Myself, I'm rebuilding a 1953 army M-37 1 ton pickup to a 4cyl turbo diesel, 30mpg expected.

Started a year ago, rebuilt from the ground up every single moving part, and should be on the road by end of year.

Then I get to start on conversion plans to electric or hydrogen power for it.

I can tell you pickups have always been popular here...

Gilleys not so much, never went there...

My first 'car" was a 1967 Ford Pickup my Dad handed down to me.

I think it got about 17mpg highway.. ;)

Most rural folks think Hummers are a joke and laugh at Yuppies driving them too.

snip...

The authors explain that Hummer owners employ the ideology of American foundational myths, such as the "rugged individual," and the "boundless frontier" to construct themselves as moral protagonists. They often believe they represent a bastion again anti-American discourses evoked by their critics.

===

by your comment on smoking or obesity since it could be read either way.



Choice in how much you eat or whether or not you smoke is not the same thing as "rugged American individualism" cast in a negative light. It's an adult choice that should not be made on your behalf. Anti smokers have essentially gotten America to stop smoking in public places, but that's NOT ENOUGH for those moral know-what's-best-for-you tits. They want to ban smoking altogether, but god forbid you attempt to ban food for fat people.

It's all absurd. Get out of other people's personal choices and the world will be a much more peaceful place. Odd that the people who claim the "moral" high ground are often the least moral and the most aggressive and hostile.

An attempt to protect people from the smoke of others, or to inform people of the dangers of obesity, is derided as nanny-statism. You're doing exactly that.

I stand by what I said. Get your ass out of my life, I mean "you" collectively, nannies.

So we're comparing hummer owners to smokers to fat people.

Nice. Define smoker. Define "fat". Define why a hummer is so much worse than a crappy 12 year old geo metro blowing blue smoke.

Not defending being fat or having a hummer or not taking care of your old non-hummer, or even smoking, but they are not in the same category unless you plan to stop beating your wife soon. Do you?

The nanny-state is anathema to me, but not because I am some caricature of a Professional American any more than you are a caricature of a Professional Do Gooder. The problem with "nannies" is exactly that they assume some moral imperative to take direct action instead of influencing the choices that people make. That kind of dictatorial thinking has NOTHING to do with being American, and benevolent dictatorship is still a dictatorship.

I hate hummers AND blue smoking cars. I really don't like to be encumbered by someone else's body mass in public transportation, and that's just being honest without making a judgment of WHO they are. I HATE second hand smoke, BUT if I want to eat a bag of cheetoes, get fat or smoke cigarettes in my back yard or car, it really is NOT ANY of anyone else's business and you are quite frankly wrong to think otherwise under any pretext, moral or otherwise.

wasn't a rugged american individualist?
OK
What about joe camel?

Bad examples. Anti-smokers are a special breed of people who don't stop at their own personal space, and yet would scream to high heaven if you banned them from eating more than 1300 calories a day on their behalf out of some noble concern that they might get fat.

Ugh.

In earlier times, people were familiar with death. They hunted and killed animals for food. Infectious diseases and childbirth death were familiar facts, and people died at home, not in the ICU.

Religion generally had some apocalyptic end to mankind, ranging from Christian second comings and passing away of the earth, to Ragnarok and other end-time destructions.

The chief paradigm of nature is not the steady-state. Instead, it is birth, growth, and death. This is true from the fleeting existance of small insects to the formation and failure of stars. Nothing is permanent.

Conservation, whether of individual health or of the ecosystem, only delays the end.

off to Google.

It's the battle at the end of the world.

KittyWampus

It is from the Norse mythology, and mean the end of the world. Where the goods bad and good one shall fight to the death.. But after all is dead and the earth is dead as we know it, a better day, and a better world in a state of paradise Will come out of the ashes...

