Downward Facing Blog

I have no peace in Bangkok lately. The advertising is getting so in-your-face that it’s becoming impossible not to ignore. Sometimes I’m thankful my Thai language skills are deteriorating , at least I don’t have to fully process all garbage.

Being on the Bangkok skytrain is the worst. I PAY to get on the train and every square inch of space visually is plastered by advertisements. There are two tv monitors installed in each section, playing the same ads over and over and over again, LOUDLY. When I plug in my headphones it’s still too loud for my already loud music to block out.

It’s amazing to watch people, in a total passive trance, uncritically watching these powerful messages. I’m afraid that within a decade of this, any vague sense of art, creativity, or counter culture, hey, even REAL culture is going to be gone… wiped out.

Look into my eyes…

As a clinical hypnotherapist and yogi, I have studied the mind and the brain and know a bit how it works in relation to being open to suggestion. We, you, and I are way more impressionable than we may like to think. The study of hypnosis has in fact, taught me that what we think of as being “free will” is in large part, a myth.

One of the theories of suggestibility holds that a person is suggestible proportionate to the amount of disaggregation of the psyche. Or to quote Boris Sidis, a Ukrane-born American psychotherapist who formulated the law; “Suggestibility varies as the amount of disaggregation, and inversely as the unification of consciousness”. What does that mean? Well look at it like this:

When you are conscious, it’s more difficult to be manipulated or influenced, but, when you get confused, shocked, or passive (disaggregated) , it’s more likely an outside message compelling you to think some way or do something will be accepted uncritically.

If you want a perfect example of this watch NLP master Derren Brown at work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg

My friend Todd, who is Bangkok’s resident IPhone guru tells how to crack the operating system so it can be used outside it’s originally designated networks in “authorized” countries: “A website with malicious code causes a buffer overrun in the browser. The browser crashes and the new code is written into the computer.” Well the mind is the same way. Distract the conscious mind, and when it’s not looking, slip in the malicious code underneath. We’re all social creatures, susceptible and open to influence. That’s good when the code is benign or positive. Buuuuuut… advertisers aren’t exactly batting high on the scale.

The commercials here use sex to sell everything from dried chicken noodles, to car lubricants. Are the people working in ad firms bored yet? It’s boring for me and I like looking at pretty girls, probably like a lot of people. Eventually this shit must desensitize us, right? Maybe? Like yeah yeah, another pretty girl falling in love with some guy because he was qualified for a low interest home loan. Yawn.

Let’s aim higher

Any psychology 101 class will consider Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a model of psychological development. (which, is not unlike the chakra system.) As a pyramid, it shows that in order to reach higher levels of development, we must have basic needs taken care of. So obviously, we can’t really entertain spiritual development if we’re hungry. Everyone ultimately aims for self-actualization; another way of saying that we are all deeply aimed at finding out who we are, and why we are here.

Why is it that advertisers relentlessly use the bottom rungs of this pyramid? Can we aim higher? What about advertising that appeals to our innate sense of wanting a better life for ourselves and the planet?

The Bangkok Metropolitan Authority is morally bankrupt . They are selling the soul of this country for a profit. Maybe that’s ok, nobody seems to mind? This constant barrage of messages will change society beyond recognition. It makes greed look normal, and most of what is advertised are physically unhealthy products. I’d rather not have the sound and visual aspect, I’d prefer it to be blank so I can get some peace somewhere. That said, if they had to have televisions, why not play educational bits? Like, why not teach the public better geography, mathematics, or environmental ecology?