We live in a world where we crave for peace, saving the environment, condemning the guilty, and pointing the fingers at those who own big business(es). Why have we come to this point in our human history?
In all honesty, there are a plethora of issues that have caused this meltdown we are seeing and will feel the major affects of in the future. I will tackle a very few of these issues that I am seeing, I feel it is important to understand the nature of the beast before we can slay it.
I believe it would first be wise to look into human psychology, for better understanding. We have the conscious mind, or the mind that takes in the information. The conscious minds only holds in information for an hour and a half, before it goes to the critical mind.
The information hits the critical mind, this is the filter that is in both the unconscious mind and conscious mind to deny or accept the information. If I told a person, “Penguins are pink,” some people might accept that if they are conditioned to believe it, other people would be conditioned to not believe that information. The critical mind will either be receptive to the information or let it go.
Once the accepted information is processed then it goes into the modern memory, modern memory, a part of the unconscious that takes information is accepted. Some of this memory is trained, such as driving. If a person who has been driving a long time, they can do it without conscious thought, the car becomes an extension of their body. The modern memory also takes in other information we can still recite from school, home, and life in general. All of our memories are in the modern memory, this helps us determine what is positive or negative to us, the pain/pleasure responses are stored here too.
The last part of our mind is our primitive mind, this is where the fight or flight occurs here, it comes from our ancestors.
I feel our mind and its evolution from the primitive fight or flight mind to the conscious mind shows the evolution of our nature. However, in a “civilized world” the fight or flight response is very repressed, this can cause anxiety, stress, and extreme emotional responses. All of this information is properly explained by John G. Kappas, Ph.D in 'Professional Hypnotism Manual: A Practical Approach for Modern Times.'
In our modern world, we are so use to media, television, advertisements, and big companies making money that we are more prone to give them money. I find that in the reality of things, this is to keep consumer rapport and a stabilizing factor to keep the economy floating, respectively. However, in the process we are destroying our earth with consumerism. The fact is consumerism is creating more wants then needs, as humans we have trained ourselves to this point by a long history of propaganda, arousing emotions, and modern marketing techniques. We are pawns in chess (because we have the money) and the people in power know this fact.
Consumerism and Psychology go hand in hand, as you will see in this brief blog.
We have been brainwashed to want things we do not need since birth, but why? It seems we forgot our roots where we used be self-sufficient in the western world, there was once a time when we did not have chemical in our food or heirloom seeds being banned. The use of mass media and marketing have turned us into money machines, instead of learning how to make our own clothing, we want the convenience of time and money, so others do the work for us. Eighty years ago more people knew how to cook, versus today. We are in a world of convenience and time, then we are employed for the folks who try to offer the convenience an time by working with their product that offer convenience.
Marketing in the business world first became more impacted with Edward Bernay, he did the first major study on psychological marketing and how people would react. Mr. Bernay's book 'Probaganda' was a study used to test masses on what is most influential to the mind. He later worked for politicians, fortune 500 companies, and other major rich people to make his living. Bernay died in 1995 and is known as “the father of public relations”.
Every major company has marketing with psychology, there are also several schools of psychological marketing, you can look look at this Google link and see the schools that offer these courses at https://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=psychological+marketing+schools&spell=1&sa=X&ei=R4c2UYr9FYix0AHY-YGoCA&ved=0CC8QvwUoAA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.43287494,d.dmQ&fp=e19311d919a2bb7&biw=790&bih=748.
The truth is consumerism is exhausting our resources, evolving people into money machines to feed the rich, and it is slowly killing human race. I would encourage everyone to Google the unnatural chemicals that are being placed in our foods and see how they are affecting our bodies. Everyday things we are using are getting us sick, without realization of it. It seems the direction we are given has been placed us in a position where the “wants” become “needs” because of co-dependence. Cigarettes and alcoholism fall into this same field. The big companies know that if if you supply an addictive substance to the mind then it will become acceptable through social beliefs and social proof.
The group behavior is one that is interesting, if we look into the history of hypnosis, there was a man by the name of Franz Mesmer. He believed in animal magnetism, or a magnetic fluid in other that gave him control of people around him. People would act hysterical and not so normal in that moment he work with them. He called his animal magnetism by the definition “mesmerism”. King Louis the XVI had his techniques studied to test the theory and there was not validation to the methodology.
Now, we have learned that mesmerism was actually hypnosis, which is defined as: : If a person recieves an overabundance of message units when it is impossible to sleep or or escape, causing hypersuggestibility and the accompanying anxiety result. At this time, the critical area becomes less critical (because it is being threatened and because the consciousness is stimulating sleep in in this hypersuggestible state) and starts dropping message units without evaluating them. This creates negative habits and increases hypersuggestibility.
Hypnosis is essentially suggestibility. The suggestibility of people are either emotional or physical, this can also be done in a group setting, as was done in mesmerism. When someone walks into a church and people start speaking in tongues and rolling on the ground, the pastor with the music has increased message units causing hysteria, much like in mesmerism. Just because a group agrees does not make them right, this link explains the social behavior should not be a benchmark for valid results: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Behavior-in-Groups.topicArticleId-25438,articleId-25407.html.
When a large group accepts consumerism, then it will be correct, but there is little regard for the environment in consumerism as long as the masses are not aware of the impact it has, or they implement a defense mechanism of denial. The truth is we need to be aware of the environment around us, if we want change in the world then we need to be the catalyst. As long as the human population thrives the more supply and demand will be needed from the earth, so species will die, and there will be little regard for our own environment because we are worried about our own survival. I have a feeling we will not be able to limit consumerism until it is too late, consumerism needs to be handled by the people knowing the tactics that stand behind it, knowing needs from wants, and ect. I have a feeling that we will never learn this lesson, but at the end of the day I guess all that matters is I tried.