← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · vytis
Thread ID: 16996 | Posts: 43 | Started: 2005-02-27
2005-02-27 14:47 | User Profile
Here's a little quote I found by John F. Kennedy's minority Jew Chairman of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) I want to share.
'Television: The most powerful instrument ever devised for reaching the minds and hearts of men.'....Newton Minow
2005-02-27 17:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=vytis]Here's a little quote I found by John F. Kennedy's minority Jew Chairman of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) I want to share.
'Television: The most powerful instrument ever devised for reaching the minds and hearts of men.'....Newton Minow[/QUOTE]
Minow was right, of course. Lenin said the same thing about film after viewing Eisenstein's Potemkin.
Rather than railing against the hostile crowd currently dominating the tool of television, why not re-channel our creative energy into producing our own features?
How about a 2-minute, daily Original Dissent webcast--anchored by Tex and featuring film reviews by the Spider? :D
It could easily be done.
2005-02-27 18:03 | User Profile
Of all our technological gadgets television come closest to the Ring of Power in Tolkien's myth. And like that evil ring it needs to be destroyed.
2005-02-27 18:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]Of all our technological gadgets television come closest to the Ring of Power in Tolkien's myth. And like that evil ring it needs to be destroyed.[/QUOTE]
No. The Ring was inherently evil--the Russian/British invention of T.V. led to a morally neutral medium with the immediacy of radio and the visual power of film.
Let's reclaim it for Western Man!
2005-02-27 18:44 | User Profile
The problem with television is that it allows a tiny group of people enormous power over a large group of people. This may very well be inherently evil.
2005-02-27 19:02 | User Profile
Sometime I think the Taliban had a good idea when started smashing television sets.
2005-02-27 20:45 | User Profile
Television has great potential for good. But, those who produce shows for television do not have great potential for good.
2005-03-09 19:13 | User Profile
Personally, my TV viewing is minimal to say the least.
'When there's a wrong in a country you'll find the Jews' ~Henry Ford
2005-03-09 21:08 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.]No. The Ring was inherently evil--the Russian/British invention of T.V. led to a morally neutral medium with the immediacy of radio and the visual power of film.[/QUOTE] I am not entirely sure that television is morally neutral, even when it carries acceptable content (which is very rare these days.) The very act of watching television is totally passive, and puts the watcher into an almost trancelike state. The brain of a person watching TV shows less activity than the brain of someone sitting alone in the dark. I think television encourages passivity and shortens attention spans. It is best used only occasionally, if at all.
2005-03-09 22:42 | User Profile
The key to watching tv is when you realize that you are waching "entertainment", including the news.
2005-03-09 23:47 | User Profile
Who knows how your unconscious processes television. Read a book instead.
2005-03-10 02:41 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]I am not entirely sure that television is morally neutral, even when it carries acceptable content (which is very rare these days.) The very act of watching television is totally passive, and puts the watcher into an almost trancelike state. The brain of a person watching TV shows less activity than the brain of someone sitting alone in the dark. I think television encourages passivity and shortens attention spans. It is best used only occasionally, if at all.[/QUOTE]
What do passivity or suggestability have to do with morality? Had the champions of Western Man--rather than its ancient enemies--been in charge of what passed through the cathode from 1950 to today we'd be freer and stronger for it.
Reclaim the Medium for good--oust the usurpers...
2005-03-10 05:08 | User Profile
The television is a brainwashing device. I refuse to have a brainwashing machine in my home. I haven't had a television in my house for 9 years. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. An act of mental liberation.
Turn the TV off and throw it away.
2005-03-10 05:45 | User Profile
I disagree that tv is mindless. I deal with mindlessness in my real life. It is great to be able to sit down, after a day out there in the real world where stupid people predominate, and turn on MSNBC or CNN and see a few smart, well-informed people talk about the significance of this or that in politics and the news. Alot of these people on the political or current affairs programs have read several daily newspapers, the host of weekly magazines, and have culled all the interesting and important stuff. And in the tv format they are forced to get to the gist of all it. Where else can you be briefed by people with the best education, who read everything, think it over thoroughly because they must write a piece on it or discuss it on national tv, each and every day! I guess you can always turn to talk radio, where you can be informed by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, neither of whom has a college degree, and who at most peruse the Drudge Report, NewsMax, and Cigar Aficionado.
I could make similar cases for The History Channel, C-SPAN, Court TV, A & E and Discovery, Comedy Central, and many others.
2005-03-10 06:05 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Faust]Sometime I think the Taliban had a good idea when started smashing television sets.[/QUOTE]
That's the direct approach.
But that's not possible now. It might be in the future.
What is needed now, IMHO, is a periodical like, say, TAC that has a DVD insert with videos produced by and for white American Christians. The DVD could have news & entertainment spots. Advertising could be tailored to local needs.
It wouldn't smash the televisions, but it would be competition to the One Eyed Jew instructing out children. Every minute our folks watch the DVD is a minute they're not looking into Soron's [I]palantir[/I].
It would be a start.
2005-03-10 06:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]The problem with television is that it allows a tiny group of people enormous power over a large group of people. This may very well be inherently evil.[/QUOTE]
I think you're on to something here.
