Every moment is spent in search.
Is it really right in front of us? – Satori?
And what happens once we’ve found that moment?
Should we drop everything and clutch it for the remainder of life?
Is it to be clutched? Or is this feeling of possession another level of illusion?
If you feel you should be doing something different, most activities in life become somewhat meaningless.
Commercials prey off of this. “Sex” sells because we hope to take at least some aspect of life, anything, and make it transcend the banality. A puritan attitude designates norms and sets a certain behaviour outside. Advertisements establishing appropriate and non-appropriate ways to act and make them seem obvious, universal.
The notion has been planted in our brain that gross excess offers a way out. This is where commercials come into play.
A scene in front of a newstand. The vendor returns the woman’s forgotten change. Already this commerical is making money the conversation piece. After all, the whole point is that if you buy State Farm insurance, you will save money. And with this money, you can do all kinds of things…
Pause at the :21 second mark. Read the titles of the magazines.
Obviously in a commercial they can’t use real magazines. That’s a mountain of trademarked material, so they have to make up their own.
Above his left shoulder is a sports magazine with a blond model, posed alluringly. Above his right shoulder is a magazine that reads “Stocks & Bonds Daily.” Above that is a magazine called, interestingly enough, WOMAN. Next to this left hand is a publication called Mountains. There’s one for Travel, Guns, Pure Muscle, Podiatrist, News. Reads like a list of top ten google searches.
This seems pretty innocuous. Of course it would, after having been conditioned to accept this logic. But in fairness, this isn’t much different than what a real magazine stand would look like.
Advertisements deliver a mindset, encouraging consumption. And the way it does this is by making us yearn for the opportunity to escape the rat race, even for brief moments, yet presents the rat race as the sole option, as reality itself.
The irony is that the reason most people are miserable is the insatiable grind of capitalism itself, turning them into interchangable automatons.
When I went to China, I was taken aback by the blatant communist propoganda.
It was so larger than life, captivating, intimidating.
But even more alarming was the realization that we are bombarded by our own propoganda…
Active Philosophy 