My problem with advertising isn’t the outright lying, but the psychological calculation that goes into it. Beer, for example, is advertised with images of sports excitement or hot girls, so that we will associate the product with the imagery. This is not lying in the direct sense, but using repetition of exciting imagery to evoke a certain positive response to a product, a response that would not come if reason alone were the consumer’s means of appreciating the product, is, to an extent, coercive. Manipulative would be the best word, but I refer to coercion because the intention in advertising psychology is to bypass the reasoning aspects of the consumers’ minds and compell them to buy on a more subconscious, emotional level.
This may not seem like a big deal, since people do have freewill, but when you consider the ravenous consumerism, the overextended credit cards, and the growing obesity problem in this country, you pretty much have to accept that people aren’t using their heads in making their purchasing/consuming decisions.
Yes, but this begs the question: at what point does persuasion become coercion?
Not all advertising is guilty of so-called “coercion”, & if one labels advertising coercion, then this more or less puts one in the same political correct position that many democrats stand for regarding the market (that advertising, & eventually the market, ought to be regulated or intervened).
I take a similar view towards advertising that I do towards competition: those who recognize advertising for what it is will be better able to resist supposed manipulative advertising.
If anything, I think the entire lack of exposure to the psychology of advertising makes people more receptable, & the same would go to a person trying to tackle calculus without the required knowledge of the mathematics that come before so (algebra, trigonometry, geometry, etc.).
It would not be fantastical to imagine citizens of a stateless society realizing the “pitfalls” of the market by addressing the concerns that people become prey to possible coercers.
If anything, I see the inherent lack of an arms race of knowledgeable consumers against advertisers, no thanks in part by interventionism (Statism) which is assumed to be “protecting” the consumer by the average citizen who endorses the State.
A similar thing has occurred regarding advertising, copyright patents, etc. on the internet with many proponents of open-source and/or the FSF, wherein the opponents to intellectual property must engage in continual intellectual arms race in order to stay one step ahead of regulators and/or closed-source proponents (the wikileaks admission of the ACTA treaty is a good example of this being effective).
I largely see this problem of “manipulative” advertising being sorted out by individuals realizing that they must equip themselves with the psychological equivalents of personal arms to protect themselves.
Of course, many idealists will despise the possibility that advertising psychology will become an integral part of one’s education in a possible stateless society, but then again, it would probably be required regardless as more people would undoubtedly become entrepreneurs.
The line between consumer & producers would blur (prosumer, I believe is the term), until at some point, there is no clear distinction between consumers/prosumers/advertisers/ etc. & advertising is essentially liquidated to the individual level.
You can thank Google for helping to rev up the initial stages of this with AdSense, & individuals being capable of deriving revenue from something as benign as blogging.
You can thank Youtube (more generally, The Internet) for providing an early useful (even if it is susceptible the tragedy of the commons) preview at what happens when everyone can advertise themselves on a site that mimics television.
People that make their own productions are becoming prosumers & are helping others like them to advertise like products.
Roosterteeth.com, cinemassacre.com, Renegade Studios (Star Trek: Of Gods & Men, the upcoming production of Anarchy In America) etc. are a few good examples of how fewer individuals, nowadays, can come together as entrpenauers & become the new advertisers / content producers.
You can bet as the Internet develops (both with and around any sort of statist regulation), more methods of acheiving ad revenue, & more evolved methods of advertising, will come about. Per memetics, many of us have the advertising bug already & do not even know it yet.
Advertising would kind of become a non-issue if almost everyone is engaging in some sort of entrepreneurship, which requires a knowledge of advertising (& subsequently, it’s psychological effects), even if one is only possibly being an entrepreneur at the local levels.
Additionally, the decentralization of local & regional economies from the federal level (succession, panarchism, etc.) would make manipulative advertising less profitable, because at lesser levels of bureaucracy and/or oversight, more control is possible for the consumers / prosumers / regulators.
Of course, I favor & many others no regulation, no state, etc, but it can be demonstrated that even in a statist society, manipulative advertising & marketing can be reduced with voluntary, free-market actions of individuals.