I suspect television may be one of those things that Evolution causes us to crave but simply did not equip us to handle.
It's like refined sugar, which is utterly alien to our metabolisms in evolutionary terms as it's been part of our diets a mere 200 years. Our evolved metabolisms crave sugar strongly - intense calories needed for immediate survival needs. But that was adaptive back when we were hunting mammoths because it was an itch that in nature could only be scratched by sweet blackberries in the Fall and a once-in-a-year honeycomb, and that would easily be burned off during the afternoon hunt. Now daily overdoses of refined sugar are the root cause of the epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes.
Similarly, our evolved mental equipment was made to crave the rewards of moving images set to story and song (think of a shaman's shadows flickering on a cave wall during festivals) but is ill-equipped to handle the million-watt power surge television provides our religious and artistic imaginations on a daily basis. Our love for song, story and dance served an evolutionary purpose that is simply not served by watching The Simpsons. Like sugar, television is an indulgence in the pleasure afforded by that instinct for its own sake, severed from any wholesome personal or group end. In fact, television allows people to immerse themselves in a fantasy world not to the benefit of some larger group purpose, but rather to avoid the very real survival problems they face, on both the personal and group level.
I read somewhere that "all virtual realities have their roots in hell." That sounds right to me.
At the very least, we need to assert control over what we watch. There's no question in my mind that it affects every aspect of our being far more profoundly than most of us even suspect.
2005-03-10 07:49 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Similarly, our evolved mental equipment was made to crave the rewards of moving images set to story and song (think of a shaman's shadows flickering on a cave wall during festivals) but is ill-equipped to handle the million-watt power surge television provides our religious and artistic imaginations on a daily basis. Our love for song, story and dance served an evolutionary purpose that is simply not served by watching The Simpsons. Like sugar, television is an indulgence in the pleasure afforded by that instinct for its own sake, severed from any wholesome personal or group end. In fact, television allows people to immerse themselves in a fantasy world not to the benefit of some larger group purpose, but rather to avoid the very real survival problems they face, on both the personal and group level.
I read somewhere that "all virtual realities have their roots in hell." That sounds right to me.[/QUOTE]
Interesting points. I suspect that much of what you say could also be applied to video games.
2005-03-10 09:22 | User Profile
Oy. Where to begin?
Firstly, I don't really believe people who bang on that 'kill your televitz' drum. I certainly feel that way at times, but people do not readily go backwards (even if going backwards is the salutary course). Nor are people going to [I]kill their electricityberg[/I] because, after all, life was better when it was rugged and spartan.
And don't assume everybody out there is cut from the same mindless-consumer pattern viz their viewing habits. F'rinstance, if you've ever lived in a tornado or hurricane alley, then your tv is tuned to that Weather Channel everytime a high wind picks up. Most people, I think, tend to roll their eyes in disgusted disbelief at much of what they see on the 'entertainment' channels; I've learned, time and again, that the sorts of people who most closely fit the lemming/sheeple tag re the multicult agenda are careerists and self-styled intellectuals, [I]not [/I] regular folks (who are reasonably well-educated themselves, but don't demand a medal for it).
I find tv to be valuable for 3 reasons.
One, [I]it can be useful [/I] - because its idiocies and petty depravities get (and keeps) us angry. This is incredibly important, seeing as how the complacency of white people is an ever-present problem. Every day, one more increasingly frustrated and angry white person is warily clicking on a site like this (or VNN or VDARE or what-have-you), having been prompted by one exposure too many to something hateful or sickening or poisonous on the tube. What would you prefer - to eat the postage for a mass-mailing of THE ARYAN ALTERNATIVE and wait for the phone to start ringing?
Two, [I]it can be fought [/I] - and I know I'm not the only one here who subscribes to a policy of constantly and derisively talking back to the tv. I've been doing it for so long that there are poeople who refuse ever to watch tv with me again (although I would never do this if something [I]good [/I] was on). Why suffer silently through a LAW AND ORDER or a WEST WING or an O'REILLY REPORT or a Keanu Reeves movie when you can turn it into an interactive insult-comedy? And don't be fooled thinking "MST3K", because some of us have been wiseassing at a glowing screen when Mike Nelson was riding a Big Wheel. The next time you're watching tv cops about to be briefed by the black squad commander, just chirp out in a Rochester voice, [I]"Now, boys, you is got to mirandafy these heah perpamators!"[/I] It doesn't matter if the others laugh and then some woman cracks, "You really are awful" ...it only matters that they laughed. Do this kind of thing often enough and your relationship to your tv changes - it becomes more like hitting the heavy bag.
Three, [I]it can be broken and tamed[/I]. Hell, I don't watch but a couple hours a day but more and more often I just use my tv for a monitor, and play tapes and dvds out of my collection. I made a habit years ago of taping everything worthwhile I saw listed by using the programmer on my vcr, and supplementing here and there with dvds that caught my interest. So, if I'm watching solo, why would I wanna sit through news and cop shows when I can watch Buster Keaton shorts or a Hitchcock classic or TAXI DRIVER or any goddam thing I choose to? On the other hand, in case a tsunami (or just another nor'easter) [I]is [/I] approaching, I kinda like having that Weather Channel handy.
