The New Culture of Desire 5 Radical New Strategies That Will Change Your Business and Your Life

by Davis, Melinda

• ISBN13: 9781416593058
• ISBN10: 1416593055
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-02-06
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

A wholly new force is driving human behavior today, and it's turning the world as we know it upside down and inside out. Human behavior is now being driven by a new survival instinct -- a new primal desire -- that is invisibly but unstoppably reshaping the world, from the most intimate details of our private lives to the dynamics of the global marketplace.The New Culture of Desirereveals and chronicles this present and future brave new world -- the beginning of Human History Part II. According to futurist Melinda Davis, it is evolving right under our noses, and we need to adaptnowto survive -- and to thrive.Described variously as "a secret weapon of the Fortune 100" and a "hired-gun visionary," Davis divulges the startling conclusions and once confidential details of The Human Desire Project, a six-year, multidisciplinary study to investigate what makes human beings want what they want and do what they do. Originally initiated as a landmark study for big business (Davis's client ranks include distinguished companies such as AT&T, Merck, Diageo, Procter & Gamble, L'Oreal, Unilever, and Lucent Technologies), The Human Desire Project evolved into an even larger phenomenon with far-reaching implications for all of our lives. InThe New Culture of Desire,you learn to leverage for your own good fortune, today -- and into tomorrow -- the same insights and strategies that inform the future plans of some of the most powerful corporate movers and shakers around. Here are just some of the revelations ofThe New Culture of Desire: The unconscious formula that we all use to make choices now Why bliss beats sex, money, and power The new peak experience: the State of O The single greatest unmet consumer need The battle for our interior lives The five strategies we enlist to satisfy the new primal desire -- and what they mean for your life and your businessHarvard-educated and street-smart, Davis examines the telltale signs of our rapidly morphing world with the nose of an MIT/MTV anthropologist and an arsenal of case histories. Quizzes and checklists appear throughout the book to help you diagnose your own desires. New marketing models provide new ways to speak more powerfully to the heart of your customers' true desires. This insider's analysis of the most powerful desire-driven trends of our time provides a strategic guide to the inside of the new millennial mind, to help you understand your own motivations and those of your colleagues, customers, and friends. Here are some of those cultural trends that you need to know about: Magical Thinking: Looking for the simple, supernatural solution The Third Sex: Having it all Yoda-ism: New candidates for a god Tribe Crashing: The ultimate insiderism Hot-Blooded Spiritualism: Drumming up the saving graces Raging Amazonianism: The rise of the butt-kicking babe Pleasure Healing: Self-indulgence that does you good P. Q.: The Performance Quotient: Upgrading the human processorA pioneering work that looks into what people want and why,The New Culture of Desireblows traditional future-planning theory and practice sky-high, and replaces it with groundbreaking strategies that really work.

Author Biography

Melinda Davis is the CEO and primary seer of The Next Group, a futurist think tank in New York, and has consulted to multinational corporations, venture capitalists, politicians, and pop culture icons. She is also a fiction writer and winner of a Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York City with her husband, Ealan Wingate.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Human Desire Project

A New Understanding of Human Behavior

Human History, Part II

Welcome to the Age of the Imaginational

Life on Terra not so Firma

How to Make Sense of Human Behavior

When Reality Itself Has Gone Mental

The New Primal Desire

Struggling for Psychic Survival, Shooting for Ultimate Bliss

Bliss and The Bottom Line

The Calculus of O

The Hierarchy of Healing

Strategy I: Doing The Work of Grief

Mourning the Death of an Old Reality

Denial

Primal Escapism"I Am Outta Here"

Outward Bound in an Inward Age

Our Appetite for Survivalism, the Old-Fashioned Way

Anger

An Age of Rage

Fury As Imaginational Politics

Raging Amazonianism

Or the Incredible Rise of the Butt-Kicking Babe

Bad Behavior

"Oh Yeah? Watch This!"

Smart-Assism

The Bad Behavior of the Deeply Cynical

Bargaining

Why Everyone Is Talking to God

Calling in the Invisible Powers

Depression

Our Black Plague

An Evolutionary Warning?

Strategy II: Pursuing Instant Altered States

First Aid for an Ailing

State of Mind

Pleasure Healing"Say Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh"

The New Medicine Man

Shamans of Altered States

Hot-Blooded Spiritualism

"Drumming Up the Saving Graces"

Strategy III: Looking For Safety in the Human Embrace

The Search for Imaginational Shelter

The Human Net"Catch Me!"

Primal Tribalism

The New Gangs of Psychic Safety

Tribe Crashing

"Please! Let Me In!"

The Third Sex

Is the Concept of Sexual Identity Obsolete?

Strategy IV: Building a More Solid Sense of Self

Our Quest to Stay Visible in an Invisible World

Why We Are Fat

The Existential Equivalent of the SUV

Meta-Posting

Kilroy Goes Global

Personality Multi-Plexing

When One of You Is Not Enough

Luxe Populi

The New Elitism

P.Q. The Performance Quotient

We'd All Feel Much Better If We Were Highly Effective People

Strategy V: Finding a Clearer Path

How to Make It Through a Complicated New Jungle Navigators, Advocates, and Avatars

Someone to Take the Point

Mythmaking

The Magnificent Truth Safari Machine

Yoda-ismNew Candidates for God

The Marketer As Meta-physician Let the Buyer Be Healed!

How to Succeed in the New Meta-Physical Marketplace

The Consumer As Mental Patient

Customer Diagnosis

A New Model for Understanding Wants and Needs

Customer Treatment

New Models for Marketing Epilogue

Notes

Index

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