My wife just put something surprising and rare on the table: a supermarket receipt. Not unusual, you reply. Indeed: rubbish bins, pockets and car floors are littered with countless wax paper dockets. But this receipt is shocking: it has no advertisements on the back. Just a curly rectangle of white. When my wife pointed out its idiosyncrasy, I smiled. How extraordinary: a blank space, not filled with companies spruiking their banal wares.
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Advertising is now absurdly ubiquitous. Ads are by highways, on petrol bowsers, printed on T-shirts and tattooed onto foreheads (I'm not joking). And it is not only visual: the radio in this cafe is now telling me about tiles. Next might be erection pills, then fast food, so I can make love on my hardwood parquetry floor with a full stomach.
Happily, the rule of the spruikers is not quite so tyrannical - partly because they are all competing for eyes, ears and wallets, and partly because we are not as childishly pliable as they'd like.
Still, we are more vulnerable to advertising than we might like to believe. One study in Psychological Science reported that people sped up their behaviour when they saw fast food logos - even when they were not aware they had seen them. The brief flashes of junk food chain signs encouraged a mood of haste, instantaneity, and restlessness.
Another study showed that people who saw these logos, then tried to listen to music or watch beautiful scenery, were unhappier than those who just saw the logo. The explanation is worrying: in an accelerated mood, the study participants were less able to enjoy the sounds or sights.
Drive-through junk, in other words, can drive us to distraction. And this is only a few logos - imagine the possible influence upon outlook and behaviour of a day's advertisements on radio, TV, billboards, clothing, the internet. Even if this does not get us buying - though it often does, which is why companies pay for it - it can subtly change our minds.
In this light, advertising involves a double threat. The first is that vulnerable groups, and children in particular, will be encouraged to buy unnecessary or unhealthy products - hence rightful calls for banning of junk food advertisements during children's programming, and regulation of so-called ''alcopop'' promoted to minors.
The second is that consciousness can be interrupted and corrupted by constant corporate stimulation.
In the ''information economy'' there is plenty of data - what's scarce is attention, and companies pay top dollar for a share of it.
Governments are unlikely to regulate advertising on the latter grounds, if only because the effects are nuanced and contextual, and contact with them is seen as the responsibility of individuals.
This is not strictly true, since our media and cities are saturated with advertising, and children in particular are marinated in corporate sauce before they can even walk. But assuming we want, as individuals, to avoid undue corporate and media influence, what can be done?
Most obviously, it helps to limit exposure to the commercial cacophony.
This ranges from the more straightforward measures of the winding back time watching TV, browsing online, or listening to commercial radio, to seemingly more radical changes. For example, an excellent way to regain focus and reflect deeply is walking. Instead of using one's feet for brake and accelerator, use them for stepping.
This is not only healthy psychologically. It also gives one time to observe, analyse, meditate; to notice details of one's neighbourhood, rather than simply speedometers, bumpers and billboards.
One can stop and smell the roses - literally and figuratively.
Another method is to engage with the advertising, rather than simply absorbing it.
Take a moment to examine a glib jingle or novelty cardboard guitar from a supermarket; note its desperate claims and unspoken biases.
Visit a fast food ''restaurant'', not as a rabidly hungry driver, but as an observer, calmly surveying its products and rituals. What is it selling, alongside sugar and saturated fats? The point is not to become an expert on corporate manipulation, but to reclaim some mental autonomy; to be not a consumer for an advertising agency, but an agent, with all the self-awareness and self-control this suggests. And help kids to cultivate the same freedom.
A final step is more existential. Will we really say, on our deathbed, ''If only I'd spent more time being sold stuff''?
I doubt it. There is, shock horror, more to life than consumption, and most of us know this intuitively. We just need a reminder every now and then: of our finitude, limited horizons and the arrow of time. Put another way, human flourishing requires a keen sense of value - and this comes with no checkout receipt.
Damon Young is a philosopher and the author of Distraction: A Philosopher's Guide to Being Free.