2005-03-10 10:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]Three, it can be broken and tamed. Hell, I don't watch but a couple hours a day but more and more often I just use my tv for a monitor, and play tapes and dvds out of my collection. I made a habit years ago of taping everything worthwhile I saw listed by using the programmer on my vcr, and supplementing here and there with dvds that caught my interest. So, if I'm watching solo, why would I wanna sit through news and cop shows when I can watch Buster Keaton shorts or a Hitchcock classic or TAXI DRIVER or any goddam thing I choose to? On the other hand, in case a tsunami (or just another nor'easter) is approaching, I kinda like having that Weather Channel handy. .[/QUOTE]
I think that's a good way to look at it.
Television is a powerful technology that, like all technology, must always be a servant and never a master.
We have to be conscious and deliberate about it. I think the diet analogy is apt here as well. We can eat some sugar, but it's best to severely limit the Almond Joys (which are in fact Nirvana) and to eat more like our caveman ancestors (my health greatly improved by my doing this a few years ago). So too with television. It's great for information and entertainment, but in moderate doses while being aware that there's a lot of garbage out there.
As the computer guys like to say, garbage in - garbage out. If we allow the televitz to fill our imaginations with trash, then we'll have problems. If we wise up and exercise a little adult supervision over ourselves, we'll enrich our lives in ways our ancestors could only dream of.
2005-03-10 13:46 | User Profile
Neither I nor my woman turn the television on. It is just a habitual non habit. I don't even care for movies that much. I stay away from refined sugar too, for that matter. Whenever I'm trapped in front of a public televitz it just plain irritates me to watch, and just as much it irritates me to watch people watching, and virtually nothing is worse than listening to people discuss television programs. They talk about them like they actually happened and I think subconsciously television programs get processed as though they did actually happen, in other words television programs, and even more so movies, get processed as experiences and since they are false and designed, so far as Whites are concerned, with malice aforethought, all things considered it is better just to shoot the damn thing and use a weather rock instead.
2005-03-10 13:54 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu] I think subconsciously television programs get processed as though they did actually happen, in other words television programs, and even more so movies, get processed as experiences and since they are false and designed, . . ..[/QUOTE]
That's a very important insight.
We underestimate the power of our subconscious. We have to take care of it like we would our bodies. Call it "mental hygiene."
We need to be careful what goes in, else we might have unpleasant things coming out.
I'm living alone for the time being (my family moved to another city in anticipation of my changing jobs a few months ago) and I fill my time watching a lot of old movies. I get them on DVD mostly. The deal I have with myself is that I can watch as much as I want, so long as I'm working out on my exercycle. I find that works pretty well. It's interesting that I find myself unconsciously pumping the pedals faster and faster whenever there's a fight or chase scene. Our bodies react to this input, and just sitting on the couch eating M&Ms while out "fight or flight" instinct is being tickled couldn't be good for us, at least on a continual basis.
2005-03-10 14:13 | User Profile
Walter,
Deconstructing television, isn't it true that speaking of morality, Blacks and "minorities" generally are always earnest, well meaning and good, in other words there are no negative stereotypes surrounding them. Whereas Whites are divided between good and evil. There are good Whites and there are bad Whites. Evil, so far as televisionlandia goes, is a funtion of a certain percentage of Whites, and to a lesser degree Arabs. The effect of this subconsciously, especially with the youth and the credulous, is to chip away at the White group's self confidence. To me this is the main ill effect of television on Whites.
2005-03-10 15:28 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]Evil, so far as televisionlandia goes, is a funtion of a certain percentage of Whites, and to a lesser degree Arabs. .[/QUOTE]
I totally agree.
Except you forgot Serbs.
For a while there, they were the source of all evil in the world.
2005-03-10 15:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]It's interesting that I find myself unconsciously pumping the pedals faster and faster whenever there's a fight or chase scene. Our bodies react to this input, and just sitting on the couch eating M&Ms while out "fight or flight" instinct is being tickled couldn't be good for us, at least on a continual basis.[/QUOTE] I watched 'Ride With the Devil' a few nights ago, and I could actually notice my heart rate increase during the battle scenes. Those claiming that media (TV, commercials, video games) have no effect on their viewers are crazy.
By the way, 'Ride With the Devil' was a pretty good movie, but it did include the Obligatory Noble Negro.
2005-03-10 15:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]I watched 'Ride With the Devil' a few nights ago, and I could actually notice my heart rate increase during the battle scenes. Those claiming that media (TV, commercials, video games) have no effect on their viewers are crazy.
By the way, 'Ride With the Devil' was a pretty good movie, but it did include the Obligatory Noble Negro.[/QUOTE]
I liked it okay, but thought it could have been better. The noble negro was uncalled for and I thought quite out of context.
BTW, have you seen [URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000056BSG/qid%3D1110470301/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-7127565-3780852]The Ice Storm[/URL], another Ang Lee flick. I think that this is potentially a WN classic, but nobody else seems to agree with me. What is your opinion?
