Television Kills

Television

That which entertains us, no, not entertains, but knocks us unconscious. At least American television. So many adverts, over and over, the same commercials on every channel and it even reaches out from the Tele to the radio and then to print, like the film The Ring. It is all so mindless and incessant.

I believe that ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) can 100% accurately be attributed to the viewing of overly commercial television from a young age. Scenario: Youth watching a cartoon. The cartoon is on for ten minuets before it is interrupted with a series of commercials. The attention is lost, then the program continues at another interval of ten minuets and the cycle continues. The young forming brain is being conditioned to be attentive in short bursts. Even if they actively view the commercials, each advert is only about a minuet in length and about five at a time.

Most American parents think nothing of sitting any child as young as six months old in front of some hyper real television program to buy themselves some time, to begin inoculation of this insane culture that these tiny innocent creatures were born into. Osho would consider this a crime of ignorance.

For nearly six years I was, at least in my home, television free. Maybe it had something to do with living in Europe, they are so much more conscientious about how they spend there time and developing their interests. So this granted me a great power when I stepped back into TV lifestyles while visiting the States. It seemed such a strange practice. To sit in overly comfortable chairs and sofas in front of this image box for hours and hours. The super loud, hyper-intense advertising was like watching someone get hypnotized. Like the spinning of an evil clown’s umbrella. If you suspend your vision comprehension, you will see this monster. A pounding of images, a flashing of a million lights carrying messages of secret ideologies with sign and signifiers, propaganda, patriotism, sex, consumption and the perpetuation of image addiction: headache.

In America it is true that most suburban houses will contain a television in any commonly occupied room. Families sit evenings and nights in separate rooms viewing sitcoms, sports, over reduced and dumbed Discovery shows. To an outsider who may have aerial, better then x-ray vision this custom may seem like a virtual drug use, as it leaves its participants drooling, lifeless and eventually asleep.

Entering back into the realm of television watching society with this power of perspective made everything broadcasted seem like a joke. It seemed like everything was an over dramatic Hollywood B-film, even the news. I remember looking at everyone in the room with laughter, but it was not shared. It was as if I could see right through the act and see it for what it actually was, the over use of bold graphics, music and . Like Rodney Piper in that classic 80’s film They Live! (A must see by the way.) It is as though people “evolve” with the TV, and those that have not see something very alien. Like traveling to another world.

It is interesting to consider the evolution of the television, not mechanically as much as psychologically. It is as if the Television is evolving/mutating to keep brains permanently entranced. So the louder and faster, the deeper it can penetrate our subconscious. It seems like it is trying to mimic the process of the brain. The length of time it takes for synapses to fire and send impulses and commit the information to peripheral memory. I suspect they hold focus groups on the subject. People sitting taking notes behind mirror windows, watching people screen hours of subliminal messages and then quizzing them for effectiveness.

What about these Nielsen ratings? As far as I understand, there are random televisions fitted with monitors that report how much TV you watch, what you watch, when and etc. But I suspect that with the recent mandatory switch to digital and the ceasing of broadcast, they will be monitoring every television, internet and phone, since it is all in one now. That is how they successfully evolve TV, they try to narrow down those scussefeul elements, then deliver them constantly and while your watching, steal all your money.

This is a real science, like a millennium long PHD is anthropology, statistics, Race relations, Political Science, Cultural Studies and business in one. I think the beginign of this PHD could be credited to someone like Edward Bernays. (Another must see documentary Century of the Self, it is a full length film available on google.)

TV is all over the world spreading information and this was good, in the beginning, but it has been infiltrated by a capitalist disease that intends on infecting the entire world. But the new TV is slowly becoming the internet. Sometimes people even do both, like a unconscious cerebral orgasm. Drooling TV, while facebooking, Myspacing or googling any little thought you may have, it is obscene. Like eating and masturbating on the toilet. Internet is worse then TV in so far as it is everywhere, carried on phones, mp3 players, computers, you can’t have a conversation with anyone in this city without them checking emails or googling to win a conversation.

I can’t help but want to remedy the situation with the recent reading of The Art of Mindful Living by Thich Nhat Hanh. If everyone was to concentrate for a moment on their breathing and to simply breath in and breath out and be utterly aware of it, Hanh says that something miraculous happens: you stop thinking and you are in the present moment. He suggests that we spend so much time thinking of the past and the future that we are not living at all. We are mindless and unaware of our surroundings. He suggests that we do this because we are afraid of the now, we rather say “Tomorrow will be better” . Perhaps this has something to do with the existence of time and our knowing that our experience is short and there will be an end and this brings us fear or being in the now. We rather watch TV and fiddle the phone and perhaps drink and take drugs.

