TV short circuits the process of eliciting one’s true values

We all know it’s unhealthy for children to be watching television. It’s already a cliche.

Why am I writing such a Captain Obvious post? Because even though it’s a commonplace, it’s still done everywhere! It’s accepted. I used to be a Maytag appliance repairman, and I would tell young mothers they shouldn’t be sitting their kids in front of the TV, and they would say, “I don’t know what else to do with them.” Anything but that, lady! Let them play with cardboard boxes, or make ant hospitals, or eat earthworms, or talk to an imaginary friend! ANYTHING. BUT. TELEVISION.

Starting with my post on the mandatory Holocaust curriculum, and then the Republican party’s Satanic symbolism, I have begun to zero in on the ubiquitousness and commonplace-ness of the soul-destroying mass media machine.

Because it’s right under our nose, we tend to dismiss it as commonplace and “already a cliche.” It may be a commonplace and a cliche to us, but to most people it’s normal to sit their kids in front of the television for hours a day. Even upper middle class, educated parents do this. I got a phone call from my kid once to come pick her up from a friend’s house early. Why? Her friend was entranced in front of the TV, and my kid was bored out of her mind. TV is an acquired taste. If a kid grows up without TV, they won’t have the patience to sit there for hours on end, especially with the kind of mindless garbage put out as filler for the real TV addicts. My kid likes movies all right, but she can’t watch those “kid variety shows” for even a few minutes.

Let me re-iterate what happens when kids watch TV. Their natural curiosity and the process of “know thyself” is short circuited. You know the childish refrain, “I’m bored!” What they are saying, is that they are bored with themselves! They become philosophically crippled by ennui at such a young age! It’s like foot-binding for the soul and spirit.

A childhood of television watching implants the extremely harmful, implicit idea that there’s nothing worth doing, except what the rest of the herd is doing. So much “noise” has been thrown at the TV soaked brain, that the small voice of wisdom cannot be heard.

The best thing that ever happened to me, was the realization that I should go try new things. I should go learn Russian language, I should take up violin, I should learn computers, et cetera. Even beyond the value of doing these things, it made me realize that there’s a Big World out there, and that Fortune smiles upon the Bold and Enterprising.

Mass media conditions children to be the opposite of Bold and Enterprising.

All the bad things in this country spring from this. The government and corporations get away with literally destroying the country in every possible way — sending our manufacturing to China, destroying our family farms and replacing with biotech factory farms that create the Gulf Dead Zone, diminishing the White majority and it’s cultural foundation in the country. All these are of a piece. They all go together, and it’s actually more powerful to tie it all together as one big effort to destroy the country. But of course, it’s a lot for a newly awakened person to digest all at once, so you introduce one concept at a time, and then tie it all together.

But it all began with destroying the soul of the American child with TV. If anything can be called “truly evil,” that’s it.

So what does a healthy child, whose soul hasn’t been destroyed, act like? I’ll tell you.

They have dreams of what they will do when they grow up, and they are doing things towards those dreams. They visualize their goals, and act on them, even if their goals seem ridiculous at the time. For example, my kid, like many, wanted to be a pop singer and an actress. So I take her to voice lessons and piano lessons and encourage her to participate in her school play.

But all these years, I have practiced at “eliciting values,” from her, and in doing so, teaching her to figure out her own values. What do you really want from life? Many people go their whole life without knowing how to ask themselves this question — especially TV babies.

The “values” don’t have to be perfect or ideal. What’s important is getting that process going of eliciting values. The ability to elicit ones own true values + life experience is likely to lead to wiser choices.

So my kid likes to hang out with a girl whose parents have a big house and an indoor swimming pool. She was describing how much she wants to live in a big house with an indoor swimming pool, and I realized, “Hey, here’s a value eliciting teachable moment.” So I said to her, “Maybe instead of being a CSI detective, you should just go to business school and get rich. Then you can have a big house with an indoor swimming pool.” She objected that it sounds like too much work, but I assured her that the MBA types don’t put themselves out too much, intellectually speaking. They sit in their corner offices and do their “managing” and work 40 hours a week and live in the lap of luxury. It’s all about making sure the higher people like you and want to promote you, and before you know it you’re a multimillionaire and you don’t have to work any more and you can enjoy your big house with the indoor swimming pool.

A few days later, she announced to the wife that her new career is going to B school and being a rich businesswoman with a big house.

Obviously, this isn’t very idealistic. But that’s not important. What’s important is that she got an idea for herself NOT BASED ON TELEVISION, but based on what she really, truly wants out of life. The whole “detective” thing was from watching CSI when she stays at my mom’s house.

A lot of people go through life without ever finding out what their real values are, because their values were implanted by TV from a very young age. That’s why TV for children is monstrously evil.