Our God Our Ad

So we're a generation of lazy kids, with bad jobs, who are all moving back in to our parents basements. We value little above being momentarily entertained. We can't focus for long enough to finish a book let alone a three minute song. We can't do any one thing without at least three others blinking, tinking, and whirring away in the background.

Was there any thought given to the environment we were raised in? Has our parent generation considered the fact that they let the foxes into the hen house, and we are the result of a generation raised by advertisements. We have spent the entirety of our lives being bombarded with images, all promising happiness through consumption. A culture where the best that we can aspire to be is an entertainer or, better yet, entertained. A substance free zone where the content of everything amounts to it's dollar value, and the viability of an idea rests on it's ratings.

We are not victims, we are products. This is what happens when you've taken in more visuals by your twenty first birthday than your grandparents did in their entire lifetime. Advertising is our religion. It feeds us all. Clothes us. Surrounds us. Newspapers, magazines, BLOGS, run on advertising money. Everything we know, we know because of advertising. Our truth is sold to us. Our reality is motivated by profit.

So where does that leave ideas? Was Hitler just wrong because he fought a war for ideals, and US right because we now fight a war for profit. The current Iraq War is the most privatized war in the history of warfare. A lot of people are making a lot of money off this stuff. It's not a conspiracy, it's business. There is no agenda beyond profit. There is no truth but the ad.

And we've been conditioned our whole lives to believe in the ad. We bought it when Optimus Prime told us to, and we bought it when Bush did. We had better whip up some awareness and analysis fast before we buy our own destruction.