Just say no to advertising

There is nothing quite like a light from Heaven saying “Think on your own!” But at least don’t let cruel enemies dictate your thoughts and feelings. The Servants of the Light have come to set you free; the rulers in the dark are seeking to enslave you.

This is a quick reminder that emotional advertising is evil, even demonic in a literal sense. Such advertising, most notably TV and movie ads but also the simpler form seen in many colored magazines, is callously designed to create insecurity, inflame desires for things you don’t need, and to make you identify with external status symbols.  It seeks to pull you apart from yourself and fuse you with highly temporary objects.

Modern advertisers know more about the human psyche than most of their victims, so it is no wonder they are successful. And make no mistake: To them you are valuable in the same way that cattle is valuable to the rancher. Your wellbeing is of no concern to them at all, as long as you can be used to create more profit.

There is no point in being angry at these people, though. They are captives of a deeper darkness than most of their victims, a hollowing that is the antechamber of Hell. The human subconscious operates in symmetry: What you do to others is done unto you. By making others into lifeless objects, your own life is gradually lost. Theirs is a fate worse than death. In any case, they are not your concern. You are.

There are two main defenses against manipulation. The most obvious is to run for your life.  Don’t watch TV or movies unless you have a good reason to. This is generally a good idea, but particularly so if there is advertising involved. The adverts are designed to manipulate you, and unless you are highly aware, they will.

There, I mentioned the other defense: Awareness. This again falls into two parts. One is to be aware of the purpose and form of the advertising. Typically it will depict a situation in which people receive acclaim, praise, respect or understanding from others, or experience emotional closeness. These are things people often feel they lack, and this feeling is aggravated by seeing others in these artificial situations over and over. In order to obtain these immaterial values, you are told (subtly, of course) that you need to purchase something you otherwise would not need.

The other part of understanding is your understanding of yourself. If you don’t know what makes you tick, if you don’t spend time watching yourself and looking over your actions and reactions, it will be hard for you to see when people are turning your knobs and pressing your buttons to make you work for them. Another benefit of such self-insight is that you are not easily manipulated by people in the flesh either.  Relatives, coworkers, bosses, many such people have techniques for manipulating you. If you know yourself and what is really important to you, they cannot pull your strings and make you dance to your tune.

If you are not yourself, who is going to be?

Be free!

15 thoughts on “Just say no to advertising

    • How about the businesses and job that could have existed if people did not waste their money on a) things they don’t need and would not normally have missed, and b) the cost of the advertising itself, a huge industry.

      Or are you suggesting that without manipulative advertising, we would have dug a hole in the ground and put our money there rather than spending it on something of our OWN choosing?

  1. Or they wouldn’t spend it all. There people who sit on piles of money.

    Is it even possible to measure whether advertising has a negative or positive impact on society?

    There are definitely forms forms of advertising that need to go.

    • I’d say it is rare that mentally healthy people in free countries “sit on” much money without investing it, at the very least in a bank, where it would presumably be put to use for production of more useful goods or services. At worst, perhaps some people would work shorter hours, if they had more money than they felt they needed. I don’t see that as a big loss.

  2. Why do you hate the free market?

    I find this quite amusing. The only people who really want to see advertising gone are the hardcore wacky lefties.

    Pretty much everyone else considers it a necessary evil.

    • The cold and calculating decision to manipulate less aware people by temptation, increasing their unhappiness by inflaming their desire, for profit? How could I not hate that, when my wish is to promote the freedom and lasting happiness of all people?

      What I want is not for the government to crack down on this (they might just replace it with something worse, the way the Norwegian government did with gambling, which they have taken completely control over and are now pushing through state-owned broadcasting on a large scale.)

      What I do want is for each person to reach a level of mind-brightness where they can see through these scams and be free from them. It does not require being a guru or bothisattva. It is something within reach of everyone with a working adult mind.

  3. You are creating a problem were there is none.

    Advertising lubricates the economy like nothing else can…

    I can’t imagine any government coming up for a replacement for advertising.

    How does the government run casino compare to private ones? How is it worse?

    • Brainwave entrainment reduces the need for sleep, so you don’t need to worry so much about your sleep. This also makes it easier to sleep. Part of what makes it hard to sleep is the knowledge that you should be sleeping but is not. When you are able to get part of your rest simply by exposing your brain to these frequencies, you won’t be under that pressure anymore.
      Besides, it reduces tension in the body and dampens the frenetic running of the thoughts. Tension and tumbling thoughts are bad for sleep, as I am sure you have noticed.

      I usually play a 2Hz track at night, as it simulates the effect of deep dreamless sleep. Normally people have this deep sleep early in the night, but if they are very excited, this may not happen. People also tend to get less of this type of sleep as they grow old, and this causes the body to age faster, since deep sleep is when we release most of our human growth hormone.

      Anyway, here’s a link to that track on my home computer if you are curious. It lasts for 40 minutes, but it takes about 8 minutes for entrainment to occur the first times. This time gradually decreases with familiarity, so it happens quite fast for me now.

  4. Totally out of left field and in a conversation in which I don’t belong, but . . .

    Butterfly = final stage of metamorphosis?

    Purposely delaying becoming a butterfly = being Buddha-like and purposefully not going off into the other planes of existence so you can stick around this earthly dimension to help your fellow man? There’s a prayer that I can’t quite remember that calls upon the “Buddhas” to keep being reincarnated instead of waltzing off to Nirvana. (Although waltzing to Nirvana would be difficult.) (Did I mention I’m very tired?)

    Not sure about the Jesus reference. Doesn’t matter in my mind, anyway. People are going to think, say and write whatever they want to about Jesus. And I’m going to think, say and write exactly what I want and choose.

    Carry on with y’all’s deep conversation now! I’ll just back out and sit quietly!

  5. “Butterfly = final stage of metamorphosis?”
    Pretty much.

    The author of the book claims whatever we believe to be true will come true. So if we believe that drinking lots of water will make us healthier – then drinking lots of water would make us healthier.

    Basically everything is an extension of the placebo effect.

    Almost all of us believe in cause and effect.

    Except Jesus and a bunch of other people close to becoming a butterfly.

    He was able to defy reality – turn water into wine, walk on water, etc ect

    The process of becoming a butterfly is bascially picking apart all of your beliefs, thoughts, opinions – demolishing everything about yourself and turning into the God you are.

    These are not my views – just the author’s views.

    • If Jesus really did not believe in cause and effect, he presumably would not have bothered with the Sermon of the Mount or other lectures, since he would have known that it would have no effect anyway.

      Of course, he might have done it anyway just for fun. Believe what you will. You do anyway, I’m sure. ^_^

    • And I’m only responding to it. ^_^
      In the end, of course, we are each responsible for our own happiness, or whatever other goal we may have instead of happiness.

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