(no subject)
Freedom of Advertising and Metal Overgrazing
Advertising has its taste in clothes, music, furniture, cars, and other things we use and encounter everyday. Ads for homes, electronic, food, and house hold items are everywhere and we see them thousands of times a day. Has anyone ever asked you if you have seen a commercial and how much it made him or her laugh? Most likely so, and I too have fallen a victim to that. Is it possible that our minds have been “overgrazed” by advertising? I feel that it has happened as we all are victims to out loss of freedom of thought.
Driving down the road we see ads for all kinds of products and services, we see them on television, in stores, magazines, on buses, taxis, and even in public restrooms. These ads fill our minds and take our attention away from everything else. We see a can of Coke in a movie and start to deconstruct Coke’s marketing strategy and determine if you’ve just been subjected to paid product placement.
Thirty-five years ago, Garret Hardin, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, authored a ground breaking article in the journal Science that introduced an idea: the tragedy of the commons. Our survival was at stake, he argued, if we failed to open our eyes and realize that Earth’s physical resources were finite. Treating them as a free-for-all was no longer acceptable if we plan to reduce human suffering and prolong out existence on this planet.
To illustrate the tragedy further, Hardin used the example of the 14th century common land. “Picture a pasture open to all, it is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons,” he wrote. Whenever one of the herdsmen added another cow to the pasture he reaped the benefit to having a larger herd. Now this would continue, each herdsman would add another cow; the cost of the cattle - the damaged done to the pasture - is all divided among each of the herdsmen. Finally, the herders reached a delicate point: as the pastures became overgrazed, each new animal threatens the well-being of the entire herd. “At this point,” Hardin argues, “the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.”
Advertisement is everywhere and for me, I feel it is that tragic breach. We all share a commons today -a commons of the mind. The mental environment formed and shaped by everything from culture cues to the physical space that surrounds us. It seems to me that at every level this mental commons is cluttered with ads and commercialized. Millions of ad points and marketing messages threaten to “overgraze” our attention. Our mind is their pasture.
“Ruin is the destinations toward which all men rush,” stated Hardin. Very true, I feel this statement is and very depressing as well. Ever sense he penned this warning humanity has done everything in its power to drain our resources: razed the forest, emptied the seas, and dirtied the rivers in a selfish interest of progress. Now that humanity sees the damage we have caused the physical commons, the tragedy has begun to replay itself in an even more fragile realm. The assault on the mental environment has become an ever greater threat to our survival: we are losing out capacity to focus, to think, to find common ground, to communicate and come to agreement. We are losing the mental clarity to deal with the crisis that we have created.
The rise of anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorders, depression suicide, workplace violence, and drug addiction has become the media’s focus point. The marketing industry is less concerned with this and more concerned with the decline in advertising success. The herders are growing nervous: “Marketers are going through a difficult time right now,” declares one company’s Website. “Channel proliferation, attention span reduction and marketing overload are creating and increasingly cynical consumer audience who are each subjected to over one million marketing messages per year (or over 3,000 per day). ‘If you’re not interesting me now then you can forget it later,’ is becoming their mantra.” Basically, we are tuning everything around us out in some weakened attempt to free our mind space. In 1998 the UK marketing magazine Campaign did a study that found that 52 percent of consumers were flipping channels during commercials.
Everyone is being affected by the marketing industry, the so-called well-adjusted are feeling the pressure from being overgrazed by advertising. The effects are subtle - a slight anxiety, a cynical attitude, a wave of fear - but this makes them all the more insidious. People that think and feel they are well-adjusted are more prone to react in a harsh way to mental deficiencies. The product placement of Coke in the movie I stated earlier or seeing some kids wearing a bandanna loitering in a convenience store parking lot - a flood of mental images fill your mind space. Instead of working you check your e-mail every ten minutes in need of new information, fresh stimulus. You start to notice that you cannot listen to someone for more than a minute or so as your mind will begin to drift off, or that you cannot finish a thought because something else as grasped your attention. Your mental environment is wearing thin.
We have to ask ourselves this question: Is it too late to reclaim our mental commons? Has it been so long ago when the benches at bus stops were just that and not ads for some real estate company? The wall above the railing at the sub-way station just blank tile and not some law firm, or when fashion magazines were lighter than phone books. I can vaguely remember when I could walk in the park and let my mind wander, instead of staring at some time poster on trees. I can remember the time I could go to the store and not have to worry about the attendant pushing some card application in front of me. Would it be so hard to get those clear mentally-well days back?
The question, as Hardin noted, is one of freedom. “When men mutually agreed to pass laws against robbing, mankind becomes more free, not less so.” We must decide whose freedom is more important: the bank robber’s or the banker’s; the marketer’s or our own. We need to understand and hold on to the idea of the mental commons, and realize that it, too, can succumb to an all-too-human tragedy. Putting more cows out to pasture isn’t helping anyone.
