Villains are weaker than we like to imagine them to be

My first thought is that this sort of article has me thinking of the popularity of Dark Knight, which suggests that for some reason we kind of want right now to imagine villains as master-minds, as all powerful (did you notice how many things just seemed to go the Joker's way, btw?), and kind of too readily "co-operate" with arguments made by those who would show just how hopeless things are right now.

It does sound like Buy-Ology is one of those books written by someone who kind of enjoys believing that the rest of us (not him, surely) are--despite our hope/belief that we are otherwise--all too easily moved and controlled by those who know better than we do about how people work, and so doesn't really want to explore the considerable problem subliminal advertisers are faced with amongst a considerable some in our populace.

Namely: If somewhere deep down in our subconscious we don't want to "associate" with those who would use and abuse us, we won't do so (and there are prominent neuropsychiatrists--who know that our subconsciouses are not as Freud argued, that is, essentially all the same, but vastly variant, depending on how well nurtured we were as infants--who'd back me up on this [Alan Shore comes to mind]). Sensed deep down there, we know when we're in the company of manipulators. And if you've been raised in a healthy family, in a healthy community, you'll recoil from (rather than be attracted to) manipulation and spend much of your teenage/adult life (the influence of commercial culture, notwithstanding) associating with businesses that share your respect of others and the world. And there are many, many businesses out there, that are like that. And many more ready to emerge.

(And second time in a row, Shannon, you've written an article where you begin by summoning forth mighty villains and finish by concluding that resistance is futile. Are you you helping set the scene so that when a true hero arrives, we'll cheer especially loudly?)

make a product memorable

this is the stuff of packages and bags and cups at the side of the road.

It's officially illegal to put a poster on a pole almost everywhere in Canada, but a cup in the ditch can irritate, get memorable, advertise anywhere.

I remember when posterers were followed and in some cases arrested in Vancouver. At the same time we postered ankle deep in logos. Packages, bags and cups.

Wilson Bryan Key

Alas, he left us October 2008. His books on subliminals live on.

I am trying to remember the name of the hotel in Hawaii that advertised in the Xmas season Newsweek with Saddam Hussein on the cover. 1990. This is a classic of non-military subliminals, really funny if it's funny.

Looking for it. Sex in the lawn grass, no planes in the sky, no one in sight, no boats on the sea, just a man on what looks like a diaper change table, being worked on, and a complaint about a woman who really wants to play tennis a lot. There's a statue in the foreground, on the right, with a huge baby-hatted stone figure pressing a penis against what looks like a slice of bread. Feel the Hyatt touch.

Feel the Hyatt touch and taboo. I actually showed this to a man who could not see the penis on the statue. Yikes, the power of church and abuse.

The hotel featured a huge land base, probably larger the Kandahar air base and equally stolen, and boats and bars and big plants, and the ad was all about nobody-can-see penis touch for rich guys.

You just have to put an ad like this on the table and not quite look at it for about five or ten minutes. Suddenly Wilson Bryan Key lives.

waikoloa ?

I think it was the Waikoloa, since sold to or whatever, Hilton.

Anyone gotta pile of old Newsweek, like National Geos for the geo. Of course not the Newsweeks.

Try this

Here is an antidote that works:

Never go shopping to 'see what you can find'. Always have a list. know what you are going for. If you don't find what you really really want, go home without it (and without anything) and research better. I have been known to look for hairpins of the right kind for more than five years, after my supply from the old country ran out for good, then suddenly found them in three stores within a two-week period, all run by immigrants from India. Long live diversity! The point is, I lived with no hairpins for those five years, and never bought another hair-gadget to try to fill the gap. I knew what I wanted. And that is the key. The hairpins are a metaphor. The same story has been repeated with countless items I have been looking for over the years. Stuff like a goose-down quilt or double dutch licorice coins could not be had anywhere when I first hit Canada. I am still looking for a decent slide-barette the kind that is tortoise-shell patterned in the plastic and has a little pin as the hinge, comes in six sizes, as well as my real dream item: A can opener MADE IN CANADA. That day, I'll go crazy celebrating. I already know exactly what I'll serve for the party.