The similarity with the end times in Antiquity and in early Christianity is clear, if not directly so indirectly by contact between the roman and the norse world in the times of christ and from there on as contact increased between the roman world, and the rest of the world.. And maybe specially after the vikings was starting their attacks on "the civilized world" after 780-800 the ideas of the end times was changing in the norse mythology too.. And some of the old norse mythology ended been part of the norse Christianity also.. Partly because it was more easy to convert people when they could get some of the old ideas with them. The name Hell is from the old Norse good who was ruler of the death world who everyone who was not killed in war, ended up as bleak shadows as their former self..

Diclotican

:P

A '94 and an '05 Accord. I'll be due for another in '16.

inevitable. did you mean something different?

Conservation is a a very "conservative" approach to the problem of humankind's position with respect to the ecosystem.

A more progressive approach would focus on how we must adapt to changing circumstances.

For example, there is a lot of talk about limiting CO2 emissions so that the planet doesn't warm. Alternative, adaptive strategies would also consider how to modify the atmosphere or land surface albedo to offset the effect of CO2. They would also consider how to adapt to rising sea levels if they do occur - as is quite likely to happen. For example, with a significant sea level rise, we should be considering how to manage aquaculture in the parts of Florida which will be flooded.

And most critically, if we want a world in which civilization continues to flourish for several generations without gross ecological crises, we should consider how to humanely decrease and limit the population to somewhere in the range of 100 million to 1 billion.

instead of influencing their rationale for those choices, collectively removes their choice. That's fairly new for so called "liberals" who are anything but.

It's funny the conservatives think education alone will keep teenagers from having babies, the progressives understand that you give them protection for when they make their own choices, but this new breed of "liberal" (sorry to besmirch the word) believes that cutting off the penis is the best solution, or fining teenagers for having a baby.

It's not liberal to make laws to take away choice. It IS progressive to teach people that owning a hummer is wasteful and even harmful to the environment. It is NOT liberal to ban the sale of hummers, or cigarettes, or cheetoes.

And socialist versus capitalist is yet another dimension.

So you can get 8 different political philosophies just from those.

Authoritarian progressive socialists are just as possible as libertarian progressive socialists.

I think I am therefore: (sorry bad pun)

an anti-social semi-socialist pseudo-capitalist libertarian-ish progressive. :P

into buying those Hummers as the designers and marketers played to their Reptilian Brain.

People usually aren't even consciously aware of what is shaping our decision making process. We like to think we do and that we are fully rational. We aren't. It's just not how human cognition works.

And the study only spoke to a grand total of FIVE people.

There is a BBC documentary called Century of the Self which explains how one DR.Bernays,a nephew of Freud,used Freuds research and findings,along with the works of other early phsychologists,and applied it to the advertising and marketing industries.
Basicly,what he did was teach advertisers and politicians how to use peoples phsychological make up in order to manipulate and indoctrinate people into acting in a way the advertiser or politician wants them to.

I highly reccomend that DUers familarize themselves with his work and in perception management.

that we cherish.

Thanks.

He's a clinical psychiatrist, he said ads manipulate our subconscious and therefore they're unethical.

Against marketers, politicians, and all those designing to manipulate you through fear, emotion, ego etc.

If you do not see their ads you can't be affected by them.

Said we 'mericans were "entitled" to our gas guzzlers - it was our right

... they were completely suckered in by the advertising.

which only makes them more pathetic in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Edit.

:hide:

:shrug:

They say they will still keep build them here but I'm sure this time next year they will be built like Yugo's.

I heard it fell through.

The Chinese company hasn't finalized the purchase yet. Earlier this week, however, the company announced the headquarters will be in the Detroit area.

http://detnews.com/article/20090922/AUTO01/909220417/1361/UPDATE/Hummer+buyer+likely+to+put+HQ+in+Michigan

wouldn't be more apt for them to drive a calistoga?

just more idiocy in a drive to defend their obscenely spoiled existence.

boats put back in the water...

I openly ridicule them, cast aspersions on their manhood.