2005-03-10 19:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The very act of watching television is totally passive, and puts the watcher into an almost trancelike state. The brain of a person watching TV shows less activity than the brain of someone sitting alone in the dark.[/QUOTE]
It's more complicated than that, although your and others' observations are generally confirmed. A quick google search located this:
[url]http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/5jcl/5JCL59.htm[/url]
[QUOTE]When you watch TV, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. In fact, experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman [an advertiser/opinion shaper] showed that [B]while viewers are watching television, [U]the right hemisphere is twice as active as the left[/U], a neurological anomaly.1 The [U]crossover from left to right releases a surge of the bodyââ¬â¢s natural opiates: endorphins[/U][/B], which include beta-endorphins and enkephalins. Endorphins are structurally identical to opium and its derivatives (morphine, codeine, heroin, etc.). [B]Activities that release endorphins (also called opioid peptides) are usually habit-forming [/B] (we rarely call them addictive). These include cracking knuckles, strenuous exercise, and orgasm. External opiates act on the same receptor sites (opioid receptors) as endorphins, so there is little difference between the two.
In fact, strenuous exercise, which produces the nominal ââ¬Årunner's highââ¬Âââ¬âa release of endorphins that flood the system, can be highly addictive, to the point where ââ¬Åaddictsââ¬Â who abruptly stop exercising experience opiate-withdrawal symptoms, namely migraine headaches. These migraines are caused by a dysfunction in opioid receptors, which are accustomed to the steady influx of endorphins.
Indeed, [B]even casual television [U]viewers experience such opiate-withdrawal symptoms if they stop watching TV for a prolonged period of time[/U]. An article from South Africaââ¬â¢s Eastern Province Herald (October 1975) described two experiments in which people from various socio-economic milieus were asked to stop watching television. In one experiment, several families volunteered to turn off their TVââ¬â¢s for just one month. The poorest family gave in after one week, and the others suffered from depression, saying they felt as though they had ââ¬Ålost a friend.ââ¬Â In the other experiment, 182 West Germans agreed to kick their television viewing habit for a year, with the added bonus of payment. None could resist the urge longer than six months, and over time all of the participants showed the symptoms of opiate withdrawal: increased anxiety, frustration, and depression.[/B]
The signs of addiction are all around us. [B]The average American watches over four hours of television every day, and 49% of those continue to watch despite admitting to doing it excessively. These are the classic indicators of [U]an addict in denial: addicts know they're doing harm to themselves, but continue to use the drug regardless[/U].[/B]
Recent studies on laboratory rats show that opioid-receptor stimulants induce addictive behaviors. [B]The evidence is conclusive: all opioids are addictive! Even the ones your body produces naturally. The television [U]set works as a high-tech drug delivery system[/U][/B], and we all feel its effects. The question is, can an addiction to television be destructive? The answer we receive from modern science is a resounding ââ¬ÅYes!ââ¬Â
First of all, [B][U]when you're watching television the higher brain regions (like the midbrain and the neo-cortex) are shut down, and most activity shifts to the lower brain regions (like the limbic system[/U]). The neurological processes that take place in these regions cannot accurately be called ââ¬Åcognitive.ââ¬Â The lower or reptile brain simply stands poised to react to the environment using deeply embedded ââ¬Åfight or flightââ¬Â response programs. Moreover, [U]these lower brain regions cannot distinguish reality from fabricated images [/U] (a job performed by the neo-cortex), so they react to television content as though it were real, releasing appropriate hormones and so on. Studies have proven that, in the long run, too much activity in the lower brain leads to atrophy in the higher brain regions.[/B]
It is interesting to note that the lower/reptile/limbic brain correlates to the bio-survival circuit of the Leary/Wilson 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness. This is our primal circuit, the base ââ¬Åpresenceââ¬Â that we normally associate with consciousness. This is the circuit where we receive our first neurological imprint (the oral imprint), which conditions us to advance toward anything warm, pleasurable and/or protective in the environment. The bio-survival circuit is our most infantile, our most primal way of dealing with reality.
A person obsessed with the pursuit of physical pleasure is probably fixated on this circuit; in fact the Freudians believed an opium addiction was an attempt to return to the womb. We could logically deduce that such addictions occur when higher brain functions are anesthetized and the newly dominant lower brain seeks out pleasure at any cost. Taking this into account, [B]television is like a double edged sword: not only does it cause the endocrine system to release the bodyââ¬â¢s natural opiates (endorphins), but it also concentrates neurological activity in the lower brain regions where we are motivated by nothing but the pursuit of pleasure. Television produces highly functional, mobile ââ¬Åbio-survival robots.ââ¬Â[/B]
[B]Herbert Krugmanââ¬â¢s research proved that watching television numbs the left brain and leaves the right brain to perform all cognitive duties. This has some harrowing implications for the effects of television on brain development and health. For one, [U]the left hemisphere is the critical region for organizing, analyzing, and judging incoming data. The right brain treats incoming data uncritically[/U], and it does not decode or divide information into its component parts.[/B]
[B][U]The right brain processes information in wholes, leading to emotional rather than intelligent responses. We cannot rationally attend to the content presented on television because that part of our brain is not in operation[/U]. It is therefore unsurprising that people rarely comprehend what they see on television, as was shown by a study conducted by researcher Jacob Jacoby. Jacoby found that, out of 2,700 people tested, 90% misunderstood what they watched on television only minutes before. As yet there is no explanation as to why we switch to the right brain while viewing television, but we do know this phenomenon is immune to content.[/B]
[B]For a brain to comprehend and communicate complex meaning, it must be in a state of ââ¬Åchaotic disequilibrium.ââ¬Â This means that there must be a dynamic flow of communication between all of the regions of the brain[/B], which facilitates the comprehension of higher levels of order (breaking conceptual thresholds), and leads to the formation of complex ideas. [B]High levels of chaotic brain activity are[/B] present during challenging tasks like reading, writing, and working mathematical equations in your head. They are [B]not present while watching TV[/B]. Levels of brain activity are measured by an electroencenograph (EEG) machine. [B][U]While watching television, the brain appears to slow to a halt[/U], registering low alpha wave readings on the EEG.[/B] This is caused by the radiant light produced by cathode ray technology within the television set. Even if you're reading text on a television screen the brain registers low levels of activity. Once again, regardless of the content being presented, television essentially turns off your nervous system.
