Who Murdered Love - Part 2
Opportunity & Motive
Opportunity
Advertisers vie relentlessly for our time and attention, with corporations grooming us towards brand loyalty from the time we are born, interacting with us through a whole host of high-tech communication platforms, while desperately searching for new opportunities to become further embedded in our lives. Never satisfied with the communication platforms that already exist, in the words of Banksy, “They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you.”
But despite all that advertising promises—and asks of us—can anyone have a genuine relationship with a brand or corporation, or even a human actor, musician, or politician we have never met?
We may love these people, publicly endorse what they stand for, and even put their pictures on our walls, but who are we to them?
We would suggest that fan worship, political and otherwise, mainly constitutes abusive relationships. Behind these faces—and stories they sell—sit corporate entities and their (often undisclosed) PR departments and spokespeople that use these one-way relationships to control our behaviour, including seeking influence over decisions that ultimately alter the course of our lives. Entities that are experts at making us feel anxious and dissatisfied and that nothing we have—or are—will ever be enough.
While the genuine roots of your family’s happiness can't be purchased off the shelf, there is questionable messaging—targeted at you every day as a consumer—that insists that continuously earning and consuming is the only means to arrive at happiness.
This rat race is driven by the concept of scarcity.
Marketers promote scarcity as a central theme in almost every promotion. Our modern society is packaged to us in many ways via marketing strategies—like a game of musical chairs, with scarcity as the game’s central focus. Scarcity exists as a natural result of supply and demand factors—yet can also be contrived as a means to manipulate workforces. Our entire human history appearing to be one long, complicated manipulation of labour.
The presence of scarcity intensifies the cycle of anxiety and uncertainty. In our modern language, scarcity is often referred to in marketing lingo as FOMO—fear of missing out.
FOMO has a unique and special place in virtually all marketing strategies. Advertising informs us that anxiety and uncertainty will be relieved if we take action NOW to not miss out. An example is Black Friday sales, where stores dramatically reduce the ticket price on a limited number of consumer items to induce a spike of hunger in the market. The perception of limited or scarce supply creates an intense desire to purchase. Common acceptance amongt the population of this intentional and successful practice of contrived market scarcity makes the concept difficult to view objectively.
We are all happy to snare a bargain as doing so produces a sense of relief that eases our anxiety and uncertainty, but the cycle continues and looks something like this:
We are uncertain about our immediate needs due to expert marketing techniques that zero in on our fears and insecurities.
We are made anxious by the message that scarcity may result in winners and losers (in the rush to consume).
Deciding if we should purchase or decline to purchase produces a heightened sense of anxiety. This anxiety leads us back to uncertainty, and the cycle continues. Like a game of musical chairs, every separate competitor responding to the game’s rules.
FOMO can cause people to act like hungry predators when sale time comes or when it is time to discuss how resources will be shared within our homes.
Marketing strategists not only deploy scarcity in the selling of goods and services.
Unconditional love within families is now long out of fashion, with love portrayed as a prize that is only fit for the most worthy and deserving. Romantic love being dangled in front of us, while also portrayed as a potential trap which may stigmatise, demean or even damage us. Our uncertainty and anxiety once again being targeted in cycles.
A broad spectrum of vested interest groups expertly contrive the apparent scarcity of love. This story describing many of these interest groups in detail. Steve Cooper
Motive - Who is Selling Us What and Why
Long before corporations existed, similar marketing strategies (tapping into our fears and longing to be loved) dealt with myths, legends, and fairy tales. Like advertising, these stories have been shared to breed loyalty towards institutions of power and deliberately manipulate our behaviour.
Sometimes, the moral lessons of these stories were in our interest: Little Red Riding Hood instinctively taught girls about sexual predators, and Blue Beard’s Castle shared a profound warning to women about the dangers of marrying for prestige.
No More Sugary Love
But like the tradition that, for more than a hundred years, has linked sugary treats with love, the people financing the production of these stories have sold us ideas—in the name of love—that, in truth, are often against our best interests; causing physical and mental disease. Messages that lead us away from reaching our potential. Messages that hijack our lives by confusing our honest hunger for what will genuinely nourish our hearts and souls.
“Diabetes is a pandemic of unprecedented magnitude spiralling out of control,” said IDF President Professor Andrew Boulton. “Globally, more than one in 10 adults are now living with diabetes. Moreover, there is a growing list of countries where one in five or even more of the adult population has diabetes.”
