The Overvalued Oneself

It's not possible to miss how great creatures we are after 5 mins in any commercial message sopace. Possible messages targeting us would be:

"Treat yourself..."
"I'm worth it"
"More than..."
...

Although advertising seem to overvalue oneself, it never fails to connect to a product and thefore create a currency and exchange system over products - as mentioned by Judith Williamson. As "customer is king" therefore one has to spend to be eligible for that high status in the consumer society. What's more, you don't mean much without joining this flow of consumerism - offered you through ads.

"Je dépanse, donc je suis!"

Quote - Nicodemus on Reborn

"Can a man enter his mother's womb a second time and born again?"
Nicodemus

Past Creates Now and the Persona

Robert Cialdini's experiment with pre-created personas is quite interesting. Smaller "yes"es to innocent questions build-up a persona and bring humans to a point of non return: keep saying yes.

Why? Because man tries to avoid conflict and seeks for constancy somehow, for the unconsciously created instant persona. This holds true for our beliefs as well. We don't care how we get them, yet interestingly once they became ours we defend them to the latest drop of our blood!

Man is also a creature of habits and habits are simply the experience we earn while doing things. Or our various sides we develop over time as Jung clearly states.

So, "now" creates future and past has created now... So is the persona, which is the result of our yeses and nos so far.

Storage of Information

What makes the life of today us the ability to store information.

Knowing that our minds are quite limited with the artificial booksmart type of knowledge, the ability to store the information provide us with great opportunities - especially with the second hand artificial know-how. And let us expand our thinking...

We actually, don't remember the exact information, but where we have stored it or from where we can recall it; through creating shortcuts and simpler cross references we make. The system is very similar to index sector of the hard drive: a quick and fast access area, however with limited capacity.

This is the same stsdrome with copy loaded PowerPoint slides as well... This exactly means that the presenter don't know the topic, but dumps the info on slides to read with the audience alltogether... Lack of internalisation of knowledge, synthesis or intellectual processing. The natural fruit of today's copy & paste culture...

Now is How You Define It

Now is the result of our past and reason of our future.

Now is the only moment we have control on it

Time is not devidible - unlike our illusion of hour - in reality. It is a whole and undivided space we live in: now.

Past is Now, of which we already lost control; future is Now, on which we might have control through Now.

Past is memories, regrests, future is dreams, hopes.

Future is the Now tomorrow.

Past is the old now, future is the new.

Confusing Satisfaction with Happiness

To be honest, that's an interesting topic and worth investing on it.

Satisfaction requires an achievement, a fulfillment, a sense of ownership... Satisfastion has prerequisites, conditions, ifs and thens... Therefore it requires objectives to achieve. Satisfaction is an outcome, always expected and occasionally achieved. Satisfaction comes from something else than us. Therefore satisfaction is more related to outer variables rather than us and the outer game which is pretty much out of our control.

Happiness however, is internal. Indeed it has no conditions or rules. Unlike satisfaction, happiness is a result and not an outcome tied to conditions. Rather than outcome, it's a state. Furthermore, happiness is in the inner game, on which we have or might have complete control.

Confusing happiness with satisfaction is essential to materialism, because as satisfaction is part of the outer game it can easiy be played with, modified or altered. As satisfaction requires objectives, these objectives might easily be or replaced with material objects: products (or services). Wheras, happiness is internal...

And this is exactly why money doesn't bring happiness.

The Illusion of Choice

Ads provide us a wide range if choices... these might be chasis or lines for cars, flavours for chips or drinks, or styles for clothes. However, we are never offered with not-to-buy option. This is a common psychological fact and it's the way we are raised: choosing among alternatives. And most creatives of us sometimes do merge few choices...

The only challenge to that comes from competitors, who widen the range of choices through introducing their products and their ranges. Which is a multiplier effect and consumer ends up with tens of choices.

Well, is ut good though? As Malcom Gladwell clearly states through the "jam jars" example in his book Tipping Point, the more choice we have, the more parallyzed we are and therefore the less we seem to buy.

So, perhaps designers should be more caucious and carefull for each item we add and each alternative we provide.

What's more, marketers should understand that they deal with a mentally fragmented and disturbed consumer; who doesn't act logically - as expected or assumed in most cases.

Physically Present, Mentally Absent

The digital connectedness provide us with the possibility of living two simultaneous lives. While we are here physically, we are also there virtually - at the same moment.

In meetings, seminars, conferences, classroom or anywhere else; we have the possibility of mental escape through our electronic devices without being restricted with physical space.

Often, our minds divided into two lives, however we can't properly handle both - so we choose one. And therefore, almost whenever we have device in hand, we are physically present and mentally absent.

Quote - Judith Williamson on Users

"Consumer products and modern technology provide us with everything ready-made; we are always users, not creators; manufactured goods make up our world, removing any action from us..."
Judith Williamson

Quote - Benjamin Franklin on Time

"Time is Money"
Benjamin Franklin