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.

Hoax

The recent 'balloon boy' hoax has uncovered the current gullible nature of a mass-media society. Millions were convinced that the live coverage was really about a boy in a shiny balloon. The TV outlets loved it. Sponsors were probably calling up as it was happening to get product placement onto those millions of screens.

Madoff was a hoax master. The guys at Enron were as well. How many hoaxes have been successful in this last decade of funny money, 'lent' to the gullible? Billions and billions of dollars worth. That's how many. We will all be paying for that gullibilty for years to come.

The deeper meaning for our culture is seldom addressed in the media. Why? The media live off your gullibility. If you weren't suggestible, there would be no commercials. There probably wouldn't be any broadcast TV.

So, why be so surprised when a demented parent abuses his paternity by enlisting his cherubic child in a fraud in order to get back on TV? It's just a symptom of a society polluted by commercial media.

My own practice has entailed not watching commercial television for the past 20+ years. I have found it tremendously liberating. I am happily clueless about American Idol, Survivor, Dancing with the Stars and the rest of the fluff they serve up to sell us more fluff. Taking the time wasted on watching commercial television, or television at all, opens a huge reservoir of useful time for expanding intelligence, education, relaxation, volunteering, exercise, creativity, community service, proactive parenting or anything else.

Television

When I was bedridden for weeks after being treated for cancer in 2003, I learned the power of television. I spent most of my time alone, drifting between sleep and blurred consciousness. I kept the TV on constantly. Banal sitcoms, hideous commercials, stupid talk shows, game shows, endless headline news programs. I watched it all with the desperation of an invalid. I was an invalid.

Television works best, in my experience, with the reptile brain. Passive, cold-blooded, impressionable. When we are truly immobilized by pain and weakness, we tend to revert to our animal natures, which focus on nothing other than escape from the realization of the truth of our situation.

More and more, people in industrialized nations are giving their free time over to television. Children are exposed to hours and hours of television. If television works as a drug, as it did for me in my illness, I suppose watching TV can be seen as a form of recreational drug use for those who are quite well enough to be doing more constructive things with their time. This could be expanded to see a whole civilization as becoming addicted to the recreational drug of television.

If television becomes controlled by the Rupert Murdochs of the world, then the drug (TV) will be laced with the worst poisons: Messages about selfishness, antisocial individualism and materialism. What will be the antidote for this poisoning of millions? Who will have the power to administer it? Will the suppliers of the poison not be poisoned by it themselves?

Turn off the remote. Do not poison your mind with commercials. Participate in media which allow your participation and independent thought. This too is part of practice.