To What Are We Paying Attention?

Don't Be A Prisoner To Advertising Lies

For several decades, if not centuries, we have been paying attention to the wrong things. Why? Advertising has hijacked our minds.

The word 'advertising' comes from the Latin 'ad vertere', which means 'turn the mind toward'. Advertising has become so all pervasive that it has succeeded in turning our minds away from what is true, beautiful, and eternal. It implores us from every nook and cranny of life to pay attention to false promises.

Advertisers desperately want you to care about their message, product, or service. They want you to care about what other people think. In the advertisers cruel, profit-oriented world, love is a conditional commodity to be dispensed only to those with the right stuff.

They are lying in order to exploit our most deep seated fear - the fear of not being loved.

We are social creatures, and love is a requirement of life. To love and be loved is the basic human condition, not something that can be purchased. Advertisers don't want you to know this; you don't need any of their stuff to be loved.

Most people don't care about what you own, or where you holiday, or how many little green pieces of paper you have stashed away, although countless messages tell us differently every day. Most people will care about you regardless, because that is what humans do.

We can refocus our attention and turn our minds toward more rewarding pursuits, like the betterment of the human condition across the planet. That is what humans do for each other when they aren't distracted.

There are a number of things that you can do to reduce the influence of advertising.

Living: Lifestyle Changes

• Kill your TV
• Get off the computer
• Burn all glossy magazines
• Get into nature and escape advertising altogether
• Relax, meditate

Learning: Media Literacy

• Learn about media literacy and the methods of exploitation employed by advertisers
• Share what you learn with your kids so they are more media savvy, and can think critically about the purpose of media messages
• Learn about creating an environment free from excessive corporate graffiti.
• Call out corporations with questionable marketing campaigns
• Help to influence legislation - support anti-advertising organizations, and sign petitions calling for increased governmental regulation of the advertising/marketing industry (The American Psychological Association has called for regulation of advertising geared towards children. The American Medical Association has questioned the motives of big pharma in the push to market drugs directly to patients, a multi-billion dollar undertaking larger than budgets for researching and developing new drugs)

Loving: Letting Go

• let go of fears that are magnified by advertising - we have everything we need to be loved the moment we are born.
• give in to human nature and love unconditionally - practice forgiveness

The best thing you can do is take back control of your mind, and not care a stitch about the false promises of uncaring advertisers. They are not worth your attention, or your money.