Hidden persuaders....

[biff]

in another life,in another time,we would set off for the beach on boxing day,to shake off the cobwebs and work up a hunger for the rest of the christmas dinner,the kids would be wrapped up like michilin men against the bitter north atalntic wind,it was exciting and invigorating and the kids loved it.
   our winter beaches were violent theatres where rocks fought to survive the onslought of wind, tide and gravel.the power was awsome. in quieter spots,she would find special stones,in matching pairs,rejoice in her discovery,takes these special works of nature and creat pairs of gobblins boots or fairy boots or farmers boots.this was her speciality and the finished laquered job could often be described as works of genius.
 she is long gone now and the very best of luck to her,but every so often when visiting friends or relatives or just strangers who bought them in a craft shop,i see a pair or a lone boot,i am reminded of how happy she was sitting among the kids,all with their painting brushes out,painting stones.
 kids look up to their parents for guidence and for a while they will try and copy but the will to strike out on their own is present in each and everyone one and the trick for the parent is to make that transition as painless as possible,even remaining silent in the face of needless rebukes and criticism.its a balancing act. i would not necessarly agree that the children grow up as parental clones,far from it.very often i have seen extremely loquacious and arguementive parents with quiet and reserved offspring or the parents both smokers and the kids totally anti smoking.a lot of it is in the genes.
                                                                                                                      biff

[Rick O Shea]

The elephant in the room is the TV. We do not have a telly and have not had one for about 15 years, we watch what we want to watch on the Iplayer when we want to watch it. the rest of the time we do what normal families do at christmas read, argue, moan, ect ect but we dont need a telly to do it.

The TV is a way that the common people (you and me) are sold to by the big rich people.  we are told that our lives are Oh, how I wish it was better and will remain to be Oh, how I wish it was better, 'till we buy the new bright and shiny thing that they are peddaling. Once we have the new BAST then we will still not be happy coz it has been replaced by another BAST, which the gullible ( you and me) are targetted with.

you would not allow some slimy sales person to stand in your front room and sell things to you all day long..... so why have a telly.  It only makes people sad that they have not got all the bright and shinly things, so they go out and steal other peoples BAST's, riot, theft, muggings........over crowded prisons.

suggestions for a happy family life.

1) dump the telly in a ethical way......
2) take children out for a walk. obvioiusly not on my land,    but somewhere  else.
3) educate them well, so they get good jobs in the consumer-ist society, and can afford to keep you in the manner to which you would like to be acustomeds.
4) return to being a grumpy old man or woman....it was much better in my day  we only had telly for two hours a month and it was in black and white and we had no choice.......


the above  written with tongue firmy in cheek,




 wishing all a happy and mellow new year.  Mike


       

[martin]

Sadly, I think (3) has certain flaws "educate them well, so they get good jobs in the consumer-ist society" - I could argue that if all they are fitted for is becoming "another brick in the wall of our consumerist society", then that education has failed them, as they should be questioning the whole wisdom of the system that has brought us to our present parlous state and swanning off to live a low impact life in a tipi village in the wilds of Wales instead.........

Also I agree with much about what's wrong with TV, but would say that for someone like me who leaves a couple of decades between visits to the cinema, TV is a more eco-friendly substitute, and will confess to having thoroughly enjoyed such things as "The Killing 2" and the Swedish Wallanders..... (BBC4, no adverts!)

[Contadino]

hair jollop...weasel widdle

If this were facebook, I'd 'Like' just because of those two phrases. 

[wookey]

Yes, I liked both killings (via get-iplayer and the pirate bay for the ones we'd missed before we discovered it! ).

#2 did get a little silly towards the end, but never mind, it was supposed to be contrived :-)

[Baz]

People can change, but slowly, look at the change in attitude to smoking. They change faster when there is direct pleasure gain for them - hence readily picking up lots of bad habits associated with consumerism most of which has
TV ads are going to lose power as already about 5 million have PVRs and skip the ads.
The biggest problem with consumerism is not just the rich investors pushing it but the millions of people involved at the lower levels. As agriculture became automated people could go into factories but now the factories have left our shores so instead of making a sofa that will last 50 years they are employed to sell sell sell someone another one to be replaced after 5 years.
What proportion of the workforce are employed in necessary productve jobs? We could and probably will need to eventually get rid of huge swathes of jobs that are hanging off the excess of the oil age. So goodbye half to 3/4 of the salesmen, advertisers, entertainemnt industry in every form, civil servants of many forms, armed forces, defence industry, over processed food, and without the expanding population most building trade, without fuel for cars most road builders. The list goes on.

[martin]

I think you're right that there will have to be enormous changes, but I see it as a chance to make life better at the same time, if people are to be rendered "unemployed" as bricks in the consumerist wall, they will have time for other activities - taking food as an example  - artificially cheap inputs have meant that we have had the growth of "Big Ag" and monocultures, to the extreme detriment of the environment - rather than both people in a household "doing a job", it would be far better for them to spend time growing their own food, cooking it, and doing all the sadly derided "domestic tasks" which save energy all round, and have great side benefits like a strengthened community and a parent at home while kids are growing...... We have become accustomed to everyone "earning a living" then paying for all our goods and services  - far better to take control of much of what we now "farm out" to others.

