In the age of media saturation and torrents of digital data heaped upon our supersaturated grey matter, finding ways to sift and winnow are exponentially gaining importance. We used to turn ideas over and around in our minds, deciding, like we sometimes do with pebbles found on the beach, whether to pocket the novel ways of thinking about the world around us, or whether to toss them back into the shoreline from which they came. The inspection of elements warrants less and less of our attention as the data stream increases. What we are experiencing now is similar to the entire beach being crammed into our pockets, without a good way to stop the ever increasing burden of more. some helpful techniques and tools lie at our disposal, if we only take the time to look for them or to employ their simple and elegant design. We can benefit immensely by stepping out of the torrent, reassigning value to things that really matter and making choices that link us to a more humane world view, way of life and relationship with one another and ourselves.
First, we must understand that we are more than a perceptual apparatus, seeking stimulation. In part we may be just that, but we are so much more if we just take the time to step away from our addiction to stimulation. By periodically unplugging ourselves for our typical sources of information we can become more facile with communication generally and begin to unleash our tethered minds from the bondage of imagery that people are paying to maintain. In the past week, I have allowed myself to be exposed to several things that I almost never experience. One was "real life crime dramas", a sort of heavily edited and condensed crime show where the whole thing becomes a tease, to get the viewer through the next series of commercials. It was seductive and disorienting to say the least, but the most interesting part of this programming was the sort of commercials that they run. One was pairing Coca-cola with health and fitness imagery, as if you could get healthy and strong from drinking their brand of poison. another tried to do the same thing with fast food, making it look like a healthy part of a good diet. The questions that these images and ideas brought up in me were twofold, "Who is paying to have these images and ideas broadcast?" and "Who is the intended audience?"
Frequently, just asking the "Who?" question is enough. Billionaires and multinational corporations rarely, if ever, have our best interest in mind, they are too busy tending to our brainwashing to consider us as human beings. We are simply the tools that they use to concentrate more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands. by their design, we are reduced to infinitesimally small units of consumption, nothing more. Some other interesting advertizing techniques caught my eye as well. One in particular was for a retail chain that used children doing a rendition of the "Yo' mamma so fat, she..." but with a twist, they were building one another up and praising the virtue and style of mammas who shop at corporation X. This was hilarious in that it not only didn't make you want to shop at corporation X, but just brought up how out of touch the Madison avenue commercial production corporation was as well. Not only were they not savvy to the folks who they were trying to appeal to, but they probably never set foot in the discount retail chain stores. they don't have to shop where the poor people go to save money. Keeping in mind that the vast majority of what you see on a day to day basis is either the result of the 1% trying to convince us of something, or it is the fallout from them having their way with us. The only difference is that we pay for the second one with our day to day living and dying, while the first is subsidized by us in higher costs for the products we do consume.
What are they trying to say versus what do they mean is another important set of questions that we need to understand if we are to have some level of control over our own exploitation. They may be trying to say, "Our soap is better than their soap." but what they mean is, "Since there is no difference between our product and the kind you can make yourself for a tiny fraction of the cost, we will offer you a false sense of status, freedom or wealth if you purchase our soap rather than making your own. Anyone interested can find recipes for soap now, but the powerful elites are bargaining on their brightly colored packaging, secret ingredients, and NASCAR sponsorships to keep their product flying off the shelves. Pairing every sort of grave fiction with the stark reality of paying far too much for far too little is the way advertizing has been allowed to work for centuries. One look to the ancient tombs of the Pharoes and one can see that these were just massive ad campaigns to prove the supremacy of regular guys. In the end it was just a subsidy of elaborate pawn broker schemes when the tombs were looted, the money and wealth got laundered and the artifacts smelted down for subsequent generations of rich folk.
The "When?"and "Where?" are nearly constant and seemingly everywhere on Earth simultaneously.
That brings us to the great "Why?". In our country, the good old U. S. of A., there is an interesting quirk of tax law. Every single penny a business spends on advertizing , no matter how intrusive, foolish or filled with lies it may be is taken directly off the top of corporate profits and as such is non-taxable. So when hundreds of thousands of dollars get spent putting the corporate logo for Tide on a race car, guess what, no tax is paid on those dollars. If a corporation spends a billion dollars telling us that they are on our side, or seek to improve our lot in life, that money is tax exempt even if the corporation is in the business of of exploiting us and ruining the environment. Supplanting human interest for self interest often leads to asking better questions or asking the right questions to begin to make sense of what it is that we are actually seeing on a day to day basis. Unplugging from the media torrent can also help us to see what is going on more clearly. Talking to one another, our neighbors, families, friends and co-workers can begin to yield clarity about how and why we are so harshly treated by the media and when we begin to see ourselves as worthy of better treatment, perhaps we can ask ourselves even more important questions, like what can I do and where do I need to take a stand to help create a more compassionate and humane world? We really need to get to the bottom of the question, "How can we take our world back from those who would desecrate it and exploit us in the process?"
