The Zen Marketing

Saturday, August 23, 2008

The wonders of marketing and mass consumism. Interesting little article about how something that might bring some knowledge to people has been used to increase someone´s company sells... and if you think about it, everything is like this... buy, buy, buy... and there i go!

Truth in the form of a lie.

..."Zen candles, Zen alarm clocks, Zen gardens that come in a box, and so on. Would you like a Zen screen protector? How about the Creative Zen 4GB Digital Player? Or audio treats such as The Zen of Golf, Husker Du's Zen Arcade, or The Zen of Screaming: Vocal Instruction for a New Breed?"

"how ideas that are originally mystical or esoteric make their way into mass culture. How do these ideas get out? And what do such ostensibly terrible things as commercialization and vulgarization have to do with this process? "

"The point I'm making is not about Zen as such, but rather that these ideas leak into the mass culture in the form of cliches, slogans, and trinkets. As Gurdjieff said, they have to.

There is one little detail that complicates matters a bit. Supposedly there are the enlightened masters and the endarkened masses of mankind. Supposedly. But as a matter of fact, each of us has both of these levels in us. There is a part of the mind that is illumined (the problem is that the conscious mind usually isn't in touch with it). There is also a part of the mind that isn't illumined; it's naïve and mechanical. It only takes seriously what it can see and feel and touch. It may not like meditation but it may warm at the sight of a sacred picture or even a crystal. Yet this part of the mind is just as necessary to our functioning as are higher levels of consciousness.

Which all means, I suppose, that there's no reason to chide yourself for your collection of sacred crystals and feathers or to throw away your Zen alarm clock. Who knows? You may find one day that it wakes you up in more ways than one. "

Note:
On a little side note... i did a quick search on Amazon.com for "Zen"... and yeah... you can just imagine!