Whether watching television, reading a magazine, walking around town, driving on the interstate, surfing the net, or visiting stores, we are constantly inundated by mass advertising.
All day long, our minds are bombarded with images that tell us what to buy, how to look, even how to think. Not only do these images tell us what we should buy, they also fill us with feelings of insecurity, inadequacy and yearning, subliminally suggesting that if we don’t own a certain item, look a certain way, even shop or eat at a certain place, we are unsuccessful and unimportant.
These advertisements are carefully designed to not only manipulate, but also to stay in our psyches so that we always feel as though we are lacking.
Companies carefully place their products throughout social media with continual pop up ads, and magazines that associate their brands with our favorite athletes, celebrities and average people that look like us.
It has gotten to the point where these companies have convinced us that brands are synonymous with certain personalities, and that we too can have a certain personality by purchasing a certain brand.
Our society, like most others, suffers from visual pollution. I often visit New York City, and as I get older, I prefer spending time in the East and West Village, where I can still see the beauty of the architecture, the parks and the different people walking by.
I am usually disoriented driving or walking through midtown, especially Times Square, because of all the large screens, lights and advertisements on buildings and buses, which seems to become more dense each year. I never quite know where to look.
We have become apathetic, and in many cases, given our power over to such major corporations that control what we want. Or should I say, what we think we want.
There are, in fact, few places we can go where we aren’t saturated with constant advertisements.
I often find the need to take long hikes in the woods with family or friends, for the very purpose of getting away from all the visual pollution, to clear my head, taking in the beauty of God’s creation.
We are lucky to live in such an untouched place, with no inundation of advertisement or billboards. There are also many preserves, hiking trails, farms, one can escape to here in Easton. But how often do we take advantage of this privilege that exists? Hopefully often.
And now with the immersion of AI, we face one more hurdle with an ignorance of limits, causing a further imbalance between humanity and nature.
It’s up to us individually how apathetic we become as individuals.
We always have the option to turn technology off and do something that reconnects us with our own creativity and natural environment.
The Cultural Easton 