“Which is more important? The world that exists? Or the one you are responding to?”
“Which is more important? The world that exists? Or the one created by ADVERTISING?”
A frequent Mysteryshrink statement in the official Home Branch Office: Each of us makes decisions about how we spend our TIME, our ENERGY, our MONEY, and our LOVE.
Our love isn’t limited, in fact the more we give away, the more we have. Not so with money, time, and energy. Our money, time, and energy have limits…and there’s a great big, better paid, and highly motivated industry out there trying to decide FOR you on how to spend your resources.
The next several entries on how ideas planted in your brain…can direct behavior…will be concerned with CULTURAL FORCES DESIGNED to TAKE YOUR MONEY and YOUR FREEDOM….Not to mention keep you all around nervous…
Keep in mind the lesson from Inception–the notion of planting an idea in the brain of a person— then watching that idea grow. (See Leonardo DiCaprio, Inception, and the “Lady Who Loved Freud Incident”)
Now, I must first confess a teensy lack of objectivity when it comes to advertising games…a tiny, itchy pain haunting me from a very young age. And this teeny pain has resulted in run-ins with the commercial powers-that-be more than once.
The Fat Lady Fiasco.
The first time I locked horns with the power-brokers of persuasion, I was ten. The family was attending a travelling circus with a carnival side-show alley. This was before the era when children didn’t leave their parents’ sight, though given what happened, perhaps the new methods are better. As it was, after studying the photos and sketches on the outside walls of her tent, and pausing for much deliberation (I was one tight-fisted kid), I decided to pay $.50 to see the Fat Lady.
Well. I’d seen fatter women digging through the frozen food bin at the Safeway. I was hot. I demanded a return of my funds and was refused. Thinking this was indeed a free country, I planted myself by the entrance and informed everyone passing by that the Fat Lady was a gyp. You’d think “carnival security” which didn’t have the best reputation…(My sister and I believed that the freckles on the carnival workers’ arms were evidence of syphlis, not that we had the faintest idea what syphilis was.), you’d think carnival security would be backed off by a paying customer practicing her rights as a citizen. But, no, my budding efforts at spreading the truth were shut down and my parents were called to collect me. That was my first brush going against the Commercial Man.
The Hannibal Lector Credit Card blood-sucking machine will have to wait. Just don’t buy anything for a couple of days, okay? What does advertising have to do with what we tell ourselves about ourselves and how much fun we’re having on this little trip? Close your eyes, click your ruby heels together and repeat to yourself: “I am not my car….I am not my car….I am not my….” “…I am not my butt size…I am not…my…”
