Soul Stealers

They say some aboriginal people fear cameras, worried a photograph of them will steal their souls.

I feel the same way about advertising.

My mental space is my soul. It's me. I guard it jealously, but there's an obvious difficulty with that. Just as my body isn't a closed system, needing nourishment in order to survive, my mental space must remain open to new ideas in order to thrive.

I try to carefully regulate what gets in. Just as I don't shove my face full of junk food, I try to keep my mind clear of junk ideas.

But it's hard to resist. Junk ideas, like junk food, are crafty adversaries, designed to penetrate our defenses. They always look so good, their surface allure masking the junkiness within.

It helps to have a burly bouncer guarding your mental door, one who is impervious to glam and flash and popularity, lifting your velvet rope only for the worthy.

But that mental bouncer requires constant vigilance, a quality few, if any, have, and it can easily get overwhelmed by a crowd of gate crashers bull rushing the door, so it also helps to avoid the junk.

And that's where advertising is so insidious. It won't let us avoid it. I don't watch TV, which is, of course, riddled with ads, but increasingly I can't watch movies either, having to sit through commercials before the movie and product placements once it starts. I can't drive down the street without ads hitting me from billboards, bus benches, buses and cabs. I can no longer attend concerts or sporting events without having to resist constant pitches from the "sponsors" who make it all possible. They've even put ads on the walls of my office building's parking garage, and on screens installed in our elevators. I keep my head down to avoid it all, which is why they've started putting ads on the floor of our supermarkets.

And, what's worse, ads are perhaps the most effective mental space invaders ever designed. Crafted by experts, they sing catchy jingles, they show strategic jiggles, they scream and joke and criticize and brag and cajole and give us puppy dog eyes, exploiting our weaknesses over and over and over until they've worn us down enough for them to barge in and burrow deep, setting up shop and crowding out our thoughts.

So you could say I fear ads, worried that each one I see or hear steals a bit of my soul.

Comments

[Sid Leavitt]

A timely essay, considering that the Christmas season specializes in soul-stealing.

[David]

in the words of sgt hulka: lighten up! they are JUST commercials...they won't hurt you.

[TheElementary]

I thought that this was wonderfully written- I love how you connected an ancient belief to one of your deepest fears about modern society. A musing on the new and the old, and the thought of what we may have lost along the way. Brilliant-I really liked it. I particularly enjoy posts with some unity; yours was a perfect circle and ended up where it began which is my favourite sort of writing.
Thanks for sharing your words. Cheers!

[Nate]

You are right to be afraid. As the information age ushers in the "attention economy," the thing of greatest value is our attention. Advertisers steal it in obnoxious ways. Email spammers steal it in truly evil, abhorrent ways.

Preserve it at all costs!