Internet is more frightening, because its potential threat is higher in terms of sucking your life away for hours. Unlike television, the Internet is interactive and self gratifying, there is never “nothing on”. So it engages you longer and when you get into the nice sedative state it begins to inundate you with pop ups and faux informative advertising sites, flash ads and trash. Even an honest use, perhaps research may steal six maybe seven hours of your day away. I read an article that leads to another and so on. Now I limit myself to only objective research at one hour intervals for no more than three a day. It even makes my success rate higher since I have a sort of grocery list instead of just wondering hungry through the store.

I once watched some over dramatized program about the Universe’s creation and modern physics. It mentioned that the static or snow channel was actually background radiation from the Big Bang and the expanding universe. Which leads me to an appreciation of a wonderful technology, it was a discovery, it could be used in such lovely ways throughout the entire world, but instead it has been used to sell things we don’t need, make think we are suppose to live certain lives and spreads political propaganda and fear.

So, what can we do? Well, I was given a TV when I first moved to Miami by a friend. I was reluctant to accept, but it was bought new as a gift and refusal would have been hurtful. So there it sat, no cable, no rabbit ears. I eventually watched films on it and in the last year we found a white cable buried in the dirt in our most recent house. So we plugged it in and there was clear pictured, bright colored, non-stop American cable television. We watched it like we went on vacation to another planet. I took advantage of it as an indicator of the contemporary situation. I look at it like an anthropologist and what I see helps me to understand the little intricate mechanics of its slow psychological effect on this society and all the above considerations. But for most, I believe it is their reality and everything they know of the world outside of their family and home is what is brought to them via the television. Everyone should meditate, take deep breaths, be mindful, try to figure out how ones life could contribute to better the situation and change.

Serve others, think, grow your own food, permaculture, bicycle, collect rain water, speak truth only and recycle your TV.

Televisions in the world

Century of the Self

Existence of Time

Time is relative and for our intelligence, it results in seeing nothing more then Chaos. But for most of us trapped by a society that teaches our minds to be closed and utilitarian to function correctly in this civilization, we feel time is linear and absolute. What is time to us, a series of events that happen between sunrise and sunset: hours, days, months, years, all based on the sun.

But the real experience of time is in our physical bodies. We are so self centered that time seems linear: I did this then this happened and I did this and this happened, then I saw somebody, then I went here and someone did something to me and I had to do this and etc, etc till bed. I expect that this has something to do with most of us operating on a primitive rule, the rule of animal. That every action performed is to gain pleasure or to prevent pain. There is not one single action that you perform that is not motivated by this rule. Even the most self-sacrificial, Mother Theresa of Saints is governed by this rule.

This usually has me feeling a little existential, because it means that however different all of us are, we are all the same and we can never experience the world outside of the limitations of our chemical emotions or our physiology.

I was considering a story I read about Kurt Vonnegut explaining why people like drama. (I’ll put the link at the bottom) But he draws a story line/graph and illustrates that most people have a life that is right in the middle and waivers up and down between ecstasy and misery. He draws a line that moves through time, a linear line. This seems awfully grim to me. But in this world, if you stand still like most of these football watching, joyless job going, contents, the world is grim. But even in the most mundane situation I see a life through time something like this:

Of coarse this is oversimplified and perhaps just an aerial view of three or four people.

Up and down is not the emotional highs and lows, but instead the encounter with others. Even at the time of conception you have already interfered with someone else’s life, whether you are the fetus or the mother or the father or the family, employer, etc..and then it continues. Time is made of all these things, encounters that lead to events and experiences (at least in the human concept) There is two definitive aspects, the start and end of physical existence here. Birth and death. But everything in between is unpredictable, in/un-graphable, chaos.

In considering birth and death, I can’t help be brought into ideas of religion, of reincarnation, of heaven and hell. In all mythology is some glimmer into a knowledge of a truth, some real meaning to be deciphered. After looking at a number of images captured by the Hubble and contemplating them for some time and seeing unimaginable depths, vastness, objects and materials, I have concluded with absolute certainty that there is a plethora of life beyond Earth. Existence and consciousness is unfathomable and for us to deny possibility of other life just proves our minds feeble, primitive and full of fear. There must be millions of life filled galaxies, older, wiser and more advanced then us. They visit us with nervousness. They know our fear will murder them, they know our fear will murder ourselves.

Perhaps heaven is in essence the transcendence of fear, the fear instilled into us by this civilization. And when we die our energy (everything being made of energy like 1’s and 0’s or on and off, vibrations, heat, the sun, etc) is freed from this Earth and hence transcendence. Could be to a higher consciousness. However, Hell would equate to something like staying still, purgatory, not being reincarnated, burning back into the Earth, back to the ground, not the sky (the Heavens always being a world above). Or perhaps just being dead. In this idea, it might be suggested that returning back to Earth in terms of energy, life cycle, etc. is negative, but I certainly do not think this. The point is that in all the creativity in existence of everything, it must be something a little more complex then just physics and organic chemistry.

