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Braindead TV
Been skimming through the promisingly titled conspiracy article “Mass Mind Control Through Network Television: Are Your Thoughts Your Own?” by Alex Ansary and seized on the following segment as a springboard for further conversation:
Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal that when a person watches television, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the seat of logical thought. Here, information is broken down into its component parts and critically analyzed. The right brain, however, treats incoming data uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical responses. The shift from left to right brain activity also causes the release of endorphins, the body’s own natural opiates–thus, it is possible to become physically addicted to watching television, a hypothesis borne out by numerous studies which have shown that very few people are able to kick the television habit. It’s no longer an overstatement to note that the youth today that are raised and taught through network television are intellectually dead by their early teens.
This is an argument I’ve heard repeated time and again by counter-culturalists, but it just doesn’t hold up on closer investigation. Let’s break it down…
First, if television causes the right brain to become active, what’s wrong with that? Emotional, artistic gestalt processing is NOT a bad thing, and it hardly operates uncritically. It functions according to it’s own kind of logic, a story logic or “mytho-logic” if you will. It looks for resonance, rather than reason. And there isn’t a damned thing wrong with that.
Which brings me to the next point: if we’re to believe that the logical left brain “switches off” when the tv is flicked on, then that would mean that all of ordinary waking life is controlled by logic and reason. Which is just preposterous. Look around at the world. Look at human behavior, your friends, your family, yourself. Our actions are simply NOT logical. Logic is typically something that we produce after the fact to rationalize emotional behaviors we’ve already decided on subconsciously. It’s merely a means a bribing the intellect into going along with deeper-seated activity. Not 100% of the time, of course, and logic is an important tool in some types of decision-making. But it is rarely, if ever, the final and sole arbiter of what gets done.
Lastly, if all of our minds have been destroyed by television by the time we’re teenagers - if we’re “intellectually dead” - then how are any of us able to entertain any of these thoughts in the first place?
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April 10th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
I’m with you on this. You always hear that TV rots your brain– oh really? I suppose, if all one does is watch soap operas and sports events all day every day…
I don’t watch a lot of TV, and yet I have the TiVo on at work constantly. I can always find something interesting to watch on cable, and if I don’t like it then I switch it off.
I’ll tell you what IS destructive about TV: Years ago a neighbor convinced me to go in on a new 30″ Sony Trinitron. He even co-signed for it! I felt so guilty about buying such an expensive TV set that I spent every day watching it, even if nothing was on… This led me to become depressed and anxious.
Of course, I started lagging on the payments (something that I knew would happen– I even warned my neighbor of this and he kept on with his insistence that I “needed” a nice TV) and pretty soon I ended up giving the neighbor the TV. I never felt so relieved in all of my life.
My conclusion: consumer pressure related to TV is very self-destructive. The TV I currently own is a decent model and allows me to watch The Simpsons (the only TV show I look forward to watching) and my DVDs. I don’t feel like a slave to it, nor do I feel any guilt or pressure to watch, whether it be self-induced or external.
I personally feel that I learn a lot from TV because I treat it as an interactive experience. I am the type that yells at the screen, changes the channel a lot, and even plays music while watching TV with the sound down. This is all very stimulating to me, and usually gets me off of my ass to create something.
April 10th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
great points tim……..i will say that t.v. does have a trance-inducing component though. it is, by the nature of it`s function, low definiton. that is, it fires points of coloured light that approximate the data rich images of analog photos, cine film and of course real life. the signal of t.v. is so poor, data wise, that certain areas of the brain get bored and simmer. i`m not sure if “switch off” is the term, but certainly t.v. alters brain function at least temporarily and suggestiblity is a byproduct of this alteration of brain state.
interestingly, the movie narnia explores logic as a subtext. logic is the cocaine of the left-brain control freaks……and it breaks down in the face of creative chunks and gestalts.
April 10th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Does TV rot your brain? Probably not. But that is not the best question to ask when considering the merits of this medium. Perhaps better is, “Is TV better for you than it is bad for you?”
TV is not good for your soul. Think about it. Your human soul is not enhanced by television. Anything that might, ever so slightly, enhance your soul on TV isn’t worth what it takes to experience that enhancement. While I agree it doesn’t rot your brain it does no good and possibly harm to your soul.
“TV is a powerful totem with the heart of a rat”, a wise man once said.
Villifying the medium is pointless, though. What is done with it and how it is used, however, is not. This powerful totem is grossly and most fouly misused.
Because of its trance inducing state (both frequency of and colors not to mention its periodic flashing) people rarely watch less than one hour each day. That amounts to (in the US) 16 minutes of commercials per day at a minimum. In just one week you have watched almost 2 hours of commercials. That amounts to 104 hours per year; more than four days - at a minimum. This is time of your life you can never have back but maybe you can savor the memory of a special deal on Chevy’s from your local car dealer. After 8 years of TV viewing you have sacrificed a month of your life to watch Friends or CSI or whatever. Not a good trade for you as a person. While Grissom may be enteratianing he is no subsitute for actual soul enriching experiences.
Consider what happens to people who watch 3,4 or 5 hours a day?
I realize that things like Tivo change this. But the effect is only a marginal improvement.
Advertising aside TV is a most abused forms of entertainment. It is too easy for humans to “vegge” out in front of it. This is a crutch that does no good to the body and only arguable good for the brain. While it may provide relief from stress or escape from problems it is a costly and too easy way to do it. There are so many other things that can provide what TV does and most of them are better for what it means to be a fully formed and awake human.