In addition to its devastating neurological effects, television can be harmful to your sense of self-worth, your perception of your environment, and your physical health. Recent surveys have shown that 75% of American women think they are overweight, likely the result of watching chronically thin actresses and models four hours a day.
Television has also spawned a ââ¬Åculture of fearââ¬Â in the U.S. and beyond, with its focus on the limbic brain-friendly sensationalism of violent programming. Studies have shown that [B]people of all generations greatly overestimate the threat of violence in real life. This is no shock because their brains cannot discern reality from fiction while watching TV.[/B]
Television is bad for your body as well. Obesity, sleep deprivation, and stunted sensory development are all common among television addicts.
So I hope weââ¬â¢ve firmly established that television is an addictive drug, one that is no better than opium, heroin, or any other opiate. Television is just as (and possibly even more) harmful to the body-brain as every other drug. But thereââ¬â¢s one big difference. All other drugs apparently pose a threat to the established social order. Television, however, is a drug that is actually essential to maintaining the social infrastructure. Why? Because it brainwashes consumers to throw money at the gaping void of their meaningless, terror-filled lives. And by brainwashed, I mean theyââ¬â¢ve been hypnotized using very subtle and established techniques which, when coupled with televisionââ¬â¢s natural effects on brain waves, make for the most ambitious psychological engineering ruse ever concocted.
[B]Psychophysiologist Thomas Mulholland found that after just 30 seconds of watching television the brain begins to produce alpha waves, which indicates torpid (almost comatose) rates of activity. Alpha brain waves are associated with unfocused, overly receptive states of consciousness. A high frequency alpha waves does not occur normally when the eyes are open. In fact, Mulhollandââ¬â¢s research implies that [U]watching television is neurologically analogous to staring at a blank wall[/U].[/B]
[B]I should note that the goal of hypnotists is to induce slow brain wave states. Alpha waves are present during the ââ¬Ålight hypnoticââ¬Â state used by hypno-therapists for suggestion therapy.[/B]
When Mulhollandââ¬â¢s research was published it greatly impacted the television industry, at least in the marketing and advertising sector. Realizing viewers automatically enter a trance state while watching television, marketers began designing commercials that produce unconscious emotional states or moods within the viewer. [B]The aim of commercials is not to appeal to the rational or conscious mind (which usually dismisses advertisements) but rather to implant moods that the consumer will associate with the product when it is encountered in real life.[/B] When we see product displays at a store, for instance, those positive emotions are triggered. Endorsements from beloved athletes and other celebrities evoke the same associations. If youââ¬â¢ve ever doubted the power of television advertising, bear this in mind: [B][U]commercials work better if youââ¬â¢re not paying attention to them[/U]![/B]
[B][U]An addictive mind control device . . . what more could a government or profit-driven corporation ask for[/U]?[/B] But the really sad thing about television is that it turns everyone into a zombie, no one is immune. There is no higher order of super-intelligent, nefarious beings behind this. Itââ¬â¢s the product of our very human desire to alter our state of consciousness and escape the hardships of reality.
While AdBusters has their highly ineffectual ââ¬ÅTV Turnoff Week,ââ¬Â Iââ¬â¢d like to announce a campaign of my own. Starting next week, we will celebrate what I like to call TV Pawn-Off Week. I encourage you all to sell your televisions, and use the money to buy some books.
Weââ¬â¢re living in a Brave New World, only itââ¬â¢s not so brave, or even that new. In fact, itââ¬â¢s starting to look more and more like the Dark Ages, with the preliterate zombie masses obeying the authority of the new clergy: Regis Philbin and Jerry Springer.
Notes
For more on brain state changes occasioned by watching television, see: Emery, Merrelyn, The Social and Neurophysiological Effects of Television and their Implications for Marketing Practice. Doctoral dissertation. Australian National University. Canberra, 1985; Nelson, Joyce, The Perfect Machine (New Society Pub: 1992). [/QUOTE] This article could use a few more citations to the sources referenced, but it seems credible. It has considerable explanatory value.
We all know who was in charge of our televisions from the introduction of our technology through the revolution of the 1960's, in which the old Anglo-American elite was eclipsed. We see how the medium works. Now we just need to identify the images presented to white folks between 1945 and 1965 to complete the story.
