Tuesday, September 27, 2011

What is Mental Environmentalism? | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters


What is Mental Environmentalism? | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters

"For Adbusters, concern over the flow of information goes beyond the desire to protect democratic transparency, freedom of speech or the public's access to the airwaves. Although these are worthwhile causes, Adbusters instead situates the battle of the mind at the center of its political agenda. Fighting to counter pro-consumerist advertising is done not as a means to an end, but as the end in itself. This shift in emphasis is a crucial element of mental environmentalism.

If a key insight of environmentalism was that external reality, nature, could be polluted by industrial toxins, the key insight of mental environmentalism is that internal reality, our minds, can be polluted by infotoxins. Mental environmentalism draws a connection between the pollution of our minds by commercial messaging and the social, environmental, financial and ethical catastrophes that loom before humanity. Mental environmentalists argue that a whole range of phenomenon from the BP oil spill to the emergence of crony-democracy to the mass extinction of animals to the significant increase in mental illnesses are directly caused by the three thousand advertisements that assault our minds each day. And rather than treat the symptoms, by rushing to scrub the oil soaked beaches or passing watered down environmental protection legislation, mental environmentalists target the root cause: the advertising industry that fuels consumerism.

Our minds are polluted by an overwhelming propaganda assault that colors our beliefs, desires and perception of reality. Fighting back is thus far more difficult that protesting in the streets or clicking a few links. This brings us back to the concept of satori. an epiphany, after which everything is seen with new eyes.Breaking out of the consumer mindscape takes a fundamental shift of perspective,...Mental environmentalism is an emergent movement that in the coming years will be recognized as the fundamental social struggle of our era. "FULL original Article HERE | What is Mental Environmentalism? | Adbusters


visually altered text*

is dedicated to all the

amazing and wonderful people who have

inspired me during my last 8 months of protesting.

Thanks 4 s HA r I n G

*visually altered text remains a work in P R O C E S S