Television

I stopped watching commercial television (television with commercial interruptions) decades ago. When I made the decision, I had just attended a short presentation by a renowned psychiatrist at McLean Hospital. The presenter had made a compelling argument that television, especially violent television with commercials, is psychologically toxic. I happen to think he was on to something.

Recently, there has been media promotion of the endings of two commercial television programs, Lost and 24. I know little about either show. As an objective observer of the hype, I have to speculate that these shows have touched an unsettling emotional current in American culture. Lost is a show about existential angst, wrapped in surreal mysticism. 24 is a show about spies, government corruption and terror.

Those who dream their way through life by attaching themselves to public, fictional narratives, designed to sell cars or iPhones, are bound to be insecure and ill-equipped to deal with reality. The reality of their own lives has no relevance to the television or media dream. The attempt to conform or relate ones life to these two-dimensional realities is simply unhealthy.

I find it particularly troubling when these entertainment vehicles become the grist of human relationships. Lost and 24 fan groups abounded with tearful last episode parties. Similarly, some people built their lives around Survivor. Couch potatoes, working their way to obesity with fake-buttered, microwave popcorn, while fixated on buffed strangers on tropical islands; the worst of voyeurism, combined with extremely soft pornography.

Stepping away from the television and out of your home into your real community is healthy. It is good for you and your community. Walk your neighborhood and say hello to people. Patronize a local, non-chain cafe. Be a regular at a local library or book store. Volunteer at a local nursing home or hospital. You'll soon find that you will have no time to watch the latest TV craze. Your own life will be its own, fascinating narrative with a cast of real-life characters.

Summer

In the 'developed' world, millions and millions of dollars are spent every Spring and Summer in attempt to prey on the insecurity of people, whom corporations view simplistically and cynically as customers. Advertising is focused on bodies and sex. Bathing suits and underwear adorn the buffed and flawless bodies of twenty-somethings everywhere you look.

This corporate self-hate industry, including diets, bogus exercise gadgets and unattainable goals for most people, makes many millions every year by inducing insecurity and offering magical solutions. Perhaps the best evidence to show the failure of capitalism as a model for human evolution is the massive number of obese and depressed people who sit and watch these advertisements over and over. Yet, obesity is rampant. Depression is rampant.

It is essential for individual human evolution to accept one's own being, including one's own body with its flaws and also its benefits. This acceptance is a first step to treating yourself with the respect and nourishment you deserve and need to advance in your life.

By embracing and accepting who you really are, you can then look to who you wish to be. This is just the beginning of a lifetime journey.

Epicureans

This is a time of obesity in the consumer world and hunger in the laborer world. Is it any wonder that American cable television boasts hour after hour about expensive food consumption and preparation? The elite, who have captured and dominate the international television industry, are obsessed with material pleasure and excess. This is not new, of course, but the elite of today number in the millions. They are served by billions who labor harder and harder as their overall compensation dwindles as a proportion of planetary resources and production. Greed is in. The Epicureans flaunt their devotion to pleasure, while always talking on TV about how they have paid their dues or worked their way up. This is myth in most cases. The masses are lulled into submission with false promises of open access to the upper levels of society drilled into their hypnotized TV-medicated brains. They stuff down their anger with starch and fat. There is no happiness in obesity or hunger. There is ultimately no happiness in attachment to pleasure and excess. There is happiness in the practice of moderation and living to promote economic equality and justice for everyone.