2005-03-10 20:02 | User Profile
I keep my tv on while on the webb, reading or otherwise, and if someone is trying to brainwash me then is not working, I still don't like Jews (Zionists).
2005-03-10 20:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]Neither I nor my woman turn the television on. It is just a habitual non habit. I don't even care for movies that much. I stay away from refined sugar too, for that matter. Whenever I'm trapped in front of a public televitz it just plain irritates me to watch, and just as much it irritates me to watch people watching, and virtually nothing is worse than listening to people discuss television programs. They talk about them like they actually happened and I think subconsciously television programs get processed as though they did actually happen, in other words television programs, and even more so movies, get processed as experiences and since they are false and designed, so far as Whites are concerned, with malice aforethought, all things considered it is better just to shoot the damn thing and use a weather rock instead.[/QUOTE]Look, it's not like if I weren't watching "The World's Scariest Police Chases" I'd be reading Homer. Television has exposed me to many things I would not otherwise know about (e.g., forensic science and pathology on Court TV, history of the toilet on The History Channel-- the word "crap" comes from John Crapper, the father of the modern toilet--, etc.).
I think one could make a better case against books. Any idiot can write and publish a book, and most people uncritically give books a status of trustworthiness not afforded to alot of TV programs, even though the latter is usually produced by teams of highly-educated and experienced people, and before going to air has been screened by equally high-caliber people. Mass-produced books is a new-fangled technology. Before Guttenberg people learned through the spoken word (in lectures by lectors-- Latin for "a reading" and "reader" respectively). Learning through books is a recent phenomenon, and it corresponds to the beginning of the decline of Western Civilization. Ironically, learning from watching things like The History Channel is closer to traditional modes of learning than reading books and journals.
2005-03-10 21:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE][Television]'s like refined sugar....[/QUOTE] And is it any surprise that they are both peddled by the same people? -- along with other appeals to our weaknesses and basest nature, like alcohol, pornography, and prostitution.
See Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 15, pp. 487-88 under the heading, SUGAR INDUSTRY AND TRADE, quoted here:
[url]http://www.blacksandjews.com/Jews.Sugar.SlaveTrade.html[/url]
2005-03-10 21:39 | User Profile
[url]http://www.commercialalert.org/tvaddiction.htm[/url]
The most exhaustive data on television watching data is from studies done between 1976 and 1988 on several different groups involving close to 1,200 men and women who volunteered to fill out questionnaires about their activities and moods whenever they were alerted by beepers they carried.
In analyzing the data for people's television-watching habits, Robert Kubey, a psychologist now at the School of Communications at Rutgers University, worked with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist at the University of Chicago.
Their findings are reported in ''Television and the Quality of Life,'' published this year by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. While their conclusions are drawn from the studies involving more than a thousand people, the most detailed results come from a study in which 107 men and women reported on their experiences at randomly selected moments throughout the day for a week.
The third of the men and women in the smaller study who watched television the most were markedly different from the rest of those studied. As a group, the compulsive watchers were more irritable, tense and sad than the others, and felt they had little control over their lives.
For most people, there was a strong relationship between being in a bad mood and watching television to get out of it. The strongest pattern predicting that people would watch television in the evening was that in the morning they felt the day was going badly, and by the afternoon they were in a bad mood.
Lowered Brain Activity
For all viewers, researchers have found, television tends to elicit a state of ''attentional inertia,'' marked by lowered activity in the part of the brain that processes complex information. That inertia, said Dr. Kubey, may explain why a mediocre television show can have high ratings if it follows a popular one.
''It's common for people to say they are selective television watchers,'' said Dr. Kubey. ''They'll say they sat down just to watch 'L.A. Law,' but they're still watching three hours later. A great many people feel powerless to get up and turn it off.''
For compulsive viewers, that inertia becomes extreme, so that the longer they watch, the more passive and less discriminating they become, Dr. Kubey found.
Oddly, while most people said they were more relaxed while watching television than they had been before starting, they ended up feeling far less relaxed once they stopped. ''We found no evidence that television offers emotional rewards that extend beyond viewing,'' Dr. Kubey said. Moreover, the longer people watch television, the less rewarding they find it, the intensive study of 107 people showed.
These experiences with television were strongest among the compulsive viewers. Not only did they report feeling worse than most people as they watched television, but their spirits drooped all the more once they stopped watching. What little lift they get from television, though, is enough in many cases for most frequent viewers to become dependent on it, Dr. Kubey said.
2005-03-10 23:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]Look, it's not like if I weren't watching "The World's Scariest Police Chases" I'd be reading Homer...
...Ironically, learning from watching things like The History Channel is closer to traditional modes of learning than reading books and journals.[/QUOTE] The problem, Jack, is that the objectionable content is only one aspect of what makes television destructive. The very medium itself causes or encourages harmful behaviours, such as passivity, decreased attention span, irritability, and lack of critical thinking. It should be indulged in very little.