This is what Northern Wisconsin looks like today and what it would look like under the exploitation of mining that has been proposed for it by wealthy out-of-state interests. The 1% have purchased and installed a Governor here who is more concerned about their wishes than our own. The fascist dictatorship that democracy has morphed into serves only to disillusion our young people, circumscribe their option in the future, poison the planet and degrade our quality of life. When will we begin to be the advertisers of truth? How will we step up to meet the challenges that the ultra-wealthy are throwing at us? We need all the vision, creativity, and strength we can muster to defeat those who would sell us out for their enrichment. Please, ask the right questions and teach your children to do the same.
First, we must understand that we are more than a perceptual apparatus, seeking stimulation. In part we may be just that, but we are so much more if we just take the time to step away from our addiction to stimulation. By periodically unplugging ourselves for our typical sources of information we can become more facile with communication generally and begin to unleash our tethered minds from the bondage of imagery that people are paying to maintain. In the past week, I have allowed myself to be exposed to several things that I almost never experience. One was "real life crime dramas", a sort of heavily edited and condensed crime show where the whole thing becomes a tease, to get the viewer through the next series of commercials. It was seductive and disorienting to say the least, but the most interesting part of this programming was the sort of commercials that they run. One was pairing Coca-cola with health and fitness imagery, as if you could get healthy and strong from drinking their brand of poison. another tried to do the same thing with fast food, making it look like a healthy part of a good diet. The questions that these images and ideas brought up in me were twofold, "Who is paying to have these images and ideas broadcast?" and "Who is the intended audience?"
Frequently, just asking the "Who?" question is enough. Billionaires and multinational corporations rarely, if ever, have our best interest in mind, they are too busy tending to our brainwashing to consider us as human beings. We are simply the tools that they use to concentrate more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands. by their design, we are reduced to infinitesimally small units of consumption, nothing more. Some other interesting advertizing techniques caught my eye as well. One in particular was for a retail chain that used children doing a rendition of the "Yo' mamma so fat, she..." but with a twist, they were building one another up and praising the virtue and style of mammas who shop at corporation X. This was hilarious in that it not only didn't make you want to shop at corporation X, but just brought up how out of touch the Madison avenue commercial production corporation was as well. Not only were they not savvy to the folks who they were trying to appeal to, but they probably never set foot in the discount retail chain stores. they don't have to shop where the poor people go to save money. Keeping in mind that the vast majority of what you see on a day to day basis is either the result of the 1% trying to convince us of something, or it is the fallout from them having their way with us. The only difference is that we pay for the second one with our day to day living and dying, while the first is subsidized by us in higher costs for the products we do consume.
What are they trying to say versus what do they mean is another important set of questions that we need to understand if we are to have some level of control over our own exploitation. They may be trying to say, "Our soap is better than their soap." but what they mean is, "Since there is no difference between our product and the kind you can make yourself for a tiny fraction of the cost, we will offer you a false sense of status, freedom or wealth if you purchase our soap rather than making your own. Anyone interested can find recipes for soap now, but the powerful elites are bargaining on their brightly colored packaging, secret ingredients, and NASCAR sponsorships to keep their product flying off the shelves. Pairing every sort of grave fiction with the stark reality of paying far too much for far too little is the way advertizing has been allowed to work for centuries. One look to the ancient tombs of the Pharoes and one can see that these were just massive ad campaigns to prove the supremacy of regular guys. In the end it was just a subsidy of elaborate pawn broker schemes when the tombs were looted, the money and wealth got laundered and the artifacts smelted down for subsequent generations of rich folk.
The "When?"and "Where?" are nearly constant and seemingly everywhere on Earth simultaneously.
That brings us to the great "Why?". In our country, the good old U. S. of A., there is an interesting quirk of tax law. Every single penny a business spends on advertizing , no matter how intrusive, foolish or filled with lies it may be is taken directly off the top of corporate profits and as such is non-taxable. So when hundreds of thousands of dollars get spent putting the corporate logo for Tide on a race car, guess what, no tax is paid on those dollars. If a corporation spends a billion dollars telling us that they are on our side, or seek to improve our lot in life, that money is tax exempt even if the corporation is in the business of of exploiting us and ruining the environment. Supplanting human interest for self interest often leads to asking better questions or asking the right questions to begin to make sense of what it is that we are actually seeing on a day to day basis. Unplugging from the media torrent can also help us to see what is going on more clearly. Talking to one another, our neighbors, families, friends and co-workers can begin to yield clarity about how and why we are so harshly treated by the media and when we begin to see ourselves as worthy of better treatment, perhaps we can ask ourselves even more important questions, like what can I do and where do I need to take a stand to help create a more compassionate and humane world? We really need to get to the bottom of the question, "How can we take our world back from those who would desecrate it and exploit us in the process?"
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