Learn How The Industry Gives You Guilt

Mankind has had to deal with challenges that constantly arise in its constant sophistication. It is happening at a furious pace and biology has simply not been able to keep up. These bodies, designed to hunt and protect humans in harsh conditions, are now facing technological challenges. One of these is the way the industry gives you guilt.

The book El enemigo conoce el sistema (“The enemy understands the system”) by Marta Peirano does a great job of explaining how this happens. In this she explains in detail how knowledge about how our brain works makes us vulnerable. Businesses exploit this vulnerability to motivate a consumer mentality.

The industry gives you guilt

For example, researchers now know that happy music makes you buy things faster. Calm music encourages you to stay somewhere longer. What music do you hear in stores? What kind of music is playing in the background in stores that sell more expensive items? Coming home and seeing all the unnecessary things you have bought is disorienting. Thus, the industry gives you absolute guilt.

You may also feel guilty when you can not stop eating fast food. It often happens: You decide to improve your diet, but then you fail. The truth is, though, that’s the point.

In Peirano’s own words: “We prefer to believe that we are pigs without a hint of discipline rather than to believe that one of the most powerful and toxic industries on this planet has employees who are extraordinarily motivated geniuses with sky-high salaries and laboratories lately. in technology whose sole purpose is to manipulate us without us realizing it. ” 

In other words, many people and technologies are out to destroy your willpower. Have you ever stopped and thought about the great power you are dealing with?

More on how the industry gives you guilt

You are facing an industry that sells cheap, unsatisfactory foods with low nutritional value. This creates a paradox. Many people nowadays suffer from both obesity and malnutrition. This is because food quantity has nothing to do with food quality.

The industry is designed for people to make impulsive decisions with little time and cognitive energy and with far too many things to deal with. At the same time, many older recipes are published as “healthy” today, when people begin to worry about their diet.

When it comes to the packaging of food, you see people working with phrases that advertise what the product does not contain. What you may forget to look for is what it contains.

Some industries have reduced the sugar content of their food. But sales have declined as a result. As Peirano says: “It is easier to create an addiction than to get rid of one”. 

To be sure, it is a cycle you enter from a young age. For example, breakfast cereals for children often contain potentially addictive and unhealthy ingredients, although many consider them “healthy”.

Consumer mentality on the internet

Somehow, the goal of the industry is to make sure you never stop consuming. What is popular right now? A perfect example is streaming services with a ton of TV series and movies that you can watch.

Cinemas have been replaced by platforms that give people dose after dose of uninterrupted episodes at a “reasonable price”. 

If the industry does not give you guilt, what feeling arises after spending an entire afternoon in front of the TV when you have a long to-do list? Social media is the icing on the cake. How many times have you picked up the phone to do something and started scrolling instead?

Social media is nothing if not automatic. Websites with endless scrolling are designed to give you a personal look to keep you glued to the screen. You can go to your Facebook page for example, and scroll and scroll and scroll. The stories, videos, photos, and comments from people you know are endless. To log out, you must regain control of your attention.

This is difficult to do because the people who designed these platforms created them for just this purpose. They want you to stay in their virtual locations for as long as possible. These are people who have the knowledge they need to know how your brain works. Unfortunately, it is extremely easy to exploit.

This is how the industry gives you guilt. A lot of guilt. For example, you feel guilty when you eat ice cream. When desperation manifests itself, it is usually the result of guilt. In reality, just like on film, this desperation makes you end up eating ice cream in front of the TV.