Advertising has its taste in clothes, music, furniture, cars, and other things we use and encounter everyday. Ads for homes, electronic, food, and house hold items are everywhere and we see them thousands of times a day. Has anyone ever asked you if you have seen a commercial and how much it made him or her laugh? Most likely so, and I too have fallen a victim to that. Is it possible that our minds have been “overgrazed” by advertising? I feel that it has happened as we all are victims to out loss of freedom of thought.
Driving down the road we see ads for all kinds of products and services, we see them on television, in stores, magazines, on buses, taxis, and even in public restrooms. These ads fill our minds and take our attention away from everything else. We see a can of Coke in a movie and start to deconstruct Coke’s marketing strategy and determine if you’ve just been subjected to paid product placement.
Thirty-five years ago, Garret Hardin, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, authored a ground breaking article in the journal Science that introduced an idea: the tragedy of the commons. Our survival was at stake, he argued, if we failed to open our eyes and realize that Earth’s physical resources were finite. Treating them as a free-for-all was no longer acceptable if we plan to reduce human suffering and prolong out existence on this planet.
To illustrate the tragedy further, Hardin used the example of the 14th century common land. “Picture a pasture open to all, it is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons,” he wrote. Whenever one of the herdsmen added another cow to the pasture he reaped the benefit to having a larger herd. Now this would continue, each herdsman would add another cow; the cost of the cattle - the damaged done to the pasture - is all divided among each of the herdsmen. Finally, the herders reached a delicate point: as the pastures became overgrazed, each new animal threatens the well-being of the entire herd. “At this point,” Hardin argues, “the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.”
Advertisement is everywhere and for me, I feel it is that tragic breach. We all share a commons today -a commons of the mind. The mental environment formed and shaped by everything from culture cues to the physical space that surrounds us. It seems to me that at every level this mental commons is cluttered with ads and commercialized. Millions of ad points and marketing messages threaten to “overgraze” our attention. Our mind is their pasture.
“Ruin is the destinations toward which all men rush,” stated Hardin. Very true, I feel this statement is and very depressing as well. Ever sense he penned this warning humanity has done everything in its power to drain our resources: razed the forest, emptied the seas, and dirtied the rivers in a selfish interest of progress. Now that humanity sees the damage we have caused the physical commons, the tragedy has begun to replay itself in an even more fragile realm. The assault on the mental environment has become an ever greater threat to our survival: we are losing out capacity to focus, to think, to find common ground, to communicate and come to agreement. We are losing the mental clarity to deal with the crisis that we have created.
The rise of anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorders, depression suicide, workplace violence, and drug addiction has become the media’s focus point. The marketing industry is less concerned with this and more concerned with the decline in advertising success. The herders are growing nervous: “Marketers are going through a difficult time right now,” declares one company’s Website. “Channel proliferation, attention span reduction and marketing overload are creating and increasingly cynical consumer audience who are each subjected to over one million marketing messages per year (or over 3,000 per day). ‘If you’re not interesting me now then you can forget it later,’ is becoming their mantra.” Basically, we are tuning everything around us out in some weakened attempt to free our mind space. In 1998 the UK marketing magazine Campaign did a study that found that 52 percent of consumers were flipping channels during commercials.
Everyone is being affected by the marketing industry, the so-called well-adjusted are feeling the pressure from being overgrazed by advertising. The effects are subtle - a slight anxiety, a cynical attitude, a wave of fear - but this makes them all the more insidious. People that think and feel they are well-adjusted are more prone to react in a harsh way to mental deficiencies. The product placement of Coke in the movie I stated earlier or seeing some kids wearing a bandanna loitering in a convenience store parking lot - a flood of mental images fill your mind space. Instead of working you check your e-mail every ten minutes in need of new information, fresh stimulus. You start to notice that you cannot listen to someone for more than a minute or so as your mind will begin to drift off, or that you cannot finish a thought because something else as grasped your attention. Your mental environment is wearing thin.
We have to ask ourselves this question: Is it too late to reclaim our mental commons? Has it been so long ago when the benches at bus stops were just that and not ads for some real estate company? The wall above the railing at the sub-way station just blank tile and not some law firm, or when fashion magazines were lighter than phone books. I can vaguely remember when I could walk in the park and let my mind wander, instead of staring at some time poster on trees. I can remember the time I could go to the store and not have to worry about the attendant pushing some card application in front of me. Would it be so hard to get those clear mentally-well days back?
The question, as Hardin noted, is one of freedom. “When men mutually agreed to pass laws against robbing, mankind becomes more free, not less so.” We must decide whose freedom is more important: the bank robber’s or the banker’s; the marketer’s or our own. We need to understand and hold on to the idea of the mental commons, and realize that it, too, can succumb to an all-too-human tragedy. Putting more cows out to pasture isn’t helping anyone.