quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I think we're so used to disagreeing we don't know how to agree.
All good points, but I don't know about the above paragraph. If it were so easy to "stop buying into it" why don't more do so? Look at how many people are addicted to cigarettes, prostitutes and gambling for starters. Changing ones attitude, and getting that awareness can be difficult. Especially when surrounded with the lies of advertising. You can't escape it. Bilboards, TV, movies, radio, sponsors at gigs, sporting events, blimps on sunny days, aiplanes, street leaflet distributors, emails, junk mail, buses, trains and taxis, bus stops.
All telling you you NEED this or that for safety, security, happiness, and relaxation, to be trendy, to communicate or to save time.
I think the problems in the west are massive. Massive.
Yes, they are massive. And I think I did gloss over the ease of escape rather.
I escaped. It took a few years, but I did. If I can do it, then others can. Well, they have. I know some of them.
I think the first thing is to be conscious of the trap (as you so obviously are). Being aware that you're being taken for what is potentially a life-long ride is a good beginning.
A major problem is that self esteem in the West is so bound up with what you have, and what you can afford to have. We live in a competitive society where from very young most of us learn that we are loved not for who we are, warts and all, but for what we accomplish, what we look like, what we own.
Kids learn the attitudes really early that teach them to laugh at the ones whose parents can't afford the trainers, the right clothes, the cool accessories. They don't realise that these things are just 'uniforms' and the whole idea of being 'trendy' or 'cool' when it comes to clothes was hijacked long ago by corporations who have no qualms at all when it comes to targeting kids. The youth demographic is the biggest and most lucrative market on the planet. Kids are big bucks, all right. Never mind if their parents can't afford the gear.
Until the west realises that happiness and feeling good come first and foremost from accepting who you are, and glorying in that, people will continued to be suckered by the ads, that promise so much. They can never deliver, because fulfillment of the promise is ephemeral and illusiory. Once you have one thing, you are not satisfied, but straight away move on to wanting the next thing on the list. Our society demands that we strive eternally to be 'better', to have more, to live the dream. What is the dream, anyway? To have everything you could ever want? Actually, there's no need.
Happiness comes from within, and nothing outside of you can ever make it stay. When you are dependent on anything for your happiness, then it is constantly threatened, and will always remain outside your grasp, except for those rare moments when you actually possess the things which with you associate happiness.
Happiness comes from being truly yourself. From doing the things you love in your life (I think you know this. You live this way, do you not?) Happiness comes from living *your* life, not the life that someone else has told you you should be living. Happiness comes from authenticity, from honesty. Unfortunately, many people are so tied up in trying to be what society tells them they should be (often including friends and relatives) that they don't have a clue who they truly are and what they truly want. It's hard for joy and creativity to blossom when your whole live is about fear, and pretending - essential components, we are taught, of a viable survival strategy.
It's all very well for me to talk about accepting who you are and glorying in that, about being your true self, about doing what you love. Our society seems constructed almost purposely to stop that happening, to keep us afraid. Humans who are truly free aren't likely to put up with the current status quo for too long, are they?
Interestingly, since the 60s or thereabouts, there has been a huge rise, - in fact an incredible rise - in people protesting about this, that and the other. As people learn more about who they really are, as opposed to who society wants them to be, the square pegs are carving chunks out of the round holes that have traditionally contained them, and are holding them up to public scrutiny. The round holes are starting to look more and more vulnerable, from where I'm sitting. And that includes the advertisers, the ubiquitous corporations who would have us believe that their only goal is to better our lives and make us happy.
I believe we are on the edge of a massive change in global human conciousness, and the anti-globlisation, new age, environmental movements are just part of that. My hope is that we are starting to see the beginning of the end as regards the old competitive, we are all separate, every man for himself, I'm all right Jack, there's not enough to go round so I'll grab it mentality.
I see the fast growth of a new kind of thinking (its been around since the sixties, in this particular incarnation of itself, but growth has been pretty slow til quite recently...). It's a way of thinking that embraces community and connection, and it is being spread by the Internet more than by anything else.
There are many elements resistant to this new thinking, (which is also very old in spite of its seeming newness - well, it forms the heart of Jesus' teaching, doesn't it? and goes back to way back before then).
It may be that the human race has to live through catastrophe in order to get to a point where it decides to embrace this new way of being in any kind of concerted fashion, for embrace it we will have to, if we are to survive. (Or so I believe...)
I seem to have made a few leaps to get from advertising to the dawn of a brave new world......... [img]smile.gif[/img] Call me a starry eyed idealist if you like... [img]smile.gif[/img] But I live in a town where a lot of people are living life this way, and so for me it is relatively easy to believe in. I've also spent time at Findhorn, in Scotland, which is a community of 300, living in harmony with nature and each other (that isn't quite as idyllic as it sounds, by the way.... [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img] ) So, it can be done... It's not always easy, and it takes awareness and focus, as well as a huge commitment to your authentic self, but it can.