People watch television more than any other activity: 3.5 hours a day is the average. For reading and other activities the figures did not go above 30 mins.
We are changing mentally. We are changing our minds. And many people are having their minds changed for them.
Our minds take in everything we see for evaluation and consideration. Sometimes we try what we have seen others do adapting what seems to work for further trials.
Nor are we unaffected by exposure to bad examples. Not everyone, perhaps, but most of us will become inured to bad behavior if exposed to it long enough. At the very least, if we can't escape it we will make peace with it
Our character is being formed while the TV is on. And the Tved mind of the TVed individual tells him that bad behavior is not treated the same way on TV as he experiences it in actual word and deed. It is not treated in a better way but in a way consistent with a fantasy intrinsic to a TV world, the world controlled by the TVers (the owners of the TV licenses), their sponsors and ultimately their government licensor.
Without TV most minds retain the religion and mores of their parents, the politics of their class, and the roles tradition has assigned to their gender and age, etc. Social harmony requires this. It is a natural prerequisite of man in society, and fundamental to civilization.
Mores derive from the established practices of a society.....They consist of shared understandings about the kinds of behavior likely to evoke approval, disapproval, toleration or sanction, within particular contexts.
The world of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable is different for the TVed individual. It is being orchestrated. While watching TV the TVed's universe of experience and range of ideas are being subtly manipulated in ways neither random nor in the TVed person's own hands nor in the hands of his family or associates, but firmly in those of the TVer and his overseers.
For every TVed there exist TVers. The TVer views the TVed as a set of eyeballs and/or a wallet and nothing more. The TVer wants those eyeballs. He doesn't care what the TVed needs or believes except in so far as it helps him manipulate the Tved.
The TVer's ideals are secondary to the product he hawks but those ideals will be evident wherever he thinks he can get away with inserting them. He wants to make money or have influence or both, and he must satisfy the government licensor. He doesn't want grief for something he broadcasts. But he and those he must satisfy seek to control the thinking of their audience and they do every thing they can think of to get better at it.
One broadcast at a time the reality the TVer portrays etches itself on the unconsciousness of the TVed's mind changing his thinking forever without his ever becoming conscious of it. Eventually the vales and assumptions of the TV world become more real than any others. It's just a matter of time.
constant exposure to social mores is thought by some to lead to development of an individual moral core, which is per-rational and consists of a set of inhibitions that cannot be easily characterized except as potential inhibitions against taking opportunities that the family or society does not consider desirable. These in turn cannot be easily separated from individual opinions or fears of getting caught.
Every moment you spend in front of the TV you are in the world of mental lockdown, on a narrow path maintained by the business owners and government censors of the networks. And every moment that you are there they are telling you what is worth thinking about and in what ways it is OK to think about it. If there are points of view to be aired then the TVer frames the debate, invites “opposing” spokespersons (acceptable to him) and gives weight according as he would have attention grow or wane.
The great blogger Fred Reed wrote:
The genius of television is that, to shape a people as you want, you don't need unrestrained governmental authority, nor do you need to tell people what you want of them. Indeed, if you told them what to do, they would be likely to refuse.
No. You merely have to show them, over and over, day after day, the behavior you wish to instill. Show them enough mothers of illegitimate children heartwarmingly portrayed. Endlessly broadcast storylines suggesting that excellence is elitist. Constantly air ghetto values and moiling back-alley mobs grunting and thrusting their faces at the camera – and slowly, unconsciously, people will come to accept and then to imitate them. Patience is everything. Mold the young and in thirty years you will have molded the society. Don't tell them anything. Just show them.
And television is magic: People can't not watch. No matter how bad the fare is, how much it offends against their most deeply held values, they will stare at it rather than be alone with their thoughts.
And yet a few individuals give it up as I did. As the years pass clarity returns.
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