Sunday, August 17, 2014

Entertainment, Advertising,& Marketing: How Suspension of Disbelief causes Spiritual Madness



The critical thing people have to always remember is that advertising and entertainment are always a performance.  It’s just a show.  Nothing is real.  All of the participants are actors pretending to be something they are not.  The storyline normally does not reflect any real events.  If a movie were based on a true story, the whole recorded episode is at best a reenactment with many elements usually changed for entertainment purposes.  Because of this, the whole entertainment industry rings hollow; not a bit of it is real. 

 No sane person should be unable to recognize the fiction to it all, but then again we are not all sane when we watch.
The past time is intended to amuse us, to preoccupy our times of boredom, to distract us from real life. In being entertained, perception alone becomes our mind’s focus.   We turn off our critical thinking skills and off with it goes our ability to reason.  We can become like zombies watching TV. Recognizing lies becomes more difficult in this state.  The industry aims to achieve this suspension of disbelief.  When achieved, linking certain human interests with certain products or services can greatly influence people’s behavior.  The associations could be quite poor at face value, but under the trance of entertainment they can be easily internalized.  Poetic faith can make life imitate art.  Marketers know this is mind manipulation.  They want you to buy their product or service and they are exploiting your mental vulnerabilities to do it.  Advertisers know these games work or they would not spend billions of dollars every year in the activity.  

They know people are prone to worship images.  To us, a picture is worth a thousand words.  If you can picture their gimmick satisfying a need, you are sold.  Advertisers glorify things solely as a means of moving you to buy their tickets.  Passions are always shaped by a person’s train of thoughts.  Alter a person’s way of thinking and you will alter their feelings.  As a man thinks in his heart so is the man, the Scriptures say.  The pathos hidden in entertainment greatly influences how people think and feel.  Marketers peddle their products with a motive for money making.  They want you to swallow what they have to offer.  They want it to intoxicate you.  People overcome with what they are selling make for a very loyal customer base.     They don’t care if their marketing strategy impairs your judgment.  They don’t care if it makes you mad; if it makes you stumble.  Entertainment, advertising, and marketing industries are responsible to some degree for all the depravity in our society.  God will condemn mystery Babylon for making the inhabitants of the earth drunk with her spiked drinks; for making them confused.  The term Babel means confusion.

This does not leave us without any blame.  The entertainment industry may get rich at your expense, but they can’t do all this without your express consent.  You permit them to do this.  If you don’t wish to be deranged, don’t drink what they have to offer.  No one would supply these products if there were not demand for it in the first place.  As a consumer, you create the demand.  You vote with your pocketbook.  Forsake these things en masse and the industries will die of their own accord.  Industries appeal to people’s vices because it makes them money.  Take that away from them and they will be compelled to reform.  Reforming society always begins with reforming the individual first.  It all begins with you.   Allow God to clear up your thinking and society could very well follow.

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