THE REAL REASON TV IS BAD FOR YOU

October 15, 2007

One word : mistrust

Has the world really become more malicious? Are more people out to get us? Or do we feel this way because media has chosen to force feed us this impression?

The world was safer. My parents took more risks with my safety than I would take with my own kids. As a parent, it’s difficult to be objective about these issues, but we have been taught to watch for evil intent all around us. We have become suspicious of everyone.

Be hyper-vigilant. Protect your borders.

I see this especially in young adults. They have an undercurrent of suspicion that others might take advantage of them unless they remain on the alert. It must be very difficult to move ahead when you expend so much energy in defending yourself from possible intruders. It is because of TV that we approach others with a sense of mistrust.

Sure, some degree of self-protection is necessary. There are those who would do harm, there always have been. I just don’t see them as being the majority or a force for evil that you must be constantly on your guard against. It’s a relatively new phenomenon in social interaction.

When children watch what TV has become

It is the generations that have had TV from their earliest memory that have paid the highest price. Those of us who remember the early TV programs deeply regret what they have been replaced with.

I suppose there have been benefits. The children’s programs which have evolved are better than the ones I watched. This is largely because so much programming is unsuitable, if not downright dangerous, for young minds. Back then, parents didn’t get the risk and didn’t censor what we watched. Now that parents have less time and kids sit in front of TV more, better options have evolved.

Ever notice how the thing someone is most trying to convince you of about themselves is the least true, in fact it’s the opposite that is true? All this toughness is an expression of weakness, of needing to prove something early on in your interaction with someone so they won’t try to make a grab for your power. Like a fearful animal, it will snarl and bite first and ask questions later, if ever. It stems from uncertainty about how to handle social situations.

When adults surrender their judgment

We’ve been conditioned to sit in front of the box and relax ; it takes our minds to another zone where we can hand over responsibility for our thought content for awhile. TV is going to look after it, provide your brain with something to chew on while you vegetate. So it feeds us, we don’t censor it particularly, we figure we’re grown-ups, we can control how it affects us. It certainly gives bad people ideas, but not us, right? Our morality is intact and unshakable.

I think adults are more at risk than kids because they have lost their strong grounded confidence in what they want and what is good for them. Adults have spent too many years at the mercy of other grownups who had their own limitations and agendas, in a world that seldom makes sense and often seems unfair, and this leaves a mark. They’re no longer sure of how their guiding light got so dim, when it used to burn so bright. Children are not bound at every turn by the adult’s very restricted perceptions of what is possible. Allow enough TV and they’ll follow in the grownups’ footsteps in no time.

Are you unaffected by weirdness, jealousy, bitchiness, and spite? Dream on.

We begin to see the world and everyone in it as something to protect ourselves against , or to feel humiliated for, in the case of the pathetic participants of Fear factor. Reality TV is particularly bad because it shows us people like us, pitted in some sort of bizarre and contrived competition, becoming nastier and more suspicious of those around them. This, of course, is the cheap shot that provides the mounting tension. It’s cheap junk food for tired minds.

The harm lies in our inability to resist those attitudes carrying over into our real lives. We see them enough on TV and we mentally practice them. We put ourselves into the shoes of those pathetic people and their odd imaginary situations, and our minds go down that path. Minds get better and better at going down paths. Your mind will choose to go down the path you practiced because it becomes the easiest thing to do. Choose your paths wisely.

We submit to this behavioral training in negativity when our brains are relaxed and receptive to suggestions and it leaves a permanent imprint on our way of thinking. Story telling has been a significant part of human civilization and customs for a reason – it’s because stories affect us so deeply. Stories resonate powerfully with human beings, from the most primitive times. Our minds practice situations by hearing about them, so that we can be ready if we are faced with the same conditions.

Picture this

Imagine what a different place the entire world would be if the news on every station every night was only about the good things that had happened that day, instead of the worst of humanity made as emotional and inflammatory as possible.

For only 1 day, wouldn’t it be nice if every news program told us only of the good that had been done by human beings the previous day. Not how much $$$ corporations made but how much they gave back. Not the empty idiot bug-in-a-bottle lives of so many celebrities, but what use they had made of their fame (making movie after movie does not count). Not the posturing of politicians and the bluster of one party trying to get ahead of the other in the polls, but the differences they have made for the better. Not a single murder, no war, no reality programming about indecency or malice. These exist because the attention they are given that fuels the fire.

Of course, it will never happen by itself. TV is about what sells. But you know the content would change overnight if the harmful and negative stuff stopped selling.

Tomorrow could be better

How can anyone say that this wouldn’t make a difference? The difference it would make in how we perceive others and their motives toward us would change radically, and almost immediately. Within 48hrs, less!, the world would be a different place.

Is every man who is reading this rolling his eyes? Of course it’s naïve. I know that. But I don’t see that the present system is working overly well. I’m not saying that politics and war must end; they’ll go on as long as humans exist. I’m just not convinced that we need to be soaked in gruesome detail or that we are able to defend ourselves against it. If you are told something often enough, along with pictures to prove it, you begin to believe it.

Today will be over too soon. You won’t be given it again. Why let any of it be empty and useless?

In this one-and-only day which you have been given, I am honored that you passed some of it here and I hope you found something that was meaningful to you.

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Happiness