How Marketing Kills Your Soul

Chris | InformationLiberation

As our culture has become progressively more and more saturated by marketing, the marketing culture has been taken to a whole new level with people themselves becoming nothing more than a slew of marketing slogans and hype.

A hundred years ago you would never hear people talking the way they do today. A common adage nowadays is "sell yourself", and like good little prostitutes, people whore themselves out like dirty street hookers.

The most popular sites on the web are the ultimate shrine to whoring ones self, I'm talking of course of Facebook and MySpace. These sites revolve around creating an "image" for yourself which you can then use to "meet" people.

The way people talk, act, and live is almost entirely based on creating some fake persona which is cool etc. which they can then coast on (if they're cool enough, at least).

What I'm talking about is the lack of genuine emotional expression of simple human feelings. If you have some feeling you should be allowed to express it, you should not feel pressure to suppress it because "what will other people think of me?" Yet in our society the prevailing action behind most human behavior is "how will this make me look" or something in that same general stifled expression.

See, even though we are told this generation is all about being yourself, we had some sexual revolution, and blah blah blah we are actually just as, if not more, suppressed than ever.

I don't think a hundred years ago a person would be ashamed of themselves if they were walking around in non-designer clothes, or if they had holes in their shoes, or a dirty house, or anything which nowadays can lead some people to experience paralysis.

Yet here we are, we are supposed to be the most advanced generation of all time, yet we are the most screwed up!

How did we get here?

Well there is no doubt a million reasons, but I think the main one is the rise of the marketing culture.

Hundreds of years ago people mainly just aimed to have what they needed in life -- shelter, food, water, sexual partner -- yet now as a result of serious suppression people think they need all sorts of crap to get those things.

You can't simply build a house, zoning codes, property taxes, etc. won't let you. Few people grow their own food, laziness, stunted beliefs, etc. prevent them from doing so. You can't get your own water, the city provides it for you with more ease and convenience so why bother getting a well? As for a sexual partner, without the latest Gucci suits and a new Ferrari how the hell are you supposed to get that!

This is how people are controlled.

In the past if you wanted something you would just go and get it, there was no one else to go and get things from. No one had already conveniently set everything up for you and can give you every amenity you wanted with the installation of a few pipes or wire and the flip of a switch.

But now, that we are "civilized", you can have all these things with seemingly no work. I say seemingly because like all good cons it feels like you don't have to do anything to get them, after all you didn't have to lay the pipe and wires for you water and electricity, some one else did so who cares!

But the truth is you payed for it all through your labor, and with your labor you had at least half of the product of your labor taken from you through fees, taxation, interest, stock market "corrections" (it's a correction if you are broke and some rich dude has your money), and a million other scams which are part of our wonderful "civilization".

I guess it would have been better just to lay the wiring yourself!

This is why I am actively taking steps to get out of this system, I want to have my soul back and I'm tired of doing things the society way. I'm tired of marketing myself, I'm tired of the acts, the facades, the work for money, I'm tired of all of it and I want out!

I'm working on going back to the way things used to be done, if you want something you go and get it yourself, because after all, no one else can do it for you! And that's the truth I'm just now really starting to realize, even living a somewhat affluent life (I stress somewhat) I realize the only things I truly own or have are the things I worked for and got myself.

So with that society, I bid you adieu!