Does Television Blurr Reality

What is your definition of blur?

My definition is to paint a picture that does not reflect what is really happening for an event or events that have occurred. This is not limited to news, but ideology as well.

Case in point, would be the recent statements from Ahmadinejad about 911 and the Holocaust.

Clearly he is attempting to distort history for political reasons. It doesn't stop there. US media has been cited countless times for bias and false statement.

The news isn't even the news anymore. Now news and opinion are combined with out advanced warning.

Nearly everything broadcasted on TV is a distortion of reality in some regard. Many times it is subtle, some times inadvertent, many times it is neither.

Has the wonderment of a child's mind changed. So then anything they see or hear effects their outlook on life to come.

Psychology is not a very objective field.

Psychology in it practice is not objective. All psychologist use personal knowledge gained from observation which gives personal bias to their conclusions.

In the fact that this subject is being discussed here or by C.A. Anderson, PhD leads to the issue that there is questions about the subject matter on TV in which the questioner is not happy to have a child see.

All this intellectual mumbo jumbo is fine, but what I remember is that during the 50's cowboys and indians phase of television broadcasting, my grandmother, a reasonably intelligent immigrant, was convinced that it was all real.

"...the effect has magnitude and the magnitude is scalar..."

I think a, if not the, major consideration here is that the effect will vary from individual to individual. This is not like testing samples of acid on slabs of concrete to see which is affected most. Concrete is concrete. People are different, one from another, and what might have no effect whatsoever on one person (child OR adult) could drive someone at the opposite end of sensitivity into madness. Or anger. Or fear, or any of the other potential emotional states that could be triggered.

While I gave a GA vote to your post, I think that psychology (and it's applied form, psychiatry) are almost totally subjective in nature. Sure, some scientific method techniques are used. That does not give them the necessary rigor to be considered science the way biology, physics, and chemistry can be. Objectivity is not lacking deliberately, but because there are simply too many unknown and unknowable (at least for now) variables at work in human mental processes to allow for true subjectivity.

Do you even know how you, yourself, dream? No. No one knows how, exactly, dreams are formed. Research continues; maybe one day we will, but if I don't know how I dream, how can I presume to understand how you will react to a biased television program? And would you even use the same defintion of "bias" as I would? As vermin's tag line once said: "One man's entropy is another man's order. Take gravel for instance."

Please give credit to its source - Lucious Prn!

To put the answer in the computer age...garbage in, garbage out.

Training, as opposed to learning, is dependant on repetition. TV repeats over and over the same consumerism push:

• "You need this ",
• "You deserve this," "you are entitled to have everything"
• "You should not listen to your parents or any authority".
• "Tell your parents that everyone has one."
• "Your parents are analog and outdated"
• "Do whatever you want, and you want to buy my product"
• "the product you bought yesterday is obsolete"

Yes, the media is programming everyone. The science of keeping ratings up or selling a product is so advanced, it has invaded every part of society from before you are born until after you are dead. It is all based on telling you what you want, which is to give them money.

Is it blurring the perception of reality,. No... worse...it is changing reality.

Part of the root of the problem is the psychologists. The whole field of study is based on Sigmund Freud who studied mentally ill patients. His work, and others, has had a great influence on education, and todays culture. Unfortunately the result is a society with a culture that does not accept the responsibilities of their actions...Sort of like Freud's patients........

We have to stop listening to the psychologists, they are definitely not experts on a healthy mind, just the opposite. They are only creating their own patients.

Now if there was anyone that actually studied healthy and happy minds, we might give credence to their advice.

Well, I have to disagree with some of your points, but I do agree that advertisement does push consumerism to a nauseating point and I do not like it. So, I turned it off a long time ago and don't own or watch television.

I am sorry to say that your point quoted below really is both ad-hoc and off base on the subject of psychology.

"We have to stop listening to the psychologists, they are definitely not experts on a healthy mind, just the opposite. They are only creating their own patients. Now if there was anyone that actually studied healthy and happy minds, we might give credence to their advice."

I think you misunderstand the subject. First, psychology is the study of the normal mind and the study of the pathological. If anything, it has more to do with the normal mind.

Second, Sigmund Freud's work has been widely, if not wildly, popularized to the point of mass misunderstanding. Freud's work was inventive and eye opening, but never obtained the usefulness nor following that most people believe. The probable reason for his popularity in culture is his effort to bring forward and expose sex in a society where such talk was considered strictly taboo in any social context.

Modern psychology is not based on the works of Freud, but a mix of learning's from multiple disciplines in the field. Examples include behaviorism, existential-humanism, cognitivism, and a host of others.