Andrew Boulton - President of the International Diabetes Federation
http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/diabetes%20atlas%202021.pdf
Sugar is not love. Not only does it cause sickness through diabetes, but sugar bypasses our body’s natural internal switch that tells us that we are full and should stop eating, directly causing people to become overweight. No matter how full you feel, there’s always room inside for a cookie or sweet treat.
The perfect ingredient for marketers, whose chief aim is people never finding true satisfaction.
Anyone who believes they can leave their family’s destiny in the hands of the corporations that have built this world (to put their products in front of us) should recognise their error every time they see sugar pushed on them in every aisle of the supermarket.
There, we see sugar—which keeps us hungry—is deemed fit to be pushed on our kids, but love—which might help us feel satisfied and okay about ourselves—is now regularly being presented as (potentially) toxic. The game of keeping us forever hungry is proceeding right on track as marketers’ think tanks sell us hateful narcissistic humour (in sitcoms) as if it were love.
Every day we encounter messages aimed at manipulating our decision making.
We are generally prepared for the type of marketing hype that promotes purchasing goods and services, but what about the messaging that encourages you to be outraged and feel superior to other groups of people? Protesters, immigrants, dissidents, leftists, right-wing extremists, Muslims, Chinese, Jews, felons, the unemployed, the rainbow community, mothers, parents, feminists, women, men, deplorables, the un-vaccinated, etc.
“Sex doesn’t sell anymore. Only outrage does. Outrage is the new sex.”
Jameela Jamil
In his 2019 book, Hate Inc., journalist and author Matt Taibbi outlines the extent to which our current media outlets—across radio, TV, print and the web—deliberately engage their audience with confected outrage to drive more traffic and ratings to their news services. This has become a business strategy that—regrettably—has proven successful. News items are presented interchangeably within the lens of heroes vs villains.
No matter your personal and political views, the outrage is fed to all sides of the political spectrum. You have already been profiled via social media as a ‘user’ who will react to certain news items in a certain way, predetermined by algorithms set to suit 'your taste’.
“Packaged anger, tailored just for you.” Matt Taibbi
This ubiquitous marketing strategy to engage your hatred, fear and blame is well underway and intensifying as we speak.
Promoting outrage at a distinct group within a community is commonly known as 'divide and rule’; a common and tangible strategy aimed at manipulating our behaviour, while limiting inquiry and oversight of those in power by distracting our attention.
As we angrily call on government to put controls on the people we have been manipulated to hate, we unwittingly bolster those institutions’ power to control us, putting the very foundations of our own liberty at risk. Steve Cooper
A particular breed of male and female news and current affairs TV commentators have become the most apparent caricatures of Narcissistic Personality Disorder today, pushing their lines of hate.
Charming, witty and attractive, these characters seductively sell the dominant narrative (for their particular audience) while arrogantly and aggressively mocking all differing points of view. No matter how cautiously you choose your position, these nasty narcissistic group-think games are likely to one day turn around and be directed at you.
Kim and I made a sensible decision together approximately twenty years ago to reduce our exposure to television and radio. The oversimplified and emotionally potent manner in which news and information is relayed was irritating us both. We were raising three young children and knew that we had to protect their minds. Children are easily taught to hate.
As a father within his home, a man has the stage and his audience in place. It is a dream role that many of us have the great fortune to play. To build a strong family, improving the quality of information and language must become a serious priority for men.
What judgemental scripts do we have brewing in our minds—or even memorised—that we may repeat without giving thought to our family, friends, neighbours and colleagues? Scripts that make us feel self satisfied and superior. How many of these scripts come from news and current affairs?
We should never allow ourselves to be manipulated into hating others. We injure ourselves when we decide to carry a resentful script around in our heads. The daily “Two minutes of hate” becoming a series of scripts that stay with us, in our minds at first, but eventually infecting our hearts and souls.
Importantly, each of us as individuals is responsible for our thoughts and actions. We cannot excuse our behaviour simply because broad scale marketing strategies teach us to hate our wives and mothers. We are capable of choosing love and critical thinking instead. Steve Cooper
“If we are carrying out a well-designed programme for liberation, if it’s written out, any literate person can contribute and share leadership... I think every person who calls themselves a leader, a preacher, or a policymaker of any kind should ask and answer the question in their own lifetime: How will my people stay on this earth, how will they be educated, how will they be housed, and how will they be defended? The answer to these questions will create the concept of enduring nationhood because it creates the concept of enduring responsibility... (This requires) some serious, astute planning; not loud-mouthing, not boasting, not getting on the radio or any platform calling anybody any names.”
John Henrik Clarke - A Great and Mighty Walk
Who Murdered Love - Part Three:
Blaming the Victim
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