How Advertising is Changing Our Culture

I find that I have moments where I look in the mirror and feel that my gray hair is making me ugly. When this happens, however, I remind myself just why I have the gray hair. It’s not because I’m becoming feeble and undesireable with age as much they indicate wisdom and my triumph over the tragedies that I’ve faced in my years walking on this Earth. Little ‘reality checks’ like this are important because they form a buffer between your self identity and the various things that society tells you how you are supposed to be. It is a habit that is important to cultivate because it protects the core of your self identity from erosion and abuse.

Teaching children how to think critically and to analyse what is presented to them is a vital skill. It does not simply assist them in their professional life but in bucking the trends foisted upon them by society and their peers. Reinforcing and encouraging this active questioning of the world and it’s values helps to not only promote their sense of self but allows for them to recognize problems about them in society. Many of the young adults who were involved in the Civil Rights movement were actively engaged in questioning their society’s values and accepted truisims. This skill set also assists young adults in their effort to establish their own beliefs and values as they interact with the world by allowing them to determine what they truly value.

It is knowing one’s own values, desires, and preferences that must be re-established to rectify the cultural damage that has been done by the manipulation of slick advertising over the last two centuries. When we consciously choose to follow a trend because it gives us pleasure or because we agree with it, we are being true to who we are and acting in accordance with our values. It is not an easy task to question everything but it liberates you from the manipulation of advertisments, propaganda, and similar things that operate in the same fashion. The United States of America, beneath the veneer of homogoenized culture and related detrius, is a nation that values indivdidual liberty. It is time that we reclaimed it.