Television: The Soma of this Brave New World

Friends,

Donna B...

A presumption ...

Have you ever walked around your neighborhood at night and noticed the
ominous blue glow radiating from nearly every window?

Have you noticed the glaze of one's eyes as he's hypnotized by the
screen?

Have you ever walked into Costco and noted how you're immediately
assaulted by a phalanx of blaring screens?

Does it not disturb you that multiple television screens are now
appearing in cars, gyms, banks, bars, kitchens, every bedroom, etc.
etc. etc. ad nauseum.?

Or that millions upon millions of people structure their every evening
around the television schedule?

Donna B...

I schedule my viewing around my life. That's what TiVo, DVRs, VCRs, etc. are
for. I watch by intent, not by accident. I know more people who watch TV
this way than the way you describe.

videonovels...

This is why I do not pay for cable tv.

TV is simply not important enough to waste ~$600 a year on it.

If I turn on the set, and I can not find anything on the free,
off-the-antenna channels, so what? I'll just go and do something else.

:-)

________
2- | _____] 2258: "Signs and Portents"
time | | ___ 2259: "The Coming of Shadows"
Sci-Fi |__|[_ \ 2260: "Point of No Return"
Achievement B A _B Y\ L\ O N 2261: "No Surrender, No Retreat"
Awards ( \__/ | 2262: "Wheel of Fire"
Winner \______/
A TV NOVEL (available on dvd)

Are you aware that the brain waves of a person watching television are
flatter than those of one asleep?

Are you prepared to free yourselves from this slavery, granting your
minds the silence and space needed for contemplation of the highest
things, which is the very function of the glorious human mind?

Can you tolerate silence anymore at all? Must you constantly have the

Donna B...

It's not a question of tolerating it at all. I experience silence as well as
noise I intend to hear, as well as noise I am stuck hearing. I only object
to the last, but it's the price of living with other human beings & as such
worth it.

television on or an Ipod in your ear? Do you ever drive in silence?

Donna B...

I not only 'must not' but I do not always have the TV on or audio on. I
don't own on iPod.

Donna B...

Usually if I am alone I drive in silence. If others are in the car, we
usually talk some & are in silence some. If we're on a long trip, some of
the time we might put a CD or 2 in. Often we burn specific CDs for the trip,
for fun.

Does silence now frighten you? Did it frighten you as a child?

Donna B...

No.

Donna B...

No.

Donna B...

Hey, you, too. Things are going well for me. I don't need your advice on how
to live my life, much less how to think about living a life of intention.

Consider very carefully:

"There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic
revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television
seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is
a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a
measure of the extent to which we have been changed. Our culture's
adjustment to the epistemology of television is by now all but
complete; we have so thoroughly accepted its definitions of truth,
knowledge, and reality that irrelevance seems to us to be filled with
import, and incoherence seems eminently sane. And if some of our
institutions seem not to fit the template of the times, why it is they,
and not the template, that seem to us disordered and
strange....Television is the soma of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

"It is my object in the rest of this book to make the epistemology of
television visible again. I will try to demonstrate by concrete example
that television's way of knowing is uncompromisingly hostile to
typography's way of knowing; that television's conversations promote
incoherence and triviality; that the phrase 'serious television' is a
contradiction in terms; and that television speaks in only one
persistent voice - the voice of entertainment. Beyond that, I will try
to demonstrate that to enter the great television conversation, one
American cultural institution after another is learning to speak its
terms. Television, in other words, is transforming our culture into one
vast arena for show business. It is entirely possible, of course, that
in the end we shall find that delightful, and decide we like it just
fine. That is exactly what Aldous Huxley feared was coming."