When the Homily is about Immunology

World Wide Mass Marketing

Most of us are really stupid, like fish chasing shiny metal through water and then wondering what went wrong as we are clubbed on the head.

A while back, Alana wrote brilliantly about the "Crapification of America", and this morning as I was noting a few billboards on my way to work, it occurred to me that part of this crapification is clearly revealed in how we are being marketed by advertisers. By this I mean that very few of the advertising for products today actually focus on the quality (or even functionality) of the product - rather they appeal to our sense of and need for being cool.

Amazingly enough, consider this: the ONLY ads that DO extol the quality and utility of their products (if even they might be lying) are the much derided "infomercials!"

Quick and disposable is our motto, whether we know it or not. I cannot begin to tell you how much absolute crap I have bought - and I won't even include the unfathomable moutain of steaming crap I have bought for my kids. Things that are bright and shiny for a few days and then begin the swift process of decaying, like a "Mission Impossible" briefing tape. But no worries, there always MORE crap to buy! We have made an art of cultivating crap in our society, and the pinnacle of it is found in commercial children's television programming. How those advertisers sleep at night is beyond me.

Is it any wonder that our theology, our churches, our marriages follow right along? All of these are perfectly disposable...for we believe more and more that life ought to be quick and easy - just like getting credit when you don't have perfect credit. Heck, even our children are disposable, at least while they are still being nurtured in the womb.

How do we escape it? Sure, don't buy crap...but its more pervasive than that now. Its deeper in us now...

Addendum: On my way home I heard a news report about the dwindling surplus of fans in the Seattle area. It seems the recent heat (which I curse) has sent washingtonians to the stores in droves looking for fans. Curiously, this happens EVERYTIME the mercury (or alcohol) surpasses the 90 degree mark. But how can this be, that each and every heat wave the local retailers find themselves bled dry of fans???? What on earth happened to last years fans? Or last months fans? Am I to believe that each time we have a heat wave that an over abundance of "first time fan owners" are coming forward at last and investing in a fan? Or maybe new arrivals from lands where fans are unknown have just experienced their first Seattle heat wave?

Of course not, we just keep on buying disposable crap fans and then throw them out into the landfill - conveniently located somewhere else. Wherever it is that our garbage goes, there must be an unbelievable quantity of crappy fans.