People enjoy leaving the TV on, blaring in the background instead of interacting with family. Some people flip on the lights in a room and then the TV next by instinct. That is not the function of entertainment.
I haven’t encountered the “logic reducing” component of TV before today on your site but if it is true (and I have no reason to suspect it isn’t) why would you want to watch a newscast, a commercial or a politcal advertisement with your logic impaired? Seems to me that that alone would be more than enough to NEVER watch TV again. There are so many things that can impair our judgement, why invite one more without any perks to it?
The cons of TV strongly outweigh the pros and most of the pros of TV are only arguable at best. I thought this all through and in much more detail in 1998 and cancelled my cable account in May of that year. I have never looked back.
April 10th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
I might add that it is well documented that the screen-refresh rate on televisions is hypnosis inducing. It puts you right into an alpha state, which is more a more suggestable state of mind, making the mind more open to television commercials and the underlying bullshit values on many television programs. That’s why it’s important never to watch television without first smoking a whole lot of marijuana. Marijuana puts the brain into such a deep alpha state that it overcompensates, making it immune to the insidiousness of television.
(Can you spot the hidden message in this comment?)
-z
April 10th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
I don’t know. I don’t think people *shouldn’t* watch tv. People can do whatever they want, and I don’t think they ought to necessarily feel guilty about it. There’s a lot to be learned from watching television. And I actually think its very risky for people to be media-illiterate nowadays.
What I mean by “risky” I’m not sure.
I guess I’m just saying people don’t necessarily need to stress out over it. Tv isn’t some big evil monster that sucks your brain out the second you walk past. Arguments that say it puts us into alpha state & whatever may be scientifically valid (or may not, I haven’t done the research), but giving them too much credence gives up a measure of your personal autonomy - IMHO
April 10th, 2006 at 9:04 pm
Yes Zeno! Fucking awesome.
Tim I disagree with you.
April 10th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
Are you responding to me, there, Tim? I was just kind of being silly. Sometimes my sense of humor doesn’t carry over the net.
Actually, sometimes my sense of humor doesn’t carry at all.
April 10th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Nah, not really. It’s an argument I’ve heard many times over. And yeah - I knew there was an element of humor in there
April 10th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Excellent post, Tim, I concur fully, especially your comment about “mytho-logic”. While sometimes I think the left-brain, right-brain thing is a bunch of pseudo-science, I’m totally in agreement with myth-cognition.
The only avenue I might explore is the effect of TV as a brain entrainment device: it’s all beta and gamma, it destroys dreams…
April 10th, 2006 at 10:11 pm
There’s actually a flaw in the reasoning here. Can you spot it?
April 10th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
The real danger of TV - of any entertainment - is that for it to work, part of you have to believe it’s real.
It then becomes a substitute for lived experience.
What’s more valuable - lived experience, or simulated experience? Which kind of memories are more valuable - those of lived experience, or those of simulated experience?
I’m not saying TV isn’t valuable; there’s a ton of good stuff on anymore. But you have to find a balance.
I once had a dream that I was sitting on a couch with my boyfriend watching TV, and an old woman came tumbling out of the screen. Upon waking, I connected that old woman to myself - you could get old in front of the screen and not even realize it.
April 10th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
I’m not logical. I merely construct logic to convince my rational mind to go along for the ride and not cause too much trouble.
Besides, my job is to point out flaws in other people’s logic and ignore my own!
April 11th, 2006 at 10:57 am
PKD wrote a little on this topic. His conclusion - kids reject whatever is bullshit, and the kid of today is way more able to cope with all the information shot at him then the adult of a generation or 2 before him. So the kid is watching TV a lot, but at the same time he is coloring, playing with blocks, etc…when there is something of interest to the kid, they focus on the tv show. When it’s not or no longer interesting, they turn their attention to other stuff.
April 11th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
it is vital to be media literate in the sense that you understand that it is a media. the t.v. is a device that flashes lights at us for substantial periods of time. it is also increasingly becoming a high fidelity audio delivery system for those capable of recieving the signal. this adds to the amount of information delivered into the mind of the viewer/listener. the language of ad copy has always been powerful, especially when spoken in conjunction with images. one has to be careful with media literacy that one doesn
April 11th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
`t get drawn into the content. the content is a slieght of hand to distract you from the real issue…….more media. that`s what we`re consuming here. plasma t.v.s, digital cable subscriptions. premium channel packages etc. the content hasn`t changed in years. there are even re-run channels.
April 11th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
I see some delicious irony here, mainly that everyone commenting (including myself) is using a type of television (the computer monitor) in order to see the comments of others, to communicate online, and give our respective two cents concerning TV.
Any studies on prolonged Internet use? ‘Cause I’ve been watching TV for over 3 decades, and NEVER have I felt as spiritually or intellectually drained as I do after two hours of being online without a pause.
April 12th, 2006 at 1:19 am
That was from Wikipedia. So my point of interest lies in whether an argument could be made for the regulation of television intake by youth, or by the public in general.
As ridiculous as it might sound, it would definitely be scoffed at. Chocoholism is an eating disorder in which someone suffers from an addiction to chocolate. Chocolate contains theobromines and it may be possible for the human brain to become accustomed to chocolate at regular intervals. So for those addicted to television, could an argument be made for its obvious negative affects on health and the mind for the masses?