I’m arrogant and egoistic, Fent, but I’d never sink to the level of even suggesting how people “ought” to either think or “act.” That’s up to the ‘spin’ doctors.
All I can attempt to do is try to ‘show’ or illustrate how so many people are ‘led’ by PR, what I call ‘spin’ and what Moreno calls–and rightly so–‘distraction.’
This sort of non-critical thinking–or non-critical feeling (thank you, Moreno)–impacts the way people vote and the way people live as a result of their vote.
I agree 100% with your assessment that marketing is spin, distraction, non-critical thinking, non-critical feeling etc. I just don’t believe that the sheeple will ever attain the skills to lift the veil; they will follow the latest trends, spin regardless. The need to be led is so deeply ingrained in their psycho-physiological constitution that you would have as much success of turning them into autonomous beings as you would at making a giraffe have a shorter neck by yelling at it.
Many years ago I too tried to make them “autonomous”. I raged against marketers and marketing like you wouldn’t believe. After a numbers of years of trying I came to the conclusion it was a failed experiment; their drive to be led by a dominant external authority far outweighs their drive to make critical assessments.
This is why I am a firm believer in aristocracies and unfavourable toward democracies. While there always have been and will be stupid people, democracies bring these stupid people to the forefront. It encourages their superficial drives to be more important than the drive to anything else, all the while squeezing out alternative Weltanschauungs.
I believe it is possible, it just takes continued effort. And for people not to give up on it…The problem is that it does take a lot of effort I would think, more than many might be willing to put into it. I would think one of the keys is to be active and thus give example of such…
Democracies are great so long as they don’t fall into a media-ocracy or corp-ocracy or some combination thereof…and when they do, it takes people to stand up instead of see everybody else sitting down and think that standing up will do nothing…There doesn’t have to be change in a life time… things like gayness became more and more accepted because people stood up and didn’t let the populous keep them down…
But haven’t they (our Representative Democracy, at least) done exactly that?
Fent said:
Okay, I agree. What I’m asking is, why? Why has so much of humanity turned away from both critical thinking and critical feeling? Is it because it’s easiest, because they want to believe the propaganda, because they are “…this busy monster manunkind…”, because they think with their digestive systems?
There can be no ‘change’ until the reasons for any un-ease is understood. We all know that. We all also know humans fear change of any kind. In politics, do we need another FDR to ‘tell’ us we have nothing to fear but fear itself?
I meant to imply the likely hood. nonetheless, action is possible so long as there is the will to act. If there is no will to act then there is none of this anyways…I keep an open mind to the possibilities of goodness in even odd things like lower taxes for corporations. Oddly I have tried to find data on the History of the Tax revenue, and though i haven’t got to a dead end yet it seems harder than it should be…I have seen Data on the Tax revenue as percent GDP, and I want to use this or just the Tax revenue to do some peraonall statistics (over the past 100years aproximatelly) I have already stated an analysis of the actual spending, in relation to GDP as well. It is quite interesting… I am seeing interesting trends, as well as the impossibility to make deductions based on certain data for which news stations often use. For example according to the standard deviation and averages it is not possible at all to assert any likely hood with regards to the future growth in GDP or Spending based on any numbers alone…(you might could say the Pres said and signed a thing to say he is going to spend on this-or-that, thus there will be a increase in spending…but thats about as close as you can get…) I’m also seeing other trend but I have not worked at out all the math yet to actually be certain yet…I plan on posting it on the Forum when I get done…
A lot of it has to do with slow alteration in our environment due to things we do (specifically social environment, also techno-environment) that we are evolving to be weaker, lazier, less critical minded, etc due to these “allowances”…There are many factor, too many to list, but they can be seen, and part of the key is just getting people to take their eyes off the stare-box and focus on more productive things…We are to fed with entertainment of all sorts…Entertainment is good in so far as it might be needed for some happiness, but we are fat of it. To much is done to escape reality, but then that is because of the slow pushes by some and tendency by others to consume more the entertainments, the distractions…But there are many problems, many many affecting it all, one step at a time though…i don’t think things are near where nothing can be done.
Marketing is propagation of values, values are the fibers of being, beings are drawn to values that seem to sustain and empower them. Advertising and propaganda uses the mechanisms of selection and evolution, whoever is in control of it significantly influences the direction of life.
If state and corporate propaganda would present images of a self-empowered humanity, our species would grow strong and be able to assume responsibility for its environment. Where our corporate stateforms present images of a helplessly lust driven miser complacently incapable of influencing terrible global-scale events, what is cultivated is a pan-human self-contempt and increasing absence of resilience, will and responsibility.
Observing the explosive nature of our media for propagating values, the direction could be changed in the blink of an eye. But the will to do so seems to be absent in “rulers” - the tools are there, but there is no one free enough to “work on man”.
