Yes, but there is a difference in believing advertising can educate and change behavior for motivations that are rational than simply appealing to some perceived need.

For me, it's was the realization that writing is a craft, a trade that you treat much like anybody else in trades treats their own. Sounds simple, but it took the 'self' out of it that so often gets in the way. For me, it was freeing. Now I write without judgement.

What you call advertising is misleading. There are two kinds of advertising. That which works and that which doesn't. Sad but true. It's a cynical business.

Haha. I actually went back and reread. Moralism vs morality. Victorians excelling in the former. He credits it to having begun well before Victoria's birth. But an interesting observation on why that era produced so many interesting, if not eccentric, people.

I did have one of the biggest smoking cessation campaigns in history. But it was not by educating.

Would love to agree, but you are confusing educating with advertising. Getting someone to buy an SUV is not the same as getting someone to act selflessly for a bigger cause. Consumerism is based on satisfying individual needs and exacting those needs above the common good. However...

Three of the things I regretably discovered after a career in advertising:

1) People don't fear what is real, but what isn't.

2) Getting people to change behavior is nearly impossible.

3) To paraphrase PT Barnum, people are way dumber than you ever imagined. Sadly true.

Jaques Barzun had some interesting things to say on the topic. Does he make the index?

Congratulations!