Advertising is destroying society and our planet. I don’t mean self-promotion or carpenter listings on Angie’s List. I mean agency-created, strategically placed advertising, injected into your mind and interrupting your field of vision very nearly wherever you look; interrupting the flow of your thoughts nearly every time you try to think, read or correspond with someone.
It steals our dreams, contaminates our view of life and leads to a strange perception of the world. With the help of UMass Amherst professor Sut Jhally, I set out to demonstrate this in tonight’s edition of Planet Waves FM.
First I look closely at Mercury stationing retrograde in an exact trine to centaur planet Nessus — focusing the astrology of a discussion that’s been brewing on various Planet Waves forums all week. I also cover the Sun square Chiron, which happens the day after Mercury changes apparent directions. Planet Waves is currently hosting two discussion threads that continue our community-wide inquiry into gender roles and sexual consent. I cover the related astrology in detail, though I would also refer you directly to those threads, in which you are invited to participate.
Then I look at the natal chart of performance artist, storyteller, musician and inventor Laurie Anderson. The page includes Laurie’s charts and several videos.
I will not be updating Daily Astrology tonight — this edition of FM was quite an adventure; and conveniently I’ve got nothing else left to say — at least not in words.
Back to Coke….
I happened to watch the Super Bowl this year so I saw the ad special ad Coke designed for it. The next couple of days, I was amazed by so many liberal friends on Facebook who were defending it against the right-wing backlash it had produced. I was utterly amazed! First, I thought, did they honestly think a company as wealthy and savvy as Coca Cola Inc didn’t fully know what they were in for when they sent that ad from storyboard into production? And since *when* is Coca Cola Inc in any way altruistic? When I first watched that ad, the apparent inclusiveness appealed to me….but I am old enough to remember seeing the ‘teach the world to sing’ ad when I was little so I immediately decided that the new ad was just the old ad repackaged for our new times.
The liberals raged on in its defense. I posted the old ad but no one seemed to care.
I hate to toot my own horn. I share this because I agree with Eric and I was happily surprised when he chose the old Coke ad as his primary example in his discussion of modern advertising. I share my Facebook experience because I think it shows just how immersed (lost?) we’ve become in the world of advertising. I would typically expect my liberal friends to have seen through that ad. Some of them did, I was not alone. But just as many, if not more, did not.
Here’s the 2014 ad, in case anyone missed it:
http://youtu.be/443Vy3I0gJs
Sut Jhally is the new sexy! 🙂 Awesome program. Loved hearing more about Laurie Anderson too… hauntingly beautiful work!
I remember the Coca-cola song when it came out. Our family sang it a lot (in harmony) on road trips. We loved the visual messages the words were weaving. And… we NEVER drank Coke or other soft drinks…. they were not allowed in our family. Somehow, either thru my parents or thru my isolated upbringing (rural – left to myself to play in nature) or thru my natal configuration ( Pluto in Leo in the 9th in direct opposition to a very highly refined Mars in the 3rd both squaring a Scorpio Sun-Saturn-Venus-Mercury stellium) I was rarely prey to advertizing and then only when I was a teen-ager and had not yet figured it out. But then I’ve always navigated the very edges of the mainstream and have mostly avoided it. I can be attracted to products, but it is what they are intrinsically themselves (a beautifully designed product) or the solution to a problem that they provide that gains my interest.
If you want to be more aware and pro-active about “stuff” and how we are killing ourselves and the planet with our desire for more and more of it, here is a great website for getting educated:
http://storyofstuff.org/
Thanks, Elizabeth — I’ve fact checked this pretty well and have a list of 32 violent incidents, including mass shootings and stabbings, in schools that all involve SSRIs. I do have the AMA ethics letter as well; I’ll have inks posted in the morning or so.
By the way — and I am sure Carol would agree — lack of expertise is a qualification for a valid opinion or observation just as much as seeming expertise or credentials are. Being outside the box, it’s easier to think that way.
http://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatric_drugs_antidepressants.html
Yikes, that Mercury again.
If the corporations weren’t hiding the real dangers….
(no “and”)
🙂
Why is a prescriber of these drugs so upset about a discussion regarding their supposed benefits? I admit that I don’t have any personal experience with SSRI’s, but the argument that “they help so many people” should be backed up with real world evidence– and considering many of the mass shootings lately have involved unstable kids under the influence of these prescriptions, it’s a valid discussion to be having.
