Ways Of Seeing, John Berger

Advertising is a huge industry in our day and age and to be able to see what it does to us is important. Advertising has become a very detailed and complicated process of figuring out what makes people want what they have to sell. There are millions of different choices out there and advertisers want you to buy their stuff. The pictures that are now used create a culture of envy. When billboards are everywhere, stores surrounding us, there is no way to avoid what the advertisers assume is the ideal human. With all these things around us it becomes a cycle of consumerism, you work to make money, to buy what advertisers sell. These advertisers advertise happiness and it makes you want happiness, but to obtain this happiness, you must work, and working for most people is not the most pleasant thing. “The interminable present of meaningless working hours is ‘balanced’ by a dreamt future in which imaginary activity replaces the passivity of the moment. In his or her day-dreams the passive worker becomes the active consumer. The working self envies the consumer self.” Here Berger emphasizes the fact that advertising gets into your head. It is all over the place nowadays, in our newspapers, on our TV’s, on the internet, there is no way around comparing yourself to someone you assume is ideal. In class today we talked about the 2nd commandment, which tells humanity to avoid making images so that we can prevent idolatry, this seems to be our problem. Its funny that even God predicted what we would become or at least knew about human weakness.