TV has rightly been called “The Idiot Box” for some time. Whether it’s people who are successful, moral, or healthy they all seem to have a deep aversion to TV and especially popular programming. Having never been a huge TV watcher I was never really aware of the influence that it has in the average person’s life, until recently. Now before we get too far into this let me say that I don’t think TV in and of itself is evil or wrong or whatever just that with modern programming and how addicting TV can be I believe that there are much better ways to spend your time.
Who popular programming is, is hypnotism on a large scale. With a television you can mold the minds of the people watching to just about anything that you want, and I’d bet that without the TV our cultural and societal degradation would not be anywhere near the place that it is now. Edward Bernays talks about this mechanism a bit in Crystallizing Public Opinion (a book that I highly recommend that you read). Television has long been a way to help influence and persuade from sitcoms pushing one value or another or commercials who lose money every run but keep pushing an agenda nonetheless.
Changing Code
There are three main negative consequences of watching TV. One physical and obvious the others (mental and spiritual) less so. We’ll start with spiritual. Now I’m all for one devising a code of their own and if it’s different from mine that’s fine. But one thing I know about television is that it takes it’s own set of morals and slowly but surely influences you around to it. TV is a sort of psy-op on a mass scale. And I don’t mean this in a paranoid wear tin foil or the CIA aliens under your bed will get you way but rather in a factual way.
Any marketer knows how powerful TV is. After all you have an audio and visual component and if TV can be used to sell mops for 3 easy payments of 29.99 imagine what it can do with engaging and emotion stories (not to mention the news). So regardless of which way you lean and what your personal values are with TV it’s almost a guarantee that slowly but surely those values will be ebbed away and replaced with the values of those producing the programming that you are watching, which most likely will not be your own.
Encourages Passivity
This is an issue that I also have with pornography, it encourages and trains one’s brain to be passive and to be a voyeur, to be a cuck in stronger terms. TV does much of the same thing. Again I have no problem with using the TV to watch and instructive YouTube video for example I’ll use my TV to watch a Dan Kennedy DVD and take notes on it, but I’m instead talking about mindless consuming from regular programming. Whether it’s reality shows, the faux outrage news, or whatever your poison is, it trains you to be a passive observer instead of engaged with the world around you.
You’ve heard the term couch potato but you’d have very few couch potatos without a TV in front of that couch. I hear a lot of adults complain about children watching too much TV and how they should be out playing yet these same people after they get home from work park their butts in front of the television and don’t move. The more time spent in front of the television the less time spent doing things to improve one’s life. Television often works as a sort of numbing agent like drugs or alcohol but more socially acceptable.
Waste Of Time
Here’s my biggest thing against TV, it’s a waste of productive time. And as every rich, successful, and happy person knows your time is your most valuable asset that you have. Wasting it is one of the most foolish things that you can do. Time spent mindlessly watching TV is time that could be spent with your family, working out, reading a book, making money, helping a friend, being with a beautiful woman, and a million other things. I’m not saying that you should never ever sit back and enjoy a show, just that there are much more productive uses of your time.
Don’t waste your time, make sure that every moment is spent doing something you won’t regret latter. Sure that may be at times watching a show you enjoy by yourself or with your family. But more often than not will consist of doing something other than watching TV. And with that being said the messaging and numbing effects of TV are only going to get stronger as time goes on. Not having a TV in your home may give your kids superpowers over others in ten to twenty years time. All in all at the very least find ways to spend less time watching TV and instead doing productive work.
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-Charles Sledge
