Using Permaculture Media & Advertising to Incite the Good in People | Permaculture Magazine
Jerry Mander is right: images from television, and particularly advertising, do dominate our minds to a dangerous degree. But banning or otherwise suppressing this form of expression isn't a true solution, any more than pouring herbicide on your yard to get rid of weeds is a true solution. Whether the landscape is your yard or your mind, we permaculture designers would say that the solution lies in introducing beneficial relationships.
How to address the dominance of TV in our mental landscape:
1. Fortify our own critical thinking (and that of our kids). Permaculture education is good for this. Just plain talking to kids, giving them our full attention, is good for this.
2. Find better things to do than watch TV. Yes, this requires effort. And yes, WE everyday folks — parents and citizens — are the ones responsible for making this effort. We can't blame the advertisers for hijacking our retinas if we willingly lend them our eyeballs several hours a day.
3. Make more use of widely available, powerful tools for spreading the ideas WE want to spread.
Television advertising may be hijacking our retinas but we have the ability to spread something better - What do you want to put out there? (Richard Register, Ecocities)
Jerry Mander is right: images from television, and particularly advertising, do dominate our minds to a dangerous degree. But banning or otherwise suppressing this form of expression isn't a true solution, any more than pouring herbicide on your yard to get rid of weeds is a true solution. Whether the landscape is your yard or your mind, we permaculture designers would say that the solution lies in introducing beneficial relationships.
How to address the dominance of TV in our mental landscape:
1. Fortify our own critical thinking (and that of our kids). Permaculture education is good for this. Just plain talking to kids, giving them our full attention, is good for this.
2. Find better things to do than watch TV. Yes, this requires effort. And yes, WE everyday folks — parents and citizens — are the ones responsible for making this effort. We can't blame the advertisers for hijacking our retinas if we willingly lend them our eyeballs several hours a day.
3. Make more use of widely available, powerful tools for spreading the ideas WE want to spread.
Television advertising may be hijacking our retinas but we have the ability to spread something better - What do you want to put out there? (Richard Register, Ecocities)