If you find you have an interest, try picking a book at the bookstore or library and spend some time. You will find there are a lot of misconceptions on the subject as well as find it it might be fascinating read for you.

Previous responders are more accurate than you may admit. Immanuel Kant, Jung, Becker, etc. have clearly shown that outside the sheer scientific method of materialism there is no such thing as objectivity. Psychology does not merely accumulate data, as soon as judgment enters you have lost your ground.

Palinurous gets my vote.

"Previous responders are more accurate than you may admit. Immanuel Kant, Jung, Becker, etc. have clearly shown that outside the sheer scientific method of materialism there is no such thing as objectivity. Psychology does not merely accumulate data, as soon as judgment enters you have lost your ground."

Certainly, and I think this was his intent, the gentlemen he mentions demonstrate the truth of his statement in the negative. The only way to know reality, and therefore have some mental hold on it, is through scientific method.

Kant of course, with his declamation that one can never know the thing in itself, asserts that the only reality is that which we construct in our minds which in turn, to get back to the starting point, is in fact created by TV and other mass media unless we have been trained from an early age in scientific method, i.e., collection of data, hypothesis based on data, prediction and proof in practice, or negation which again approaches reality by eliminating, the negation of the negation, that which is not real.

I am 74 but recently, for some five years, spent time as a student in the classrooms of GSU. Virtually every class and subject matter, outside of the sciences, but inclusive of math, starts with unproven assumptions, the theological basis of which is our agnostic friend Kant.

The problem of psychology is in the fact that it does not start with the historical data available to us of the original minds of our common African ancestors, hunter gatherers and still, even whilst we are destroying the last remnants, the Kalahari Bushmen, or for that matter their descendants, still in remote places hunter gatherers.

Historically, from what I know, I would have to insist that the hunter gatherer mentality was the healthiest. Our problem today is can we get back to that mentality on the basis of modern technology. My answer is yes and although that is not the purpose of this forum and web site, I think it can be proven.

The good or bad of the TV medium is of course in the use it is put to. I would use it to bring a physics laboratory to every household.

Teach algebra and the basic electrical formula, ohms law, to kids and incidentally their parents too, and with it scientific method. On television, go back over the works of the founders, Volta, Faraday, etc., or in biology Pasteur, etc.

Best of all use it to prove the fallacy of Kant's agnosticism by bringing live tele-casts of MRI and the examination of living human brain functions.

Science, materialism, are the only basis for a normal human mind.

Jack Jersawitz

404-892-1238

bigjackjj@yahoo.com

I don't know if this is pro or con regarding your rant, but...

Am I the only one that after a prolonged exposure to TV (say, 3 or 4 days) begins to feel as though everyone in the World is beautiful and never makes mistakes and always has a clever come-back?!

When this happens to me, the only cure is a quick trip to the nearest mall, where I can observe humanity in its grizzliest, most grotesque form!

Teaching algebra, etc. to the masses on television is a wonderful idea. In fact, in my formative years, a daily 6:00 AM PBS program series (many weeks) on set theory gave me cause to leave for school immediately after the program and spend at least an hour each day researching that subject as well as other mathematic subjects (I pretty much memorized the log tables) prior to the beginning of class. I had to get permission from the Algebra teacher to have the janitor open the classroom so I could access his library. It was interesting but did not launch me into a lifetime of the pursuit of mathematics in particular. Funding for that program came from the usual grant sources. This was the early days of PBS. Pre Sesame Street.

I guess it is possible for PBS to broadcast such programs today if there were enough interest and funding can be secured.

The possibility of commercial television, network or cable/satellite, producing this kind of programing is practically nil. It wouldn't sell soap powder.

"The possibility of commercial television, network or cable/satellite, producing this kind of programing is practically nil. It wouldn't sell soap powder."

Of this I am well aware.

But the thesis in law, and why stations are licensed, is that the airways are public, i.e., belong to the public.

I don't see, in view of the whining about not being able to teach science, why we should not simply kick the commercial interests out the door and replace them with good solid interesting educational materials, math among them.

Think about what I suggested by way of example. Ohms law, as a reflection of the actual relationships of the different aspects of electrical functions, is a very simple thing to demonstrate with a few batteries, lamps, crude meters. For a young student, fourth or fifth grade, with rudimentary math, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, the actual relationships demonstrated in front of them, are immediately explicable in algebraic formula.

I have no doubt we could do that with all sorts of supposedly "abstruse" materials.

In that regard an awful lot of what I learned about electrical principles was obtained in a wonderful museum in New York's Rockefeller Center, The Museum of Science and Industry if I remember the name correctly. It is sadly long gone.