I believe that transcendence is found in the inherent innocence that we are all born. Children are born with good moral, it is we as a society, as parents that corrupt with ideas of hatred and fear.

We are all connected and share the subconscious chatter of the Collective Unconscious. Collectively we must try to return to our instilled ability of judgment, which is inherently good, moral, natural. To help rather then to compete, to conserve and respect our resources, to nurture our strengths and collaborate. Without these changes the world will continue to become globalized with bad ideas, money, poverty and synthetic, shallow beliefs.

North Florida, the start of the real South

Florida

I am up in Macclenny, my sort of hometown or at least the place I grew up from birth until I became self aware and yearned for more. My childhood memories include things like pine forests, white fences, cows, horses, chickens and rodeos. A quaint little piece of country, quiet, religious, kind and respectful. It had its mom and pop restaurants like Day’s Deli where you could get homemade pizza and sandwiches, Lyma Greens with old fashioned Barbeque, Country Junction with its high quality, not made in China, probably made in America, western wear. There was one, maybe two fast food places, there was a butcher, a hardware store, corner stores where parents would send their children to pick them up a pack of cigarettes without any dubious hesitation.

Everything was green, the homes made uniquely and with real craft, with backyards that had pecan trees and vegetable gardens, bird baths and ponds. There were wild rabbits, foxes, turkeys and maybe a boar or a bear. We would play outside until dark (even in the heat), we would swim in the black, murky waters of the Glen St. Mary river and not think about snakes or alligators. It was innocent, it was pure, it was before Capitalism with its shiny lights, faux stucco and Hollywood placed signifiers crept into our homes through the TV.

I remember when Burger King and Wal-Mart came to town. Then I recall the local sheriff and perhaps some other city officials were done in for some sort of marijuana dealings. So the old boys were out of the way, which meant the old money was gone and the little town was prostituted to franchised business as usual, all the “Mom and Pops” were put out and now your options are the same as any truck stop or highway exit in most of America. A super Wal-Mart knocked down over 25 acres of pine forest and now threatens even the franchised businesses.

I suppose the old Macclennians were preserving this little old town, perhaps with things that were illegal, but really there was no crime against anyone. It was just a plant that causes less harm then alcohol, that mellows people out and lowers the violent tendencies of testosterone carrying hot heads. And now the innocence was sold lot by lot, cemented with identical lego land houses and everything has become the ultimate manifestation of Postmodern. The ultimate manifestation is when everything imitates what it is suppose to be. Everything is artificial. Artificial food, tastes like cheese, looks like cheese, but its components are nothing more then coloring and something like MSG and maybe some dairy cultures. We buy fruit imported from Chile that should grow in our backyards. Just another commercial institution that makes big money for some American CEOS of a Chinese company, no care for the people, but that is nothing new.

What is new, is that the farther into the South we drove (meaning the farther north into the Southern ideologies) I started to notice anti-Obama signs. I knew these Republicans would be pacing the fence about a Black president. They say things like, “Obama is trying to turn this country Socialist.” And “What he (Obama) is doing is illegal.” And “Obama isn’t even an American citizen.”, Oh and healthcare, that is a big word and complex idea for these folks. What is going on up here, everyone is crazy. Firstly,this country will never be Socialist, the people here are too greedy, competitive and ignorant to be Socialist. I mean the idea of distributing wealth to everyone, please, that is just un-American. Secondly, Obama asking school children to get involved in politics by writing a letter to their president is something almost every American elementary school child has done and now these uneducated, stubborn, know it all Republicans are pulling their children out of school so that they miss Obama’s speech. Who bloody cares? Does it mean that much to them? It is just so, I can’t even think of the word. I guess ignorance is the best word.

Yes, Macclenny, a deformed child of the modern world, somewhere between mutating into contemporary and staying religious and moral. A drunk, wife beating priest, a child technologically connected to the rest of the world yet but confined to his parent’s, parent’s, parent’s ideals. Change happens in this place when money is dropped like a bomb that transforms everything to this and no one says or does anything about it because they bow to it because they believe that it is all powerful and perhaps even bigger then their God. They let it put them out of business, destroy their farms and enslave them to the Wal-Mart employee hand guide.

I remember a winter here, it was chilly, the pine straw was heavy on the ground, the air was fresh and everything seemed like an ideal from a Steinbeck novel, but perhaps now it is the place where the ear is crawling with ants in the grass, where Kyle Mclaughlin lost his innocence and Isabella Rossellini forever sings Blue Velvet and someone like Dennis Hopper is selling family land and businesses to the devil while molesting prostitutes.