2005-03-11 04:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]The problem, Jack, is that the objectionable content is only one aspect of what makes television destructive. The very medium itself causes or encourages harmful behaviours, such as passivity, decreased attention span, irritability, and lack of critical thinking. It should be indulged in very little.[/QUOTE] I don't think Court TV, The History Channel, or the cable news channels carry objectionable content. And as far as TV's problem being a passive medium, well, see Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book and his How to Speak/How to Listen. Not only do people read passively, they listen passively as well. Perhaps TV is seen as passive because it is the people who are passive listeners (Adler: most people haven't learned how to listen). What if one were to approach TV the same way Adler suggests one approach a lecture, i.e., by being an active listener?
2005-03-11 13:43 | User Profile
''It's common for people to say they are selective television watchers,'' said Dr. Kubey. ''They'll say they sat down just to watch 'L.A. Law,' but they're still watching three hours later.''
That pretty much sums it up. At the risk of offending people here whose opinions I respect, saying that "moderate" TV watching is okay, or that it doesn't affect you because you're racially aware, or that not all TV is corrupting sounds exactly like alcoholics who claim that it's all right to drink moderately, that not all alcohol is bad or that it doesn't affect them because they know when to stop.
I say this not with scorn or mockery. I do not look upon those who defend TV watching as stupid or ignorant. I know that some will become angry and defensive at these remarks. But TV is a toxic addiction like any other, and its defense mechanisms function like those of any other addiction. And they can only be conquered the same way.
Again, although I'm well aware that this post is a loaded bomb, I'm not trying to piss anyone off. I know everyone who's posted on this thread for intelligent and thoughtful men whom I respect even when I disagree with them. But this has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with addiction and denial, and my motivation is sincere concern, not finger-pointing or sarcasm or holier-than-thou mockery. Television is a poisonous addiction, and the sooner that fact is faced, the sooner it can be overcome.
2005-03-11 14:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE]At the risk of offending people here whose opinions I respect, saying that "moderate" TV watching is okay, or that it doesn't affect you because you're racially aware, or that not all TV is corrupting sounds exactly like alcoholics who claim that it's all right to drink moderately, that not all alcohol is bad or that it doesn't affect them because they know when to stop.[/QUOTE]
Yes but you are also kinda-sorta claiming that everyone who drinks is an alcoholic whether they admit it or not.
What about someone who puts the tube on in the background for white-noise purposes (more people than you'd think)? Would turning the radio on instead actually make a major difference? (It does to me: talk radio aggravates me to apoplexy, and I can't abide top-40.)
I tend to agree with Cassidy on this one. "Read a good book instead and feed your mind" sounds just terrific except I have on countless occasions flung books across a room in utter disgust...if I fed my mind some of the crap that currently fills bookseller's shelves I'd die of malnutritrion in a fortnight.
I'm rising to the bait here, Arkady, not because I feel personally stung - I spend what tv-time I get either yelling invective at the screen or, more often, simply using the tube as my personal monitor - but because there is a flaw in your logic. It's not tv per se (or radio, or newspapers) that is the villain...[I]it is the culture[/I]. The gestalt of our age. You act as though there are safe zones of culture in whose cocoon the pervasive creeping moronism of Soulless Materialism and Dopey Diversity cannot find or taint you. There [I]are[/I] none. The only safe harbor is the culture of the past and you are not gonna convince the under-30s to spend a lot of time there the same way you're not going to convince many over-50s to take up roller-blading or listening to gangsta rap. Some will, of course, but they're going to be internally compelled to do so - not chided into it.
And if I've read your comments correctly, you're not even chiding them...you're halfway-housing them. Jeez, if there's one component of the current [I]scheisskultur [/I] I have had my fill of, it's this business of Everything is an Addiction and You Need Help (because you don't [I]think [/I] you do). It's right there in your [I]drinker who kids himself that he's not an alkie[/I] example. Only the second-most annoying bit of it's-for-your-own-good effrontery (right behind childless loners demanding the rest of us to go forth and multiply or the sky will fall next Thursday).
Can we get a show of hands here? Who here has physically removed their tvs, or never owned one? Bardamu tells us "Neither I nor my woman turn the television on"...but he's got one. Dallas provides scientific evidence that watching tv is Slow Death...but [I]he's [/I] got one. Arkady, I know you've got a tv in your house.
Let he who is without an Idiot Box cast the first stone. [I]Please[/I].
2005-03-11 14:59 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]
Can we get a show of hands here? Who here has physically removed their tvs, or never owned one? Bardamu tells us "Neither I nor my woman turn the television on"...but he's got one. Dallas provides scientific evidence that watching tv is Slow Death...but [I]he's [/I] got one. Arkady, I know you've got a tv in your house.
Let he who is without an Idiot Box cast the first stone. [I]Please[/I].[/QUOTE]
The television set is a monitor for my vcr, so it is not really a fair question.
