Human Primal Forces

Have you ever wondered why advertisers would bother to spend millions embedding messages of sex such as phallic symbols or messages of death such as skulls inside their product placements?

BASIC INSTINCTS
The main concern for all animals including humans is survival. Survival of the individual first and then survival of the species and genes through procreation.

This is achieved through two primal instincts.

DESIRE AND FEAR

The desire of life and the fear of death.

Life – the mother of all desires.

Death – the mother of all fears.

The desire to move forward to the one (life) and the fear to move away from the other (death).

These two primal instincts control all human behavior and are the mothers of all other fears and desires.

Without you consciously knowing it, EVERYTHING you do is either to move forward into the desire and fulfillment of life or away from the fear and loss of death.

Much of our behavior is hard-wired internally within our brains for the basic goals and objectives of all human beings. Survival and procreation. Satisfaction and pleasure.

These two core instincts control everything you think, do and are.

We are constantly striving for more life (including perpetuating our genes through sex) and running away from illness and death.

As no one has yet conquered death, the only way to ‘cheat’ death is through procreation. Add the intense pleasure that sex affords and you can easily see why sex (after individual survival) is THE most important motivator for humankind.

However, as we live in social structures with economic systems that restrict these basic instincts most humans are repressed. That is they are unable to give vent to their full biological motivators.

SUBLIMINAL ADVERTISING
That’s why advertisers target them so consistently. Life and death. Sex and death. Enjoying the pleasures of life – cheating the threat of death. But they add a little twist to the mix. After all, they want us to buy their products – not cheat death or have unbounded sex.

We live in a world of repression – repressed desires and exaggerated fears.

They know we are repressed. They know we cannot give vent to our sexual urges and our innate fear of death – but we can re-direct them. Re-direct them into their products.

Even if we cannot afford the luxury of having sex with young beautiful mates (thereby ensuring our immortality and allaying our fears of death if only momentarily) we can substitute them with gadgets and material things that provide the illusion of comfort and security.

Retail therapy as a substitute for the real therapy of perpetuating life and sex.

Instead, advertisers seek to manipulate those frustrated desires and exaggerated fears into purchases.

If we cannot get the beautiful young man or women of our sexual dreams (to pass on our genes) then we can relieve our frustrations by smoking the cigarettes or drinking the alcohol that we have been taught through subliminal advertising to associate with that.

In fact, we can be persuaded to buy almost anything if we can be fooled into linking it to the promise and pleasures of procreation and the attendant alleviation of the fear of death.

HABITS & FAMILIARITY
Together with our basic instincts, man is also a creature of habit and of familiarity.

HABITS
We are all creatures of habit. Inbuilt is our desire to repeat things that are pleasing and to avoid those things that are unpleasant. To repeat those behaviors that are rewarding and to stop doing those things that lead to frustration and non-satisfaction.

FAMILIARITY
What we perceive as familiar is what we unconsciously prefer. When we become accustomed to things, we unconsciously prefer them above others. This is so hard-wired within us that on occasion we can even become familiar with things that do us harm.

Advertisers know that people are creatures of habit and of familiarity and once they can make their product familiar to us there is much greater likelihood we will buy them.

An even bigger plus for advertisers is the fact that after we have bought their product or products there is an even greater likelihood that we will continue to do so, simply because it has become a habit.

PROGRAMMING
All this ‘programming’, all these instincts, habits and gravitating towards familiarity has been hard-wired into our brains from the earliest times.

Since the birth of mankind.

And with subtle and clever manipulation it is possible for advertisers, filmmakers and other media creators to appeal to our base instincts, habits and to our preferences for familiarity above that of the unknown to influence us to make choices that benefit them perhaps more they might benefit us.

It is obvious really. Perhaps sometimes so obvious that we discount the inherent power that these simple facts present both to ourselves and to others.

The point is this. We are creatures. Pre-programmed instinctive creatures. With desires and fears.

Creatures of instincts. Creatures of habits. Creatures of familiarity.

It is this that controls us at a very basic level. An unconscious level most of the time.

And it is at this level that we can be and are manipulated by those that seek to control us and to manipulate us.

This is what subliminal messages are really all about.

The power to control. The power to control how we behave.

It is when we can fully realize (REAL+EYES) this truth that we can at last begin to understand what others already know and the tools they are using to get inside our heads.
Inside our minds. Inside our basic instincts.