I was two years old when I saw my first television test pattern. There was me squatting in my puddle all ready to be tested. The virgin mind. After 50 some years of exposing myself to the programming efforts of ad copywriters, bellringers, sound mixers and lighting wizards, plot developers, casting couch predators, snake oil producers and creative directors of more gravitas than God, I venture to suggest that I’m pretty much the same blob of personality I was way back then staring at the Indian chief, peeing in my nappies.
And that’s gotta be trillions of dollars later. Wall Street advertising agency executives would sell their grandmothers to discover the formula for penetrating my psyche. But they’re catching on. They’re getting their numbers in order having plumbed the fact that a brand needs to be placed in view of the consumer at every possible turn and its slogan must be repeated as often ("Two mints in one!") and with the same reverence as one might chant a private mantra ("…when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent."). After all, it’s your disposable income at stake here, the holy grail of consumerism.
And now that advertising strategists, the Freuds and Carl Jungs of today’s circus barkers ("Head on…" groan), have determined that repetition is the name of success ("How do you spell RELIEF?"), the only companies who can afford this kind of extreme exposure are the multi-nationals. And among them we find the psychopathic corporations selling us their reasoning for why they allow people to die from AIDS rather than provide an affordable remedy; pharma-ceutical giants advising us about "possible side effects including heart failure and in rare instances, death …" and Hummer peddlers who deny global dimming straight-faced. And with the limitless arrogance of a smug real estate agent remaxing his Platinum Card, would it surprise anyone to find the ad industry types planning a new category for their next awards party: The Moses Fangs Memorial Award for Mendacious Marketing?
We are finally at risk of being programmed to desire shit. And to take shit. We are buying into banks managing our money for us while stealing us blind with henpecking fees. Ever since they got away with corralling us into the interior architecture of ropes and stands in their little line-ups we have been willfully subservient. Your RRSP return is pathetic but you are told to hurry before it’s too late to make your "contribution." What a lingo. At Investopeadia.com I average more than 40% return on my portfolio of stocks.
Some poor sucker of a tree hugger is out there in the cold drizzle on Vancouver Island, teeth chattering, trying to get the attention of a Vancouver Sun reporter to his cause while the Canwest media conglomerate, the owner of The Province, The Vancouver Sun and dozens of other formulaic papers, reduce the forest by megatons every year to pay occasional lipservice to ‘green’ causes. Two sections on Driving in every Friday edition of The Vancouver Sun says it all.
The conventional media, recently involving both broadcast and print, by its being beholding to its shareholders and the whims of its majority owners are compromised. Publishers are appointed by MBA’s and editors dare not tread beyond a certain party line. Investigative reportage is ultimately circumscribed by corporate agendas which demand room for all the unchallenged repetition that successful campaigns for their products demand. Recent political polls clearly indicate that the body politic is confused, unprincipled and tilting with the latest breeze, including backwards.
Wholesale immigration policies which favour the wealthy without inquiring as to the source of that wealth (criminal or otherwise) tend to weaken democracy altogether in that new voters will cast their lot to protect a healthy economy before a just society. The elite herd with the elite. And when it comes to breezes stirring a panic, witness the electronic stampedes at the markets. Again, no principles, no rationale for the occasional mob frenzy trying to outpace the lemmings. And curiously, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange that afternoon traders were frozen out of calling their bids. So much for built-in securities.
This whole house of cards called the economy is verging on global collapse. As is the balance in the ecological affairs of our planet. Having cast an infected blanket over the delicate face of earth, no accident there. The foul smelling Climate Jam we’ve allowed the greed-addicted to concoct is only a manifestation of the malaise in our spiritual climate. When Vancouver’s charity runners are bounding over blanketed corpses littering their streets there’s a serious disconnect in the societal works. Our collective lack of will and compassion will invite disease and right now pneumonia threatens to invade lungs indiscriminately, crossing class platforms and depositing its victims into ‘emergency’ wards already backed up by 12 hours. It’s no surprise the well-heeled are screaming for private health care.
Nature itself is advising us. With wild weather phenomena and melting ice caps, and the list of endangered species growing in rare frog leaps, how much more obvious and dramatically can the point be made?
Life was given perfectly for the enjoyment of humanity. All of humanity. Hording and continued industrialization are threatening the sources of survival for all of us. Eco-criminals need to be singled out and stopped. We have the science, or will soon, to use the innovativeness and that same wit that created these problems in the first place to dismantle them. We have a natural responsibility to return the earth to a state of grace.
We need to come alive as a spiritual force, a humanity with a character of godliness where saints are ordinary and living with our inherent magnificence and an automatic charity are expected. Damn right this is a radical shift from mediocrity but it’s this brisk awakening or return to that sheepish little line-up, barely trudging forward while the mavens of this establishment continue to escort us to our dismal, obese and truly pathetic fate.
In the thrilling event you concur and sense this same urgency, raise your voice. Raise a Banner.
