In
previous editions of this ‘Blog’—and one still wonders what a ‘Blog’ is, there
have been discussions about what was in comparison to what is now.
There
was, for example, a comparison between the life style, customs and traditions
of a World that existed two thousand years ago and the World that we inhabit
now. Things changed little for the next fifteen hundred years so that it would
be difficult to label King Henry VIII as a paedophile for marrying a very young
girl when, in those days, there were no laws extant that prescribed the age at
which people could get married; indeed, the trend at that time was to marry off
girls when they began menstruating because that signified when they were ready
to breed.
We could,
equally, label Rudyard Kipling—one of the World’s greatest ever writers, as a
racist. Some of his views on the inhabitants of the Indian Subcontinent were,
by our standards, pretty condemning when it came to the darker shades of skin.
If you complained to him about it he would look askance at you; he would fail to
understand what you meant because, by the mores of the day, he was just
following what everyone else did. Slavery was already abolished but that did
not mean that the common perception of coloured people changed very much. He lived
by his lights as we live by ours.
Shakespeare,
Chaucer, Bacon, Dickens, they all described life in a very different way to the
life that we are accustomed to living now. Does it make them wrong? No. Does it
make them despicable? No, of course not.
Society
has changed. It has changed very little in its roots but there have been
changes. Not all for the better.
Another,
more recent change has been the predilection for soap manufacturers to use
pseudo-fruit scents in our toiletries instead of the more traditional floral,
conifer and sea-spray. If it is changed then it must be better.
More
perception.
Change is
almost constant now. It took thousands of years to promote basic changes to our
perceptions, this was whittled down to hundreds of years and now we are into a
period where change is almost a daily routine.
“Buy New
Improved Glob For a Whiter Wash!” This is actually incredibly sad because my
short was blue before I washed it in ‘New Improved Glob’!
Of course
we have to wonder what was wrong with the old ‘Glob’. Why did it need changing?
It needed
changing because sales were beginning to slump. The ‘Bell Curve’ was starting
to drop into the ‘zero sales area’.
With food
it is much easier. Tinned food, especially, can be immediately improved by
adding more salt and sugar. This will spice up its taste. We are living on salt
and sugar because we are taking in more and more preserved and pre-packed food.
We learn
about this food because we are inundated with messages from marketing and
advertising people through the popular media every time we turn on the
television or radio; every time we go to social media on the computer; every
time we open a ‘newspaper’ or magazine; every time we get in the car and drive
past posters, billboards and shops.
It is a
blitz. It is a constant blizzard of visual noise oppressing us at every
possible opportunity.
How much
propaganda is slipped into this maelstrom of sales information? Can we tell? Do
we know?
The
manufacturers know exactly what we want. They use data mining from things like
loyalty cards and credit cards to let them know precisely what we are buying.
From this they work up the plan to decide which products need improving.
Research
groups know where we live, how we live, what we drive, where we spend our
money, where we go on holiday—everything about us. Nothing is left to chance.
In this
digital age there are no secrets. Pretending that you are exempt because you
use no plastic cards is like King Canute commanding the tide to recede.
You are
surrounded, you are awash with spyware of all kinds.
Genetics
will modify your vegetables. There may be ‘Monsanto’ based genetic modification
in the laboratory or the produce that you eat may be modified in the old
fashioned way—the way that gave us cabbages and various potatoes, chickens and
beef cattle for our gustatory pleasures.
It is
modified so that we, the consumer, will buy it. We will buy it because it is ‘new’,
it is 'improved’.
There is
nothing you can do about it. You are trapped in this situation, like it or not.
As
Sherlock Holmes said, “Alimentary, my dear Watson.”
