Advertising

Let's put it bluntly - ADVERTISING SHITS ME.

By and large. Apparently advertising works, but I've yet to understand why. Well, I do kind of know - it pricks the subconscious of consumer minded people. They think that they have to buy something because the advert appeals to them. Quite often, adverts hardly mention the product. This way the message bypasses conscious thought and enters straight into the subconscious, where it can become part of a person's programming. At least, that's the theory as I understand it.

So people buy things that they don't need and spend money on the useless rather than the useful.

And I apparently am some kind of freak for not being sucked in by it all. Sure, I buy things, but I buy want I want, not something that I am told to want.

This makes me wonder what is going on in the minds of habitual consumers. Nothing that they are aware about, I imagine. So we end up with the 'Unconscious Civilisation', blindly following whatever crumbs are laid out for them. We end up with a Global Financial Crisis (the biggest farce since the Depression - after all, there's still the same amount of stuff about the place - more even. All bubbles will burst eventually. Yet, our resources are still the same as they always were.)

I seem to be getting sidetracked.

Advertising per se is not the problem for me. It's the mindless hype, the dumbing down, the sheer idiocy of how a product is going to make your life one of bliss. Give me a break! Our lives start with ourselves and flow out into the world and back again. Whatever you put into it should enhance, not distract.

And herein, I think, is the issue: a little escapism is one thing, but a lifestyle based on escapism is the path to ruin. And this is the lifestyle that advertising encourages. So while the prices of new gadgets comes down, the cost of living itself rises. Money is not a good gauge of cost because the actual energy required to import something from China is higher than something locally produced, even if the monetary cost isn't.

Sidetracked again.

We need a Conscious Civilisation. We need a world in which people do not use ideology or religion as an excuse for grabbing power, where we assist each other in producing a better place to live, where messed up instinctive drives do not rule the night on our streets, where we work together, where the individual has rights but so does the group.

God, all this from my distaste for advertising.

Advertising is designed to appeal to fear and greed. If we do not live in fear and do not feel greed, we are free. I think that is my point.

Here's a nice photo of a city park to end with, just because I like it.