We live in a wonderful society indeed. Almost Utopia. 'Dreams' are sold to us at every corner. There is not a single pack of toilet paper that a marketing agent has not yet associated with some kind of dream-like bliss.

Think back to the past day. How many letters, e-mails, text messages, adverts and clips have called you to buy, subscribe or invest? There is not a single area of our life that is not poisoned by fierce marketing. You cannot watch a film without being interrupted three times in one hour. You cannot listen to the news without John rhapsodising over an exceptional sale of bathtubs, three for the price of one. You cannot open your e-mail inbox without being offered a fake Rolex, dubious surgery, or organic camomile. Every inch of vertical and horizontal space, from buses to plastic bags, is glaring with slogans. The latest idea of some ingenious devil was to place adverts on the pavement.

And don't even hope to eschew temptation by yielding to it. Even if you have quite surpassed yourself and bought a month's holiday in India during the rain season, installed a mini-swimming pool in your one-bedroom flat and had an operation to triple the size of your genitalia, the lull will not last long. The moment you lock your door and stroll down the street, open a newspaper or hear your mobile telephone ring, you may brace yourself for another attack. Don't worry: if you run out of money, they'll give you a loan.

The result is sinister. Advertising has turned the vast majority of us into crazed hedonists. Advertising relies on our basest instincts. With varying subtlety but remarkable persistence it encourages us to turn our life into an uninterrupted state of physical indulgence. (I have yet to see an Internet banner, unsolicited SMS or e-mail gratuitously appeal to my sense of duty, kindness or honour.) We behave like the laboratory mouse that, thanks to some electrodes judiciously placed on its body, only had to press a pedal to experience intense physical pleasure. The mouse stopped eating and pressed the pedal again and again until it died. The only thing that seems to keep us from dying of over-indulgence is the brilliant progress of medical science, which makes every effort in order for us mice to remain active and enthusiastic consumers for the longest possible period.

Worse still, advertising, by appealing to our innate yearning for the sublime and by promising us that our wildest dreams will come true - if only we buy this or subscribe to that - is effectively killing our god-like capacity to dream and create. Devilishly, it shifts the paradigm towards 'buy and wallow in dream-like illusion.'

This is not to say that advertising did not exist before our age of globalisation and consumerism. But it was as easy to spot and to avoid as the soldier of those times, dressed in a bright uniform and brandishing his rifle. Occasionally, it was even useful. Today, advertising has become surreptitious as a chemical weapon. All of us have been irretrievably contaminated. Of course you may try to stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone and affect to ignore this Bedlam of a world. But at night your dreams will be haunted by kittens, angelic babies and bikini-clad models urging you to buy coffee and diapers.

Let us face it: placards to the glory of Marx and Lenin were nowhere near as intrusive as today's mobile phone or orange juice commercials. As to our freedom of choice, it is merely a touching illusion. We only choose which brand we buy. We are a lost generation.

Something must be done. Something must change, here, where men sit and hear each other groan because their car does not have the latest traction-control system. I hereby propose to prohibit advertising of any kind, form and purpose.

That's what I call dreaming.

The picture is "Masse ohne Eigenschaften" (2009) by Marcus Kleinfeld. For further information, see Hannah Berry Gallery.