Advertisements & Choice

Advertisements

I was sitting in a movie theatre. The show was announced for 4:30. if you come early they start showing ads, so I spent as much time possible outside, standing, looking at posters. I do like some kinds of adverts ;). I arrived inside at 4:30 and still I had to bear the torture of all the Gold and Real estate companies trying to look dependable, trustworthy and necessary for my well-being and happiness.

I looked away, I played a game on my phone, I talked loudly to fellow movie watchers. I did everything I could to show disrespect and anger. One gold company is targeting children who can barely speak for their gold ornaments! I am about to get up shout slogan and tear the chair out of its hinges, when they top it all.

The theatre and the ad making company advertise the advertising opportunity that the cinema presents! "Right Audience, Right Time, Right Price" they announce, rubbing it in my face! They have capture me as a sitting duck, caught in the midst of a herd of cows who are looking at the ads and eating popcorn as if was adding any value to their life! I am seething, when  some rowdy like me shouts a Tamil joke and all the audience laugh together!  I like being here. And I will go on liking watching movies in a movie hall despite all the stupid never ending advertisements. And that is precisely what they mean by "right time".


"Anyway you look at it, you lose"
- Simon and Garfunkel

Choice

This comes from a discussion I had with a very good friend, with whom I often have amazing thought provoking and valuable discussions.

I am morbidly scared of large gatherings without a ill defined activity (such as a work place, a movie theatre, or a theatre/performance workshop). I am also terribly bored at ritualistic gatherings such as marriages. An acquaintance, someone very nice and like minded invited me to his marriage. I decided to be a good boy and go. Went I did and bored I was, but not as scared as I have been on other occasions. The crowd was not as crazy some other crowds I have been in, especially at SIPA events in New York. I felt secure and taken care of.

Sitting there idle for hours my mind went into a background search mode and spitted out something that amazed me. I reached the obvious realization that thousands of people had made a decision to be here this evening to make these two people feel special. So I was happy for a moment to be there, witness to such an important event! Enter my friend.

I told her about my grand discovery, or my re-discovery of the purpose and a reason to not entirely abhor rituals and ritualistic events. I may be finally turning normal. She cannot bear to see me happy and has to poke a hole. What followed is a very interesting discussion. I have never, but only studied this subject using the methods of Economic the theory of economics choice, and Cost-Benefit Analysis, and am perhaps using these methods here in a wrong manner or context.

She proposed that most people are not there in that ceremony because they made a choice. They are there, instead, because that is what is done. You go to your friends', relatives', and neighbors' marriages. There is no thinking, no value assigning no analysis no choice involved.

To me that does not seem right. They are standing in a line to greet the couple, they are meeting people they may not have met in a long time etc. In all they seem to be enjoying and valuing their time. And more importantly I think, every person has had to make the decision of taking a bath, select clothes to wear, put on perfume, leave home to drive across to the place, and buy a gift/choose the amount to make a cash gift. These all seem to be acts of making and supporting a decision at every step.

She proposed that these are all decisions but the making a choice w.r.t the ritual should involve the consciousness that they are doing if because they want to make the couple feel good, or because of other values that are associated with the rituals. Otherwise it is a pressure and 'putting-up' action (like sitting through advertisements in a cinema hall).

This is a very interesting thought for me. I started looking for ways to understand this. I first asked her, she knows the Tamil culture better than me, if there are any well known poets of the nirgun bhakti movement: any poets or writers who opposed the Hindu ritualism. Something which may present the option of not liking to go to the marriage, some reason one can present as a serious counter argument. She she could not think of one.

It occurred to me that if one is forced to make such choices in extreme circumstances, one thinks and re-considers everything. One such extreme circumstance may be converting from one religion to the other. It is an on going process in Chennai. People are converting from Hinduism to Islam, to Christianity, some people I am sure are converting from Islam to Christianity, Christianity to Hindusim. If there is even a small mass of such people who are thinking and making decisions about which rituals to value and which to oppose or abolish, such a discussion of a counter argument cannot be completely absent from a society. So there is always this other option involved, of not valuing the ritual and thus there is a choice to value or not value the rituals. People are who are present here obviously made a choice of valuing it enough to overcome other costs involved such as more efforts involved in driving, buying gifts etc. They may even assign these actions: driving and buying gifts etc. as benefits in the short and/or long term.

The value of these gatherings may also have been assigned a long time ago, such as when they were children, when the parents and other adults took them to such events, spoke or acted out the value they assign to these rituals. These marriage-goers may also have enjoyed parts of the events as a child and classified it as a benefits by first hand experience. This/these value may be now accessed at an unconscious level and never verbalized or discussed. So to a casual observed may come across as a matter of following the mob, a no-choice matter.

I also feel that each person must have experienced, sometime in their lives, a decided not go to a marriage,  because of one of the many reasons possible to do so, convenience, health, etc. and faced the consequences: people asking, family members of couple feeling bad, other family members mentioning, asking about the reason for absence etc. So they must have some sort of measure for a prediction for "costs" and "benefits", involved and how to value and compare them to reach a choice.

I also just like to think that everyone decided that they want to make the day special for the couple in the way friends, family, society should do in a children's story book. Even in a Limony Snickets one.