Slogans and tag lines are ubiquitous—every organization seems to have one, an unfortunate symptom of our society in which absolutely everything is for sale and advertising and the hustle are drowning out clear communication. Like enemy artillery in a heated battle, slogans are incessantly incoming: “Just do it.” “Expect more. Pay less.” “The ultimate driving machine.” “Finger lickin’ good.” “Semper fi.” Most are innocuous even though they are often silly or annoying, particularly the ungrammatical ones like “Got milk?” or “Think different.” Moreover, they are essentially meaningless, merely an advertising ploy to fix the organization in the minds of its intended customers.
In a recent visit to the website of the American Automobile Association, I saw that the current slogan of the organization is “Outsmart Life.” I have also learned that AAA has a commercial with “Outsmart Life” as a theme.
“Outsmart life” is especially bad. I wonder how the AAA marketing department came up with such an outlandish idea or whether the AAA management even considered the connotations. If one thinks about it, which I suspect few customers do, that slogan doesn’t make sense. What does it mean to “outsmart life”? The idea is not just absurd but arrogant. While AAA’s services such as roadside assistance, towing, and road maps come in handy at times, they hardly rise to the level of being able to outsmart life. The opportunity to outsmart life sounds like something spouted by a desperate real estate salesman trying to peddle five acres of bald desert forty miles from Yuma.
That slogan brings up the more general question of how anyone might be able to outsmart life. Trying to outsmart life is a fool’s endeavor. After all, life always wins. We all die, and throughout the span from birth to death, we have to struggle with the vagaries of fate. Poor Sisyphus thought he could outsmart life and cheat death, and as punishment for such foolishness he was condemned to push that boulder up a hill day after day for all eternity. In Walden Thoreau offers his own view on life: “I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
While those are wise words, it takes more than words to get through the reality of day to day existence—more than the platitudes one sees in quote collections on the internet or in responsive readings in Unitarian church services. We cannot outsmart life, but we don’t need to, not only because doing so is impossible but also because there is too much living to do as it is without distracting ourselves in such foolishness. We can do well enough if we simply accept the uncertain nature of our existence and then celebrate the gift of each day. Living fully is a wiser and more practicable goal than trying to outsmart the inevitable. Membership in AAA is not going to help us much in doing that, although their jump starts come in handy at times.
Just cancelled my AAA membership. Thanks…! =:o)
Given your self-reliant nature, I think you will survive just fine without AAA.
I was thinking that a better slogan for AAA than “Outsmart life” would be “If you need a truck or a tow job, give us a call.”