We are ignoring why we do what we do and creating a dependency on what gives us quick and repetitive pleasures. The formula for generating wealth has become selling massive stimuli that trigger an immediate emotional benefit, even if it becomes self-destructive.
Consequently, anti-marketing does not mean proposing that marketing has a negative character and positioning it as an enemy to be defeated; quite the opposite. He marketing it is nothing more than systematizing, with trial and error processes, the correct signals to promote behavior. It is a means, not an end. It can also be used for sublime and positive purposes.
The problem occurs when we do not understand what is happening, we narrow our vision and act against our good only to feed the selfish interests of others—and worst of all, we do it on our own. In addition, with the recent advances in Artificial Intelligence, the danger has multiplied.
Whether we like it or not, there are innate conditionings—instincts among them—that instruct forceful behavioral tendencies in us. For example, for survival, all Homo sapiens we are pre-programmed to opt for alternatives that imply less energy consumption.
In a contemporary environment, the latter explains why we read so little and consume so many social networks even though this implies less benefit in the medium and long term, or why the best-selling foods are those loaded with express indulgence even though they go against our own health. Industries take advantage of this situation and the result has been a collection of physiological and psychological pathologies never seen before in the history of mankind.
For these reasons, finding an antidote is urgent. I am sorry to inform you that this implies a significant mental effort: feeding our creative, reflective and critical thinking faculty. The infallible shield is found in information and biological understanding.
To make free decisions, anti-marketing means understanding desires, how they work, what their goal is, and distinguishing how communication uses our impulses against us.
For more than 15 years I have dedicated myself to studying and documenting behavioral biology and developing business models and creative communication tactics with a very particular primary purpose:
Provide tools for the mind that allow intelligent decisions to be made to protect life.
In other words, said data is very useful for selling but, above all, for discovering the cognitive biases that cloud our thinking.