The joker wouldn't have had it so easy if people really had plans, rather than dreams. You can tell the difference from whether they have points where they check their progress, not to mention a decision tree for when things are not as expected in the going. Not if, when. My family builds a bookshelf from scratch, if no one sells one that fits to the nearest five centimeters. Why accept something that will always be awkward? Your stuff should bring harmony into your life. If it won't, don't buy it.

Oprah had a book called organize from the indside out. It was about how the dumb way of cleaning closets is hitting your messy superflouosity with a steely eye and try to 'reduce' by a certain percentage. Instead, she said, you should imagine that none of it belongs to you, but you have been told you can take what you need. Then figure out what you need (this is a good trick), and then don't even look at the rest, but give it away (maybe a potlatch?)

Very cool article

As I've said before, this is the kind of material citizens used to read more often in the daily newspapers. In days of yore. No longer. But now we have the Tyee and other excellent venues that are filling the void (nature does abhor a vacuum).

Regarding Ms. Rupp's topic, there ARE techniques to counter the invasive, unwanted industry of tampering with our personal desires.

1. Turn off your TV and cancel your cable subscription!
2. Read lots of articles like these;
3. Avoid glossy magazines and instead, read publications that have a real purpose (eg CCPA Monitor; Briarpatch; Canadian Dimension)
4. Spend your time with people and books instead of shopping.
5. Find out about the Slow Movement and learn its lessons.

Many people have figured these strategies out themselves. Many more are looking for encouragement. Who knows, this may even "go viral". Great article.

"Buyology?" yeesh...

What the research fails to address is different brains are wired differently. What makes one person go for the Marlboro man stuff, doesn't necessarily "do it" for all.

A Monkey on our back

Its Black Friday as a line-up of 2000 shoppers await the bargins on Long Island, outside a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York. The anticipation of low-priced flat screen televisions and games was to much for the shopper as they pushed and shoved their way despite store being still being closed. In the chaos, Wal-Mart worker, a 34-year-old man, was trampled to death. As he lay on the ground, the bargain mad shoppers used him like a rug as they stomped and walked over him while shopping in thestore.

Have the media and society in general turned us into such consumerists that we show any sense of human decency in order to save a couple dollars off a flat screen monitor?

do we need this?

morechatter:
Yes there is that, and also the millions of perfectly good monitors that are dumped because they do not meet the newest specifications.
China no longer accepts our junk, maybe once our landfills overflow we will learn a lesson?
I can accept that people want to enjoy having a computer, but we have to stop this forever upgrading frenzy; it is entirely created by the promoters for big business and serves no real purpose.
As usual it is the poor sap who works for peanuts who gets trampled to death!

Belief=image of desire

This is a tough one. In the 70s a technique called neuro-linguistic programming was published along these same lines. Very effective technique for manipulating belief and response, based on the hard wired relationships that develop between people and the words they use to craft beliefs out of. It utilised the asymmetrical wiring that results from right or left handedness.

The behaviourists have been busy.

I think a very effective defence might be devised based on introspective observation of the processes inside ourselves.

Learn to distrust belief without convincing evidence to back it up. Learn to respond to desire by analysing the whole chain from beginning to end. To be susceptible to desire is to be vulnerable to manipulation and attack through lies.

All our politicians use desire to believe as the basis of their power. They lie in ways that make people who want things believe, and make people who fear things easily fear them constantly.

How else can a man lie, get caught publicly, lie again and again and get caught again and again in ways that are quite obvious, yet still find a large population who are willing to believe?

Bailey

The drama you are drawing attention to and reinforcing, is the very attractive one of "good christian soldier" learning/finding ways to ward of "Satan's" various temptations/lies. We do this through vigilant attention to, and management of, our desires.