Our moral faith in science prevents us from believing in anything but the most obvious, which, when it is the solitary value, means exploitation and procreation of the basest values. Common denominator - science - lack of hierarchy - lack of height/depth - lack of meaning - universal equality - flat/baseness - neutrality - nature lacking delight in itself - weakness of nature.
You’re presupposing that at one time so much of humanity did employ critical thinking and critical feeling. I think you’ll find that it’s always been a minority who have used their critical thinking skills. The main difference between today and yesteryear is the mob’s desires have been placed centre stage. It’s what they want and think that’s important, not what the minority of aristocrats think. This is why it appears that “society has gone to the dogs”.
I believe it is only sudden change that is feared.
Pain is what occurs when change is to sudden. An odd example might be fire, it causes sudden alteration/change in the part of you it is introduced to. If you pressed a needle into your skin at a pase slow enough to be say over a few million years it would not hurt…although you would have to live that long, and it would be irritating maybe to have it in the way of things…
Part of it I think is due to the consistency of the two parties to constantly assert that the other is failed in things relating to critical thinking…Even during the aristocratic times things were often as bad or worse, and occurred for longer periods of times…
Yes, I am presupposing exactly that, because I’m not able to think that so many people are simply ‘sheep’ led to believe what they’re told is what’s best for them. I also think I’m fairly normal–at least I don’t deviate that far from the norm in most things, which makes it difficult for me to believe that other people are different from me.
But the thread isn’t about me or how I think–It’s about why people think as they think.
To put it another way: If marketing influences the way people live, and those of us who do use critical thinking/feeling in decision-making aren’t totally taken in by Public Relations/Marketing, and if we are in the minority, how do we get our voices heard? Do we become activists?
My husband and I have been ‘active’ in issues that affect our Town for many years. We’ve found that most of the residents are apathetic. So I’ll add apathy to my list of why’s. Apathy isn’t necessarily a lack of critical thinking/feeling, so much as it is, “I’ll leave that up to someone else.”
If you’ve read my thread about “How Government Can Work,” you’ll see the dangers inherent in this sort of thinking. Yet, we do it all the time.
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I would think that laziness is more prevalent, though critical thinking maybe not so much…Most of history was written by critical thinkers so it makes sense to think that they were more prevelant in the past…I imagine the density of such has altered over time, and it may actually be higher now over the whole world now (IDK about America) but if it is it would be logical to think it is probably not much higher, and if it is lower it is probably not much lower…but again that is hard to tell…I think more of the issue is the growth in laziness with respect to activity levels that are productive…as there has become more reliance on automations and what not…basicly life has become easier at least in the higher wealth holding countries…this does lead to a degree of reduction in capacity to put effort into things, and i think you may actually be right now that i think about it…considering population and also life span people seem to be less active critically as well during there life…back in the day a person was half their age at 25…people where younger and doing incredible thinking and work …i mean the wealthy lived old but…IDK…
Abstract, you’ve once again submitted a post that I either don’t understand or that I can’t understand has any relevance to the thread. Perhaps the thread has no ‘hook’ with which to attract reader responses. So be it. As far as I’m concerned, if it leads to no productive thought, let it die a peaceful death.
I would think that laziness and/or lack of critical thinking has a direct effect on marketing…But I see how it is not directly in answering how marketing has an effect on us…But I would say that many marketing techniques may be thous that reduce critical thinking, and while these things get used to the lack of critical thinking gets used to and the lack become more prevalent… A lot of this has to do with the products marketed as well in that many of them result in a life style of easy that is not conducive to growth of the mind…
Laziness, apathy, whatever you want to call it, may either be the cause of marketing techniques or the effect of marketing techniques on us, but I question that. I think the apathy/lack of critical thinking goes much deeper and has a great deal to do with what our economic system. Free-market Capitalism depends on money flow–money flow depends on consumerism–marketing/advertizing gets us to spend money–even money we don’t have. Our entertainment has become, in many ways, a form of marketing; manufacturers tell us what to buy by limiting their product lines to what their marketing departments have told the CEOs Americans ‘want.’ I could go on and on, but I won’t–because there’s nothing really new about it all–and we’ve all been told about it often enough, we’re even becoming apathetic about the warnings!
Let’s look at it from a political stand-point since we’re entering into the final, frantic, frenzied, last few months of political rhetoric (16 whole months, for goodness sake!) wherein we’ll, supposedly, be held spellbound by Spin. At the end of it all, people will vote with their ‘hearts’ rather than with their minds–if they vote at all.
I would not say it is not strictly the cause of either but rather adding to it all and being added to by marketing…
Unfortunately that is common, anyways, though perhaps it may be reaching a crescendo… perhaps it will only worsen…but I have a mind that there are means to alter regression…