2005-03-11 15:35 | User Profile
Herbert Krugman wanted to find out what happens to the brain of a person watching TV. Monitiring subject's brain waves, he found repeatedly that within about 30 seconds the beta waves which indicate alert and concsious attention change to alpha waves which indicate lack of focus and lack of attention; the state of aimless fantasy and daydreaming which is below the state of alert consciousness. When given something to read, beta waves reappeared. What surprised Krugman the most was how rapidly the alpha state emerged. Surprisingly, more research proved just as astounding: the left side of the brain is the side that accepts step by step descriptions, processes the information and critically analizes it. The right side of the brain forms images of what you think you see, received information emotionally, and does not critically analize it, leaving that job to the left side. The right side is where images are formed. It perceives the world in terms of moods, sensations, feelings, starts to form an image and is dependent on the left side to analize and logically help it to form the image. Krugman concluded, "the brain responds to the medium or television, not the content difference." In other words, the "medium", the "thing" causes the left side {beta} of the brain, which defends your thoughts, your values, to tune out, bypassing your logical reasoning process, going straight to the right side {alpha} which contains all the feelings and sensations to implant, prompt, stamp, or make an image in your mind and which can be made use of in temptations. Krugman, along with other researchers, has found that watching television tends to shut down the left side, thereby disengaging the information processing area of the brain. Krugman concluded:
"What you receive on TV is not thought about at the time you see it".
2005-03-11 15:42 | User Profile
No prob, Bardamu. I make pretty much the same use of it myself. [I]TV-as-monitor[/I] is like [I]tv-as-white-noise[/I]....in that I believe they're far more prevalent than is generally acknowledged.
Ad by no means am I trying to [I]defend [/I] television, which - if it's guilty of no other crime - has methodically undermined and even destroyed more-pleasing forms which came before it. We used to be a people who ritualistically read for pleasure if not enlightenment - no more.
But I'm afraid Arkady's post was too generalized for me to discern what he was [I]specifically [/I] targeting, and it smacked a little of - as I said - the type of guy who doesn't even have a girlfriend admonishing the rest of us to have twelve children or be race traitors. [I]Do as I say, not as I do [/I] is horse-puckey, regardless of however altruistic one's motives.
2005-03-11 15:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]I don't think Court TV, The History Channel, or the cable news channels carry objectionable content. And as far as TV's problem being a passive medium, well, see Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book and his How to Speak/How to Listen. Not only do people read passively, they listen passively as well. Perhaps TV is seen as passive because it is the people who are passive listeners (Adler: most people haven't learned how to listen). What if one were to approach TV the same way Adler suggests one approach a lecture, i.e., by being an active listener?[/QUOTE] Jack, this is why I mentioned that objectionable content is only part of the problem with TV. Even if the content is good, the very medium itself affects the brain in a different way than reading a book or listening to music does. Messianicdruid's post does a good job of explaining this point. The medium itself (as considered completely distinct from the content) is like a kind of stun ray. It puts the brain into a passive state in which images are simply absorbed, and not critically processed. The reason it is difficult to get up and turn off the TV is because you are literally under mental sedation when you are watching it, so it takes an act of will to switch it off. I'm not trying to cast stones, and I will admit to owning a television set. However, I am under no illusions as to the harm television causes.
2005-03-11 16:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]Look, it's not like if I weren't watching "The World's Scariest Police Chases" I'd be reading Homer. Television has exposed me to many things I would not otherwise know about (e.g., forensic science and pathology on Court TV, history of the toilet on The History Channel-- the word "crap" comes from John Crapper, the father of the modern toilet--, etc.).
I think one could make a better case against books. Any idiot can write and publish a book, and most people uncritically give books a status of trustworthiness not afforded to alot of TV programs, even though the latter is usually produced by teams of highly-educated and experienced people, and before going to air has been screened by equally high-caliber people. Mass-produced books is a new-fangled technology. Before Guttenberg people learned through the spoken word (in lectures by lectors-- Latin for "a reading" and "reader" respectively). Learning through books is a recent phenomenon, and it corresponds to the beginning of the decline of Western Civilization. Ironically, learning from watching things like The History Channel is closer to traditional modes of learning than reading books and journals.[/QUOTE]
Your point is well taken that books did in fact help in the decline of Christendom but I don't think the idea that television is a return to a pre-Guttenberg form of learning is accurate. Television is a step further away from the slower, ergonomic, human paced learning of the pre-Enlightenment. Really, television is industrialized theater. I am of the reactionary belief that all forms of industrialization are bad because it is so immoderate. Industrializaton is the devil of the modern age.
2005-03-11 16:47 | User Profile
You guys willingly put yourselves on the defensive--bone up on your McLuhan! :D
The Tube was invented by our people and for our people...the fact that its potentials were grabbed by inimical forces ca. 1950 doesn't diminish its potential for future good.
The Medium of Television is here to stay. Let pro-Western elements and sensibilities reclaim it!
[url]http://som.csudh.edu/cis/lpress/articles/macl.htm[/url]
2005-03-11 16:56 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.]
The Medium of Television is here to stay. Let pro-Western elements and sensibilities reclaim it!
[url]http://som.csudh.edu/cis/lpress/articles/macl.htm[/url][/QUOTE]
Yes, this is probably true. Even if a super volcano erupts a few years later out will sprout a television station like some evil toadstool, so we might as well deal with it.
2005-03-11 16:59 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]Yes, this is probably true. Even if a super volcano erupts a few years later out will sprout a television station like some evil toadstool, so we might as well deal with it.[/QUOTE]
It would be a nutritious mushroom if our folks were writing the scripts, running the cameras and reading the lines. Don't you get it?
2005-03-11 17:01 | User Profile
Ruling elites have a tendency to sell out, that's the problem, but of course I "get it", that is why I said we might as well deal with it.