The Mosque "controversy" is proof that much of our population lives via TV

[Go2Peace]

..

The "ground zero" Mosque controversy is a wake up call. It shows how deeply Television influences the mind of the common citizen. Many in our population are taking their "que's" on how to live life from the TV.

I have long felt that people were living vicariously through the TV. It first became noticable to me when I recognized that a lot of our social interaction mimics the passive/aggressive tone of our sitcoms. At work people often have to communicate through comedy, as if they are in a work related sitcom. In many marriages the interaction mimics that of what we grew up watching.

Our daily interactions are often centered around what we have all shared via TV recently, what shows we watch, what information is provided on news. Many even get their religious beliefs from the TV.

The trouble is that while TV includes and can show real life events, what we see on the TV can only be a 2 dimensional slice of a many faceted reality. In a way it is a fantasy, and never fully reflects reality. TV attempts to influence and replace reality, by subtly twisting reality to get an emotional response or add excitement. It's purpose is get you "hooked", so you will return day after day, or week after week.

At it's worst, TV purposely tries to influence the viewer, to make them think the fantasy they are providing is pure reality. In essence "manufacturing" a reality. Because when they actually manufacture the reality and tie the audience to it, they gain power over perception that can be used to sell products and lift salaries. This is where we are now.

The fantasy of the "ground zero" mosque, is a demonstration, that they *have control* of a large part of the population. It provides evidence that it is not simply the "Teabaggers" that are under this form of control, but much of the general population.

It is important to distinguish this phenomenon, in order to know how to counter it. It is essentially a mass illusion, a mental illness, from the politics that are gripping and trying to control it.

My point in mentioning this, is we do not have a "conservative nation", we have a heavily influence/controlled nation. Controlled by a media with a significant conservative/corporate, slant.

That is the issue we must find answers to. And the normal political approaches will not work to change it.

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Madison Avenue has perfected the art of advertising/mind control

Now that corporate interests have acquired our government, they use their gargantuan media platforms to pacify, confuse, distract and deny the American people anything close to reality and relevance in regard to news reporting.

[Cronus Protagonist]

2. Neil Postman has a great book you might enjoy

Amusing Ourselves to Death - about the epistemology of television. You concur with him in this OP.

[Uncle Joe]

3. The phenomena of Anti-mimesis, aka; "Life imitating art" known long before television

combined with the mystical, magical, psychological power of TV; has lead it to become a most powerful tool in the art of brainwashing the people.

I agree with you on all counts but as for the answers; I believe the Internet will play a large part in that endeavor but not without challenge from the power mongers in control of the status quo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imitating_art

Anti-mimesis is a philosophical position that holds the direct opposite of mimesis. Its most notable proponent is Oscar Wilde, who held in his 1889 essay The Decay of Lying that "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life". In the essay, written as a Platonic dialogue, Wilde holds that such anti-mimesis "results not merely from Life's imitative instinct, but from the fact that the self-conscious aim of Life is to find expression, and that Art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may realise that energy.".<1><2>

<snip>

Antimimesis, as set out by Wilde in Decay of Lying is the reverse of the Aristotelian principle of mimesis. Far from art imitating life, as mimesis would hold, Wilde holds that art sets the aesthetic principles by which people perceive life. What is found in life and nature is not what is really there, but is that which artists have taught people to find there, through art. Wilde presents the fogs of London as an example, arguing that although "there may have been fogs for centuries in London", people have only "seen" the "wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas lamps and turning houses into shadows" because "poets and painters have taught the loveliness of such effects". "They did not exist", asserts Wilde, "till Art had invented them."<1>

<snip>

George Bernard Shaw agreed with Wilde. In his preface to Three Plays he wrote "I have noticed that when a certain type of feature appears in painting and is admired as beautiful, it presently becomes common in nature; so that the Beatrices and Francescas in the picture galleries of one generation come to life as the parlor-maids and waitresses of the next.". He stated that he created the aristocratic characters in Cashel Byron's Profession as more priggish than real aristocrats because at the time of writing he had yet to discover that "what supposed to be the real world does not exist, and that men and women are made by their own fancies in the image of the imaginary creatures in youthful fictions, only much stupider". Shaw, however, disagreed with Wilde on some points. He considered most attempts by life to imitate art to be reprehensible, in part because the art that people generally chose to imitate was idealistic and romanticized.<4>

As for the last sentence, I view the concepts or messages of "greed is good," "the exceptionalism of America" and "the power of pride" as being a few small but fundamental examples.

Symbols ie: the flag have taken precedence over substance ie: the Constitution, children are taught to pledge allegiance to a colored cloth not the document which all Presidents and Privates swear an oath to uphold and defend.

Thanks for the thread, Go2Peace:thumbsup:

[Go2Peace]

7. "children are taught to pledge allegiance to a colored cloth not (sic) the constitution"

I never thought of it this way but that is so true. Why is it that we were not taught to pledge to the constitution but to a flag? Because it's meaning can be changed? Very interesting observation!

[Go2Peace]

8. Oh, don't worry, we will eventually end up there

if we keep on the path we are on. Unfortunately....

[JohnyCanuck]

4. KnR

[JohnyCanuck]

5. It's not known by some as "The Idiot box" for nothing. n/t

[Karenina]

9. Bingo.

What was that medium/message thing again?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtycdRBAbXk

[Odin2005]

6. Who needs a represive police state when the elites can brainwash everyone via TV?

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. I'm sorry, but the US is a very conservative country by most standards.

Socially conservative, definitely; more than half of all Americans regularly attend religious services, for instance (compare that figure with the percentage in the UK where it's less than 6%), most US states have capital punishment and most Americans don't see a problem with it, and and on and on on a host of other cultural/social issues. To say that America is NOT a conservative country in quite a lot of ways is to deny reality.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Has television magnified US conservatism and if so, was/is it deliberate?

I believe it has, part of this being the result of television ascendancy and U.S. world superpower status coming at about the same time.

The witch hunts of the McCarthy Era being just one example of how corporate, ie; military industrial complex dominated government; of which President Eisenhower would later warn against stifled and distorted American expression via television and movies during the so called "Golden Era" of television.

This was done solely because of the perceived political beliefs; whether real or imagined of those actors, directors, producers and writers, with the First Amendment being damned.

During such a critical stage of television infancy, development and growing influence, there is no way this couldn't have a distorting/dampening effect on the most advanced art of it's time and in turn on the American People's perception.

I believe we as a nation suffered greatly from this travesty and the lingering effects are still with us to this day.