This is the same thing Big Ag is doing with GMOs– fighting labeling laws. If the corporations and weren’t hiding the real dangers, then they wouldn’t be so defensive about transparency. And Carol’s point is true beyond prisons. Half of my friends’ children are on some sort of pill, whether for hyperactivity or whatever. I’m not saying that in each and every case it’s the wrong choice, I’m not a medical expert. But why is the ratio of youth on prescription meds up so startlingly high, so much so that it is stereotypical for teens to be taking something?
see, it’s strating
🙂 Giggles…. “Murcurty” ???? (title) 🙂 <3
You know what I’d like to see? The data on use of SSRIs and other such drugs on prisoners. Because I know it’s huge and constantly growing, largely thanks to the vast increase in solitary confinement. Here’s the typical cycle: new prisoner mouths off to guard or takes 4 books instead of 3 from the library cart. He’s put in solitary for 3 months to a year or more for such behavior, and solitary fucks his brain so they have to put him on drugs. He can’t get off the drugs until he’s proved he can behave, but he’s in solitary so there’s no way to prove it. And since he’s on drugs they have to keep him in solitary because that’s their rule. See how it works? Tons of drugs go along with our incarceration bubble.
Letter from a listener about a prior discussion on PWFM, about SSRI psychotropic drugs.
Eric –
We’ve had the argument about SSRI’s before. This is your forum, but I do find your comments incompletely informed. I did appreciate Blair Glaser, in her discussion with you, when she urged you to not engage in shaming those who use these meds successfully.
The black box warning on SSRI’s have a very complex history. There were MANY hidden agendas at work. The black box on SSRI’s does NOT urge that they not be used, it simply admonishes those who prescribe them to monitor people, especially kids, closely. There were primary care doctors giving them to teenagers, and then not giving them follow up appointments until a year later. That is what most people on the FDA board wanted to stop.
I received handouts at the time of the decision – unsolicited – from the FDA, that I was instructed to give to parents of kids I was treating with SSRI’s. The handouts urge parents to NOT discontinue the medications, but rather discuss them thoroughly with their child’s doctor, and to continue, under close supervision, if the child was receiving benefit. That doesn’t sound to me as if the main purpose of the black box was to stop SSRI use in kids.
There were others who simply have an agenda of fighting against psychiatry in all forms, and especially as it relates to SSRI’s, but that is a discussion that is beyond this comment section, I am sure.
I will end by pointing out that the suicide rate in this country dropped steadily starting with the release of the SSRI’s, and continued until the black box warning was put in place. Then the suicide rate started rising again.
http://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/facts-and-figures
My opinion and experience – SSRI’s are great tools. They are not always handled well. Even when they are handled well, they are not for everyone. But, that doesn’t change the fact they have been very beneficial to a lot of people.
Thanks
T—
Dear T—,
You could say I’m uninformed, or that I’m differently informed — and that I have no skin in the game. From the outset you would need to declare your conflict of interest as a prescriber. Once we know that, we can proceed on level ground.
People who want drugs are going to get them. It’s the easy way to handle their feelings; as Blair also pointed out, there is an avoidance issue, and a price that is paid for that.
You might also admit that I’m pissing in the wind, even if I piss off prescribers due to the ethics questions I am raising. In fact I need no scientific basis whatsoever to raise ethical questions. I can do so on a spiritual basis, which is essentially my position. But I do have some information.
Since Lithium emerged, psychiatry has gone increasingly overboard on drugs as opposed to therapy. Does anyone go to psychiatrists for therapy any more, or is it all drug-centered? What would the founders (Freud, Jung, Reich and others) say about this? What would the people who really got results in therapy say [by which I mean the groundbreaking therapy-centered psychiatrists of the 60s through 70s such as Perls and Berne]?
Speaking as a journalist or observer, what I want to hear is psychiatrists argue both sides of the issue, like lawyers are trained to do. I want to see a debate, and then the teams switch sides. I want to know that their neural pathways can handle and reason on both sides of the issue, and moreover, that they admit that there are pros and cons to every drug; that there are dangers; that risk assessment means there will be at least some disease and death caused by the drugs.
Every time a prescriber talks to me, I am totally wrong and they are totally right. Even lawyers don’t reason that way.
Very little is said about problems like episodic depression becoming chronic depression from people who are on meds. Having seen many corporate files open up in litigation, I want to see what the manufactures know but are not saying, not admitting to anyone outside the top levels of the company.
The suicide rate may have gone down with SSRIs (though I want to know who paid for those studies, and what companies the doctors who did the studies were affiliated with) [also we don’t have causation here, only correlation] but what is causing the suicide rate in the first place, and what are the alternative treatments? As regards pharmacologicals, LSD and MDMA were extremely promising therapy drugs for many issues — until they were banned and they remain banned.
What is the 10, 20, 30 year review rate for SSRIs? Are there mass cohort longitudinal studies happening?
What do the people who have come off of the drugs say, especially the ones for whom they were not working, suppressing sex and creativity, etc.?
What about the murder problem? This is something that will never get on the news, or if it does, I will faint.
ef