I like your encouragement of introspection, but I am
proposing that you too are offering something--in your case, a strategy--framed so that it will appeal to many at a very deep level, so that it draws one in before ample consideration. (Who doesn't want these days to imagine themselves especially well armored to take on a threatening world?)

Personally, I would like to encourage people to consider that in fact the would-be manipulators are much more our puppets than they are our controllers. They don't so much manipulate our desires as they do play their prescribed role and do their damndest to satisfy them. Their power evaporates, we get better politicians/corporate heads, not when we learn to control our desires, but when our desires themselves change for the better. And targeting that problem requires finding a way to give love to those who received too little earlier in their lives (and who therefore possess desires that overwhelm, which are dangerous)--that is, as much through desire and emotion as through intellect.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness does work for this, because it can allow real reflection on one's urges regardless of the stimulus or what the urge is.

Of course, when an author says to "be mindful," they try to borrow the commercialized glamour of "mindfulness," which seems to mean some sort of generic enlightened behaviour that you just do. Mindfulness in the meditative sense is a practice that is developed by, well, practice. A commitment similar to a physical exercise program will produce benefits that can be seen pretty quickly. That kind of mindfulness has the potential to inoculate one against harmful impulses of anger, greed, and tuning out.

Mindfulness 2

And part of the problem with so many pop-science books is that their take on the science is so spectacularly simplistic.

Being able to elicit a reaction in a particular area of the brain does not automatically trigger a corresponding behavior. And as tquid alluded to about mindfulness, the awareness it brings enables people to immediately sense their own states and desires. In fact, part of becoming mindful is eliciting and reflecting on desire. The key here being that one has an awareness of the desires, yet not have to act to fulfill that desire, merely accept that it is there, and let it go.

That's not to say it's easy. As tquid also mentioned it takes a lot of practice. A hell of a lot of it.

Where advertising is most effective is in it's unending repetition in creating the desire to acquire. And since the vast majority of humanity does not practice mindfulness, that advertising effort is extraordinarily effective in convincing most people that unending material acquisition is the route to happiness.

Taking on the Capitalist's religion.

In the end, it all depends upon the ability of the individual to be truthful enough with him / herself to sort out wants from needs in a clear enough fashion to figure out if she / he is working to live or living to work.

In the latter case, it is likely he / she has succumbed to the consumerist doctrine that it is instant gratification that makes life worth living.

tquid

If you can reflect on our earliest, most primary motivators, then, yeah, you're along the right path to doing much good.

But getting at these earliest desires/memories/motivators can be very difficult because they're located in a different brain system (mostly in a network centred in the amygdala, rather than the hippocampus and orbital prefrontal cortex). Meditation might well still enable this, but the likelihood to me seems less if the meditation techniques are marketed in ways that speak so appealingly to our need for defensive posturing. Meditation requires "practice" and "commitment" but "produces benefits that can be seen pretty quickly." It enables "mindfulness" that "inoculates one against harm." Not cowboy-machismo, but maybe monkish-machismo, which might appeal to many who would much rather drown a bunch of drugs than undergo years of psychotherapy, but who would much rather believe the results are owing to their own responsible focus and hard work, to their own great mind mastery, than to some other source. With the result being possibly the enabling of soldier-like autism (i.e., I am at peace while at war) rather than true emotional enlightenment.

The hook

The main use of this self awareness we're talking about is to allow us to recognise the hunter. When you realise that a strong desire has arisen that has no reality in your life, you're feeling the prick of the hunter's arrow.

This gives you the opportunity to make the choice yourself, rather than being driven to the slaughter unawares.

It would involve teaching children to lie in an organised fashion, so they can understand what's being done to them. I suppose that in itself makes it unlikely to be done. Though it would be fun to write the textbook, "Chapter Three - The Spanish Lottery and other Elementary Confidence Tricks". "Chapter Four - The Thousand Dollar Suit and it's Uses in the Hands of The Premier". "Chapter Five - Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain"