DON'T FORGET TO TURN OFF YOUR TV: APRIL 24th - 30th
My girlfriend and I went to the cinema yesterday, (yeah she came back, we're seeing how it goes.) We were unfortunate enough to catch 'An American Haunting' which was so utterly shit in so may ways that spending time and space detailing its flaws is too good for it.
The only thing that bugged me more than the aforementioned unmentionable was the HALF AN HOUR of TV ads we had to sit through before even getting to the film trailers let alone the feature. Now, being the kind of person who's quite willing to go and seek out information when I want it, I have a passionate dislike for all forms of advertising which I consider invasive and gravely detrimental to our society.
I particularly resent paying £6 for the privilege of watching such dirge, especially via a medium as overwhelming as cinema, it's not as if you can change the channel or even really look away, you're immersed.
Now the latest issue of Adbusters(1) mentions that, by some counts, we in the west are exposed to over three thousand marketing messages every single day. Any surprise you may feel at that figure serves only to demonstrate that we are not aware of the majority of these.
Just to leap off at a tangent here, as tends to be my way, allow me to share with you one of my favourite facts about the human brain. Apparently once you perform the same physical action two thousand times a new, dedicated neural pathway is completed. This means you have 'learned' that action, ie. don't have to consciously think about doing it.
When I think about how overwhelmingly complex driving seemed when I was first learning and then compare that to driving today this makes sense. I no longer consciously think about depressing the clutch or changing gears, my body just does it for me when it needs to happen.
We're all so very busy these days that the idea of repeating something over and over often seems like too much hassle. Can't we just get a machine that'll do it for us, or pay someone else? Well unfortunately millions of years of evolution has given us repetition as a learning tool.
Given our combination of long term memory and the ability to record experiences outside our heads, eg. through text like this, it's tempting to think that once we've heard or done something once, we 'know' it. Repetition here might even seem an insult to our highly vaunted intelligence.
So have we got out of the habit of using repetition? Have we forgotten how to use the most fundamental system of self growth? Well no actually, not all of us. Those three thousand marketing messages mentioned above may well be for hundreds of different products and services but there is one very obvious common denominator: "BUY STUFF".
Scary as it may sound we probably have specific neural pathways, ie. physical shapes in our brains, that have grown in direct response and for the sole purpose of consumer capitalism. While we may not be making full use of repetition ourselves the big corps are and they've gotten pretty damn good at it too.
Regardless of what your conscious mind may 'know' repetition to the subconscious can be devastatingly effective. (I'm hoping for some informative comment about mantras from my most excellent friend MSM here by the way, no pressure mate 
) So what can we do? They're all around us, even inside our heads, are we helpless?
Well I say no.
Those ads at the cinema not only really pissed me off but actually made my feel a little nauseas. Like all tools repetition is blind and can be used by anyone for anything. When I see ads I think about capitalism and pollution and famine and mental illness and poverty and misery. It's unpleasant, and there's certainly nothing new about the thoughts I think each time, but then that's rather the point.
It's all about building up associations, imagine Pavlov training HIMSELF to salivate at the sound of a whistle. It takes effort and that's what the advertisers rely on, they count on you not being arsed to think about what they're saying to you, they bank on you just allowing it to slip in under the radar.
Well on top of all those terrible things listed above that lurk behind the products and services being sold, there's something else that i remind myself at every opportunity. I have never given my consent, written or verbal, for these companies to access my mind.
Now fair enough, if I choose to watch a certain TV channel or even open a certain page in a magazine I have a degree of control. I have no such control over ads in public space, like billboards, however and I simply don't believe that I could function in society while at the same time shielding myself from exposure to each of those three thousand daily marketing messages.
We are being violated, our minds are being raped over and over. I promise if you can bring yourself to think about that every time you find yourself watching an advert you'll find the effect ads have on you will start to change.
Of course something worth considering is the fallout of training yourself to be disgusted at adverts. They are all around you after all, can you really live your life in perpetual disgust? The answer is no, it's just too hard, but I've found that I tend to deal with that by switching off the TV.
Ads making you queasy? Read a book, write a blog, go for a walk, have a conversation, make something, do some decorating, dig the garden. Basically all those things you know you should do for your own good, the things you actually want to be doing but for some reason find you can't be bothered. Maybe this is the spur you need.
The world is, it seems, full of bastards trying to get into your pockets with their greasy little fingers. It's a depressing picture but there is hope when you realise: they can only do it if you let them.
footnote
(1) Adbusters: The Journal of the Mental Environment, if you like my blog you'll probably dig Adbusters too, they're more than just a mag with a whole variety of projects and campaigns ongoing such as Turn Off TV Week and Buy Nothing Day, check them out @ www.adbusters.org
You might not agree with everything they do or have to say but one of the very best things about them can be found in their letters pages where they always print readers' criticisms as well as complements and comments.
