Advertising

Let's put it bluntly - ADVERTISING SHITS ME.

By and large. Apparently advertising works, but I've yet to understand why. Well, I do kind of know - it pricks the subconscious of consumer minded people. They think that they have to buy something because the advert appeals to them. Quite often, adverts hardly mention the product. This way the message bypasses conscious thought and enters straight into the subconscious, where it can become part of a person's programming. At least, that's the theory as I understand it.

So people buy things that they don't need and spend money on the useless rather than the useful.

And I apparently am some kind of freak for not being sucked in by it all. Sure, I buy things, but I buy want I want, not something that I am told to want.

This makes me wonder what is going on in the minds of habitual consumers. Nothing that they are aware about, I imagine. So we end up with the 'Unconscious Civilisation', blindly following whatever crumbs are laid out for them. We end up with a Global Financial Crisis (the biggest farce since the Depression - after all, there's still the same amount of stuff about the place - more even. All bubbles will burst eventually. Yet, our resources are still the same as they always were.)

I seem to be getting sidetracked.

Advertising per se is not the problem for me. It's the mindless hype, the dumbing down, the sheer idiocy of how a product is going to make your life one of bliss. Give me a break! Our lives start with ourselves and flow out into the world and back again. Whatever you put into it should enhance, not distract.

And herein, I think, is the issue: a little escapism is one thing, but a lifestyle based on escapism is the path to ruin. And this is the lifestyle that advertising encourages. So while the prices of new gadgets comes down, the cost of living itself rises. Money is not a good gauge of cost because the actual energy required to import something from China is higher than something locally produced, even if the monetary cost isn't.

Sidetracked again.

We need a Conscious Civilisation. We need a world in which people do not use ideology or religion as an excuse for grabbing power, where we assist each other in producing a better place to live, where messed up instinctive drives do not rule the night on our streets, where we work together, where the individual has rights but so does the group.

God, all this from my distaste for advertising.

Advertising is designed to appeal to fear and greed. If we do not live in fear and do not feel greed, we are free. I think that is my point.

Here's a nice photo of a city park to end with, just because I like it.

How to make simple stone tools

This video from New Scientist shows a Bonobo, the gentler cousin of the Chimpanzee, making stone tools after the fashion that the earliest human ancestors would have done.

Watch this and take a peek into our own distant past!




Are we alone in the universe? I doubt it since we have company right here on Earth.

New Developments for Billions Strong

I still do not know exactly what I am trying to do here, beyond simply getting agreement that we need to be more conscious of what we are doing.

That is the question that sticks with me: What are we doing??!!



Every day, species of animals and plants are dying out. People in countries around the world are left homeless, starving, diseased, impoverished, or even just down-right depressed; because WE do nothing about it!

Of course, that is not, strictly speaking, true. There are people working on our dilemma. But we do ALL need to be involved.



Having said that, there are two new developments:

A Facebook Page

and

A Squidoo lens.

Raising Consciousness

The phrase Raising Consciousness can have two meanings: one being increasing awareness of a situation or circumstance, the other being raising one's own conscious awareness in general. I believe that the two are not separate but go hand in hand.

The best method I know of to raise one's personal consciousness is through meditation. In fact, I would say that it is the only way. Meditation doesn't have to be sitting cross-legged on a cushion, of course. Whenever you apply a relaxed awareness to what you are doing, you are meditating.

Meditating on one's own conscious awareness is a fairly high-level activity. It is simply this: focus on your mind, gently, seeking the origin of your own awareness. Doing this, you are returning the energy that emanates from that place back to its source and you thus increase its power. This is not easy to maintain and all sorts of thoughts will distract you but as a small daily practice it will build over time. Just a few minutes a day is of great benefit.

A good time to do this is when you have a song or tune stuck in your head. You know, especially when it starts to get irritating. Focus your attention on the place in your brain where the music seems to come from. You will know that you have found it when the music stops. And you will know when your attention slips when it starts up again.

Practice of this kind will increase your consciousness of your own consciousness and you will begin to realise your independent source, the origin of yourself. And the flow on effect is a greater concern beyond that self as you realise that everybody else, all people and animals and I believe plants too, share that basic level of consciousness. It is one thing that we all have in common; and however more developed our consciousness may be than a frog's or tree's, it is the very thing that we can call our humanity, our being, our essence.