March 9, 2025 | Demir Antay

How Marketing Destroyed Your Belonging

We are all addicted, not just to money but to marketing.

Telling us that if we get that big 4x4 SUV family card, we will finally be happy, and our kids and partner will finally be happy.

Nobody took the time to ask the question maybe my family doesn’t like me because they do not know me … maybe because I don’t spend time with my kid and create new experiences, maybe that is the reason?

Everybody has a quick excuse for this as well: “Well my father didn’t spend a lot of time with me as well, he provided and I respect him for it, this is the new generation's problem”.

Everybody's excuse changes from time to time, but it is mostly in those lines where they just take no accountability.

Maybe it is okay to give up on an older self that we created because that older self is sick.

How did we get sick?

After the Second World War, from 1945 to 1950, marketing shifted from just trying to analytically sell their goods to selling a dream.

It was called the “American Dream”.

Companies have shifted from selling basic needs to selling lifestyle dreams.

That is why if you take a marketing course right now, the value disposition of an offer you create, they tell you to bump the dreams high, so that the consumer is more likely to buy.

If you know about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it is a psychological framework that was developed by Abraham Maslow.

It states that after you cover your basic needs, which are food, shelter, water, sleep, and clothing.

You get no more positive incentives to spend your resources. So the companies needed to make a play for your higher needs on the maslow hierarchy so that you had an incentive to buy.

The higher levels of maslow hierarchy are love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

That is why you see nearly every consumer product we are being sold is around either family life or making a play to your self esteem needs.

Maybe it is a watch that should just tell the time, but it is now a symbol of your self-worth.

Maybe it is that red-colored Ikea coffee machine with those little espresso packs.

Yes, if your wife uses that you are a man, you made it.

And don’t get me wrong, this is not a satiric post where I condescend to you and establish superiority.

I have done this too.

I wasted my whole life believing that as a young man, if I made something out of my life, I would be worthy of love.

If I out-worked everyone with my trade, I would be worthy enough to buy those designer clothes, I would be worth enough so that someone would love me.

But I could have spent that time trying to create good memories with loved ones, maybe trying to be a man that had the necessary skills to have a long-term girlfriend that would eventually create a strong family unit.

All of my skills are around city life, paying bills, and work.

Nothing else …

I didn’t even spend time to think about my own self-actualization or my own set of beliefs that would make me a virtuous and esteemed man.

All of my belief systems are programmed by school, family, and work.

Virtue and esteem as a man are not a score board of money points where we just aimlessly chase a coin.

It is what you leave behind, what you create, how many loved ones you have cultivated in your life, and it is the dog or cat that doesn’t leave your side and loves you.

You can’t buy that. The price is not money.

The price is experience, and the fee is your time.

But we spent it on designer clothes.

I hope we will all be happy in the end.

Steps that I am taking in order to recover

I hope these ideas of minimalism, marketing, and Maslow’s hierarchy make sense.

I plan on writing more about these ideas while mixing them up with psychology, minimalism, love, etc.

Use the information as you would like.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a great day.

Thank you.

Demir.

Freedom.
Education.
Discipline.

Join 6+ following my learning lessons about gaining freedom through education and discipline.

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Demir Antay