The big thing now is "fake news," given popularity through regular news channels to debunk impostures - but now extending, rightly or wrongly, to all news. But there is something in media just as disturbing, at least to me - that is, the eliciting of emotions through advertisements. It has been with us since as long as I can remember, but this Christmas season it really hit me - how does this manipulation affect the experience of legitimate emotions?
Not that some of these emotion-tugging adds are fake. There's the one for the children's hospital showing cute kids with shaved heads or without limbs or outfitted with body castes. There are the ones for wounded vets, with wives sobbing about the costs and care of their severally wounded husband, kids courageously lending a hand. Not fake and probably good causes, but they come on so many times, again and again, that I do not want to see them. For one, they are painful; but for another, I am forced to feel for these people over and over again until I do not genuinely feel for them at all. Then I feel guilty - I should feel, over and over again. And then I feel anger at being manipulated. And then guilty at being angry.
But it is not my own discomfort that worries me; rather, it is the regularity of forcing these strong emotions of sympathy. At some point, we all give up; at some point, most of us start feeling cynical, guilt be damned. Therein lies the danger - what does this do to our natural sympathies? Do we become inured, less and less ready to feel? I think so. Advertising as a whole, I believe, does this. Recall "A Christmas Story" where Ralphy eagerly decodes L'il Orphan Annie's message only to find "it's just a crummy commercial!" He is being hardened to manipulation by advertising, literally a financial survival necessity, for if we believed all advertising, we'd have a house full of junk and an empty bank account. The same goes for emotions - we will not be manipulated, for our own good, but what do we lose?
I go back to the Indians I lived with in Venezuela and how child-like they seemed. And yet the adults were not children at all -they fought and sometimes killed, they hunted and gardened and raised children and dealt with disease and invading miners. But they were never manipulated for profit, or if they were, those were isolated events. Their holidays were truly holy days, not tainted by commercialization or wise-guy manipulation. They were not used to this, and it showed in their child-like behavior - child-like to us, but really, normal human behavior for a time before widespread adds and huckster-ism.
How much faith and wonder have we lost to this necessary cynicism? While we see in the march to civilization a growing humanism, we also see greater and greater cynicism, until today it seems that many humanistic feelings - by our politicians, by our professors and even by our holy people - are phony, not really felt but only play-acted so that we might fit within our social norms as good people. While a barbarian - a non-civilized person - might rape and kill in war, he might also fall to his knees at the suggestion of the presence of a holy spirit. We might avoid the violence, but remain skeptical about any such intangible thing as "spirit" at all.
The question, as always, remains - are we evolving, getting better, or failing, falling more and more into a single-minded materialism? The question goes farther, into theology: which is better, holy acts or being open to the holy? If one says the latter - which is my preference, for to be holy might induce one to holy acts done from the heart - than we must become aware of a negative world-wide social movement. Are we getting better, or only heading faster towards some sort of Armageddon? Ralphy still ended up enchanted by the snow on Christmas morning. Perhaps our greater emotions still remain active and genuine, but it is getting harder and harder to tell, even within ourselves. FK
Not that some of these emotion-tugging adds are fake. There's the one for the children's hospital showing cute kids with shaved heads or without limbs or outfitted with body castes. There are the ones for wounded vets, with wives sobbing about the costs and care of their severally wounded husband, kids courageously lending a hand. Not fake and probably good causes, but they come on so many times, again and again, that I do not want to see them. For one, they are painful; but for another, I am forced to feel for these people over and over again until I do not genuinely feel for them at all. Then I feel guilty - I should feel, over and over again. And then I feel anger at being manipulated. And then guilty at being angry.
But it is not my own discomfort that worries me; rather, it is the regularity of forcing these strong emotions of sympathy. At some point, we all give up; at some point, most of us start feeling cynical, guilt be damned. Therein lies the danger - what does this do to our natural sympathies? Do we become inured, less and less ready to feel? I think so. Advertising as a whole, I believe, does this. Recall "A Christmas Story" where Ralphy eagerly decodes L'il Orphan Annie's message only to find "it's just a crummy commercial!" He is being hardened to manipulation by advertising, literally a financial survival necessity, for if we believed all advertising, we'd have a house full of junk and an empty bank account. The same goes for emotions - we will not be manipulated, for our own good, but what do we lose?
I go back to the Indians I lived with in Venezuela and how child-like they seemed. And yet the adults were not children at all -they fought and sometimes killed, they hunted and gardened and raised children and dealt with disease and invading miners. But they were never manipulated for profit, or if they were, those were isolated events. Their holidays were truly holy days, not tainted by commercialization or wise-guy manipulation. They were not used to this, and it showed in their child-like behavior - child-like to us, but really, normal human behavior for a time before widespread adds and huckster-ism.
How much faith and wonder have we lost to this necessary cynicism? While we see in the march to civilization a growing humanism, we also see greater and greater cynicism, until today it seems that many humanistic feelings - by our politicians, by our professors and even by our holy people - are phony, not really felt but only play-acted so that we might fit within our social norms as good people. While a barbarian - a non-civilized person - might rape and kill in war, he might also fall to his knees at the suggestion of the presence of a holy spirit. We might avoid the violence, but remain skeptical about any such intangible thing as "spirit" at all.
The question, as always, remains - are we evolving, getting better, or failing, falling more and more into a single-minded materialism? The question goes farther, into theology: which is better, holy acts or being open to the holy? If one says the latter - which is my preference, for to be holy might induce one to holy acts done from the heart - than we must become aware of a negative world-wide social movement. Are we getting better, or only heading faster towards some sort of Armageddon? Ralphy still ended up enchanted by the snow on Christmas morning. Perhaps our greater emotions still remain active and genuine, but it is getting harder and harder to tell, even within ourselves. FK
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