Television and its adverse effects on consciousnes

[Esaias]

https://hybridrogue1.wordpress.com/2...odoo-ritual-2/

"Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television – Jerry Mander 1978

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television argues that the technology of television is not a neutral or benign instrument or tool. The author argues that in varied technologies and institutions such as militaries, automobiles, nuclear power plants, mass production, and advertising, the basic form of the institution and the technology determines its interaction with the world, the way it will be used, the kind of people who use it, and to what ends.

The author argues that far from being “neutral,” television predetermines who shall use it, how they will use it, what effects it will have on individual lives, and, if it continues to be widely used, what sorts of political forms will inevitably emerge.

The four arguments are:

1.While television may seem useful, interesting, and worthwhile, at the same time it further boxes people into a physical and mental condition appropriate for the emergence of autocratic control.
2.It is inevitable that the present powers-that-be (or controllers) use and expand using television so that no other controllers are permitted.
3.Television affects individual human bodies and minds in a manner which fit the purposes of the people who control the medium.
4.Television has no democratic potential. The technology itself places absolute limits on what may pass through it. The medium, in effect, chooses its own content from a very narrow field of possibilities. The effect is to drastically confine all human understanding within a rigid channel.
[]What binds the four arguments together is that they deal with aspects of television that are not reformable.
“It {television} affects the psychology of people who watch. It increases the passivity of people who watch. It changes family relationships. It changes understandings of nature. It flattens perception so that information, which you need a fair amount of complexity to understand it as you would get from reading, this information is flattened down to a very reduced form on television. And the medium has inherent qualities which cause it to be that way.”~ Mander"