A lovely modern guide to Epicurus, and my own question
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 2:00 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irornIAQzQY
At ~24 minutes.
After watching this, it makes me think: is advertisement a great barrier to modern happiness? I mean, why do we allow people to pollute our visual and auditory environment in such a way? If it's presentation that is the problem, then why are we simply not just giving a fixed amount of our time (at flexible hours) to see introductions to new products and ideas? A kind of citizenry duty to evaluate the prospects of what we should invest collective effort in to mass produce and mass distribute and what we should make part of our stock of consumed products... ?
It would be much more reasonable. Advertisement is a kind of anarchy really, with some civilized countries hopefully having introduced some restrictions to it (alcohol, smoking, and so forth), but in context of totality they are very weak restrictions. In the end, this pollution appears for me both by experience of myself and others to be blocking sight for our own choices, and giving a beneficial order to our own lives but more importantly the life we have as a society, as a collective of humans. It not only appear to pollute each one of us as individuals, but when we try to reason and talk with other people, the ideas of advertisement seems to creep in to our social lives and because we can't ignore it totally or fully enough we have to assume that other people see them and believe them more than we really do! And we can't ask either everyone we meet what they have seen in terms of advertisement, but not just advertisement, but also its father: branding. Coca cola for instance, it seems to have crept into our lives as a standard drink that we have and serve our guests (at least in Norway), but also other forms of popular beverage, how often do we ask if people really needs it or wants it?
What if what they really need is a glass of milk ^^ or water? Because of the extent and reach of coca cola it is assumed that it's a reasonable drink to serve, but not because it is needed or wanted necessarily, but simply because it exists in the public consciousness, and existing there it becomes something for which we assume other people to know and have an established relationship with. With advertisement in general there is also that problem with creating associations to a product as being related to good things when there's no grounds for having this association. It is building block to unhealthy compulsion, that in times of weak will takes us into following paths that has no reasonable gain for us proportional to what we really need and should invest our time in. To me, it appears as if advertisement simply is the devil of ethical reasoning, the devil that tries to deceive us from actually making philosophical ethical choices and ordering our lives after what should be...
At ~24 minutes.
After watching this, it makes me think: is advertisement a great barrier to modern happiness? I mean, why do we allow people to pollute our visual and auditory environment in such a way? If it's presentation that is the problem, then why are we simply not just giving a fixed amount of our time (at flexible hours) to see introductions to new products and ideas? A kind of citizenry duty to evaluate the prospects of what we should invest collective effort in to mass produce and mass distribute and what we should make part of our stock of consumed products... ?
It would be much more reasonable. Advertisement is a kind of anarchy really, with some civilized countries hopefully having introduced some restrictions to it (alcohol, smoking, and so forth), but in context of totality they are very weak restrictions. In the end, this pollution appears for me both by experience of myself and others to be blocking sight for our own choices, and giving a beneficial order to our own lives but more importantly the life we have as a society, as a collective of humans. It not only appear to pollute each one of us as individuals, but when we try to reason and talk with other people, the ideas of advertisement seems to creep in to our social lives and because we can't ignore it totally or fully enough we have to assume that other people see them and believe them more than we really do! And we can't ask either everyone we meet what they have seen in terms of advertisement, but not just advertisement, but also its father: branding. Coca cola for instance, it seems to have crept into our lives as a standard drink that we have and serve our guests (at least in Norway), but also other forms of popular beverage, how often do we ask if people really needs it or wants it?
What if what they really need is a glass of milk ^^ or water? Because of the extent and reach of coca cola it is assumed that it's a reasonable drink to serve, but not because it is needed or wanted necessarily, but simply because it exists in the public consciousness, and existing there it becomes something for which we assume other people to know and have an established relationship with. With advertisement in general there is also that problem with creating associations to a product as being related to good things when there's no grounds for having this association. It is building block to unhealthy compulsion, that in times of weak will takes us into following paths that has no reasonable gain for us proportional to what we really need and should invest our time in. To me, it appears as if advertisement simply is the devil of ethical reasoning, the devil that tries to deceive us from actually making philosophical ethical choices and ordering our lives after what should be...