I can also foresee a revival of something like the "Arts and Crafts" movement, whereby instead of having "disposable" furniture and other household goods, we could return to a far more eco-friendly attitude and means of supply in many things - so that rather than mass-market tat, ordinary people would have individually crafted pieces which would be valued and kept for decades......

[dtl]

....and remember people; the revolution will not be televised;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnJFhuOWgXg&feature=related

"Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat"

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live."

[biff]

dtl,
 its a pity it did not come sooner and we could have blamed it for the financial meltdown in ireland.
                                                                                                            biff

[SimonHobson]

I've watched some TV over the holiday period, and during "Poirot" last evening ended up tempted to throw things - every 15 minutes there were several minutes of adverts, leaving questions hanging in the air like "do people actually buy those deeply cr*p sofas?, and "why does Hugh Laurie, who probably earns more than the gross national product of several medium sized countries need to flog us face goop for the unshaven?", and the interminable ads for "alcoholic ginger beer" have switched me off for life from even contemplating purchasing the stuff ...

At the risk of giving you a nasty shock, I completely agree with you. But I rarely watch adverts, and it's strange if I'm ever watching live TV then I instinctively reach for the remote each time the ads come on - and then remember I haven't got the magic "skip ads" function.
The only downside is that MythTV commercial flagging works very well on US imports, but not so well on some of our home made stuff - so I often have to manually skip the ads for that.

But back to your original post, I do agree with you that change is needed. I agree completely about that.
I disagree a bit about how big those changes need to be, and I disagree about how fast they can reasonably be made in anything but a dictatorship - but I do agree that they need to be made. The big danger (IMO) is that if you push too hard for "too fast" change, then there is a danger that people will turn off altogether and you'll get slower results than if you pushed a bit more gently.

[martin]

There are various estimates as to when we start passing "tipping points" - around 8 years is a particularly popular one (when we pass the point that we can keep warming down to 2 degrees, which in itself is undesirable, but any more is predicted to be utterly disastrous), so I'm more inclined to the "why aren't we on a war footing?" school of thought than the laissez faire "oh it'll be all right, somebody will invent something" daydream......

Even if AGW were a figment of bedwetting lefties' imaginations, and the climate is cooling or doing a jig, it matters not a jot - we are basically running the earth out of everything in double quick time, and polluting the bejaysus out of it to boot, so we need to take urgent actions NOW, not next year - the sooner we all wise up and "get going" there is just a slim chance that we may be able to leave a habitable planet for those who come after us, hence my call for an attitude change (constructive use of "spin" for a change) - if people want to give up smoking/booze/stuffing the planet, there is a hope of achieving it, hence probably the biggest battle is "hearts and minds"............

At the moment, governments worldwide are backpedalling wholesale on taking action under the excuse of the financial pickle, so there is even more urgency to change attitudes........

[spaces]

Regarding the power of television, my two young nephews never seem to watch broadcast or 'live' tv. Instead it's youtube or dvds (viewed on whichever screen is nearest), so they believe they're choosing what they watch. So any advertising may be even more insidious?   

[SimonHobson]

if people want to give up smoking/booze/stuffing the planet, there is a hope of achieving it, hence probably the biggest battle is "hearts and minds"............

Indeed, which is why I say that you need to very carefully avoid making people thing they are being "pushed" into something. As you are no doubt already aware, among a lot of people there is already a considerable "negative feeling" towards green issues - partly because they perceive "greens" as a bunch of hippies who want to return us all to middle ages standards of living. You know that's not a true representation (of most of them), I know it's not true (of most of them), but some greens have been so vocal (militant ?) that it's put off a lot of people. Talk of "massive and immediate" cuts in personal energy consumption also frighten people - many of whom don't realise where the easy cuts can be made etc.
Also, when people talk about the future of cars being electric, they look at things like the Prius and Leaf - and it all looks so expensive because, well, these cars are really expensive for what they are. Personally I think the future there is synthesised fuels, but that's another debate.

As I've said before, you're clearly very passionate about this, and I think you are too passionate - to the detriment of what you are trying to achieve. You talk about "going to war", and regardless of whether that is the right thing or not (we disagree on that), it frightens people and then they get defensive. People are not comfortable with rapid change (and I include myself in that), so you have to find that sweet spot where you push for change enough for something to happen, but not so hard that people panic and put up the barricades.

Remember, for many people The Sun and The Daily Mail are their main sources of "factual" information The guy at the desk next to me at work is a Daily Wail reader, I've an aunt who's a Sun reader - trust me, if you were in a room with the two of them, you'd be lucky to get out with your mind intact

[SteveH]

 Sorry Guys, but this reads to me as "Media" or "Off Topic"... not "General Discussion"...

 Can a Mod shift it?