The Supreme Court Decision today involving a Virtuous Web Designer anguishing over being forced by the Forces of Evil to make a rainbow wedding cake… or something like that, reminded me of an instance when I faced such a dilemma, when Professional Standards conflicted with my Personally-Held Beliefs.
Fortunately, I wrote a diary about the incident for Street Prophets back in Days of Yore. Activate recycling powers!
Sometimes You Win and Sometimes Gurus
(Posted to Street Prophets on Wed Feb 6, 2008)
I cannot call myself a student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the famed guru of the Beatles and founder of Transcendental Meditation; but I once received a lesson from him.
After college, I worked as a production artist for a weekly lifestyle newspaper in Des Moines. Granted, "Des Moines" and "lifestyle" are not words that normally go together, but then neither do "Iowa"and "yogi". Yet there, in the town of Fairfield, Iowa stood the Maharishi Institute, home of TM and Yogic Flying.
For many years Yogic Flying was a closely-guarded secret of the Institute. They claimed that practitioners of meditation could overcome the bounds of gravity. Skilled adepts, like the Maharishi himself, could hover in the air for hours at a time. But no one ever saw them do it.
One day, they did.The Institute announced that it would give a public demonstration of Yogic Flying at a downtown shopping center. They billed it as "the First Yogic Olympics". The students all sat cross-legged on a large mat and then suddenly they would bounce into the air. The event was staged as a competition between the students: who could bounce the highest, bounce the furthest, cross a distance in the shortest time, etc.
I have to say I found the demonstration disappointing. Deep down, I’d like to believe that levitation is possible. I’ve seen Jonny Quest; I know how it’s supposed to look. Hadji closes his eyes, says "Sim,sim, salabim..." and slowly rises into the air. This just looked silly.
But my lesson had nothing to do with yogic flying, bouncing or cartwheels. My lesson came about a year earlier.
As I said, I was working as a production artist. Most of my job consisted of pasting up ads to go in the paper. This was back in the Paleolithic days when we physically stuck pieces of type on paper like our caveman ancestors. Sometimes, if I was lucky, they’d have me draw a cartoon as an illustration.
One week, I was assigned to design an ad for the Maharishi. A couple times a year,Maharishi Yogi would come to Des Moines and give a public lecture on Meditation and Transcendence and Stuff Like That, and I was given the job of making a two-column ad to promote it.
I was just out of college and I realized this was my first real ethical challenge. I knew that, working in advertising, I would someday have to work on an ad for something I disagreed with. Up to this point, that meant pasting up pictures of high heeled pumps for Mister Todd and his Amazing House of Shoes. Here I would be promoting a philosophy I strongly disagreed with. But I also felt that, as a Professional Artguy, I had an ethical obligation to do my best work for a client, regardless of whether or not I thought the client was a flake. How would I handle it?
I decided to handle it by doing a basic layout and putting as little into it as possible. One single typeface in a couple weights for emphasis; centered text; picture of the Maharishi in one corner; plain vanilla ad with no pizzazz whatsoever.
The clients liked it.
They thought it looked simple and clean and conveyed the message they wanted.
What’s more, in the two and a half years I worked for that paper, this was the only occasion where I got a compliment from a customer on one of my ads.
There must be a lesson in there someplace. Someday I’ll figure out what it is.
Maybe if I meditate..