The ultimate in de-centralization, to the point of the stateless society full of sovereign individuals, would make aforementioned not only self-regulated free-market action more effective, but also eventually deprive statist markets (red / pink markets) of economic activity, state subsidies for certain companies regarding advertising (the only manipulative advertising, imo, is state propaganda, such as Army commercials), & other anti free-market capitalists of the leverage regarding advertising.
In lesser words, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Advertising would eventually become a casual market occurrence that, per natural selection, competition, etc. “gets” those who who un-prepared for it, & “works” for those that are.
Where would one draw the line between persuasion and coercion?
I would define persuasion as making an argument intended to appeal to the reason of another person, an appeal to see the correctness of a given point of view. Manipulation, on the other hand, relies on trickery. If driving the latest Brand X car really DID mean my life would become more exciting, then the commercial’s attempt to make me think that would be persuasion. However, if I am led to believe that when it isn’t true, then it’s trickery.
The problem with ads is that they don’t actually tell you to believe anything, they simply imply through imagery and the like. They don’t promise happiness, they just create a psychological association between it, and their products. And knowing the basic needs for sex, a feeling of personal importance, a fulfilling life, etc, and implying these things can be derived through a purchasing and using one or another product can be compelling.
When you look at all the people who have bought so much stuff they don’t really need, in many cases to their financial peril, it begs the question, “Why?” The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, or so goes the saying. The power of associating products with the means to end that condition, using a powerful arsenal of psychological tools, can’t be denied as the likely culprit to this foolishness.
No they wouldn’t because they don’t try to interpret the Quran. Most people in Afghanistan, especially those who call themselves taliban or who live in the same tribal areas as them are illiterate- and a lot of what they know to be Islam actually comes straight from the United States.
“Sharia Law” doesn’t really use Quran as its basis either.
Most of their habits and traditions are from old tribal culture that pre-dates Islam. Practices like honor killings never had anything to do with Islam. Burka’s, as you see in Afghanistan(the beekeeper look), pre-date Islam.
But anyway-the point is that saying “Islam is a threat to the west” is a valueless statement. There are many Muslims like me and we are no threat to anyone. Although I wouldn’t even say that the Taliban are a threat to the west- they are only a threat to Afghans.(although the current US puppet Afghan government is in many ways even worse).
I never said you weren’t supposed to read it literally. You are. And when you do it is much easier to understand.. That is not what the Taliban, Saudi Royalty, Hossni Mubarak, Zardari, nor the Supreme Leader of Iran do. Again what I keep repeating is that none of them actually understand the Quran and DO NOT USE IT as a basis for their laws(if they did, they’d suddenly have to respect private property and tolerate activities they frown upon). They use hadith or their own pre-islamic culture to form their laws. There’s a reason why Taliban supress education while during the “Islamic Golden Age” it was encouraged.
Getting “blind” faith out of this world won’t solve anything- it would just solve your annoyance when it comes to religion. The problems in this world that come from people are aggression and no concept of property rights. Religion didn’t create aggression- and you don’t need to believe in a God to gather people together to aggress against another group.
You have the same problem that christians who believe in non-aggression have. You may be right that ‘true’ islam is peaceful but there are other fanatics that don’t agree with you. Since this is a matter of faith, you can’t really argue against them.
Ultimately revealed religion has nothing to offer to political problems except ‘faith’ which can be easily redirected to any end, good or bad, regardless of what the ‘true’ teachings are.
if a religion affirms the NAP, and the religion doesn’t change during such an affirmation, then it has to do with individuals, not the religion - as with anything.
Sure- and that is a problem that these individuals created. I can argue against them and have many times- since if you are a Muslim you are to accept the Quran first and foremost- if there is any belief that fanatics have that contradict the Quran(nearly all of them), it can easily be pointed out, and then its up to them to either accept it or reject it. The Quran itself is not just a book about faith- it specifies what is lawful and what is not very clearly.
There’s plenty of those that take it as a matter of faith that the free-market would cause chaos and starvation and confuse free-markets with mercantilism, we know that “true” free-markets are peaceful but there are plenty of fanatics that won’t agree- we still argue and point out the error in their logic do we not? Ultimately either they reject it or accept it as well.
But really- elements like the Taliban, Al-Shabab, Hamas, or any others…I find it laughable for people to truly believe that groups like this wouldn’t exist without Islam. Just look up their history- they all came about for a reason and it is always political(and interestingly enough, always with some United States influence)