But the way it taught was through a series of glass enclosed demonstrations with placards to explain. You simply pressed a button and watched the demonstration and read the placard.

TV is a wonderful tool in the right hands but not in the hands of those who currently program it.

j.

The program "Beakman's World" does present a fair amount of scientific information, on a general level, on a wide range of topics, along with a good bit of humor to keep the attention of those not so inclined to scientific pursuits. Sort of a twisted Mr. Wizard. Their treatise on mucus was delightful.

Museums of Science and Industry and Science Centers can be found in a few cities. A quick search brought up five.

Please help me;

Which Pshycologist has ever said that a person is responsible for their own thoughts and actions? Everyone that I have studied, has an underlying theme; basically your problems or behavior is a product of your environment, or your upbringing, or your needs, or you are a victim,and it is someone elses fault.

Freud - It was your parents fault

Maslow - Your hierachy of needs drive your priorities

etc. etc. etc

I was told recently that psychology is not a science course, and most sciencists say its belong to pseuoscience.

right?

"We have to stop listening to the psychologists, they are definitely not experts on a healthy mind, just the opposite."

Interesting point. I'm certainly not an expert on any of this, but if you ask anyone who has been in a mental institution they will tell you that the staff is crazier than the inmates. And I have observed that "normal" people don't seem too interested in studying abnormal psychology, while individuals who are themselves a bit off-center are fascinated by the subject and want to learn all they can. In doing so they find they can get paid to follow their aspirations. (This is just an observation with zero scientific method applied). So it could be dead wrong.

Yup - kill your TV! Live life, folks, it's far too short to waste suckling electronic milk from a glass tit.

One thing's for sure, reality makes bad TV. Or maybe all TV is bad. I don't know, it's all so blurry.

You mean shows like Survivor, The Apprentice, Cops? I refer to that as UNreality TV. It mimics a real life, but what happens is far from any reality I ever experienced - well, without using substances I can neither confirm nor deny I have ever had access to, anyway...

I think an old Playboy cartoon sums it up pretty well.

Man sitting in a chair, holding a copy of Playboy and talking to his wife...

"When I read Playboy, the whole World seems like a tuxedo, and I feel like a pair of brown shoes!"

There is a book that I read in college years ago that uses the premise that TV alters one's preception of reality as its basis. It also argues that the physiological effects one experiences while watching TV (anxiety, fight or flight impulse, sedentary aspect for extended periods) are extremely harmful to one's health. The book's title is Four Arguements for the Elimination of Television.

When you complain TV program have you ever think of internet?

it more effects on human action, not only adult but kids.

we can use it for learnning, or can harm one use it.

I thnk you should deal it into two sides.

have a thought, if no TV, internet, how shall we live?

We could survive. Internet didn't get us to the moon.

<....if no TV, internet, how shall we live?...>

Peacefully and ignorantly.

Since the media tend to tell only one side and push that worldview in children's programs, of course they affect the children. It is the greatest indoctrinating tool ever known.

I was born in 1953. I've witnessed a profound and fundamental change in American culture, brought about by the introduction of the TV.

We didn't have a TV until 1964.

In the fifty's and earlier, people had to go outside the home for entertainment. For us kids, there was Boy Scouts, WMCA, church plays and shows, but mostly playing outside, year round. My mother booted me out the door to do all of the above.

The adults joined bowling and softball leagues and were involved in all of the above too.

You knew all of your neighbors. Mothers looked out for all of the kids. I was probably never out of a mothers sight.

My father, and then me, became ham radio operators. We had a radio "shack" in the attic. We spent hours DXing all over the world. It was a thrill to talk to someone from another country, it took skill and patience to make it happen.

Today, that's just a click away

I think TV changed all of that. It brought entertainment into the home. Of course, TV sucked at first, there was only 3 stations. As TV programming improved, ( is that an oxy-moron?), people stayed home more, and the rest is history.

On TV you see people doing all kinds of things, that rational people in real life don't do. So the kids think that everything is OK, because they saw it on TV. TV these days is better with cable, because you get History, Dicovery, Health, etc. channels. That's all I watch. Maybe I'm alone.

The PC is really a TV.

Why you are alone? at least I agree with you.

TV changes our life, let s know more knowledges which is not known from books. we can see by our eyes all events which take from different countries and their stories, most of this can't be described by words.

internet is more interest than only watch TV set.

However I think they are more advantage than disadvantage.

In fact, most of modern TV set has a kid lock which can lock a few channels which is not good for children.

next, I think you will discuss how the pc game effect the children and students.

The outgrowth of PC games has given the police and military the ability to conduct operations remotely, including but not limited to clearing land mines, searching in dangerous environments, conducting surveillance from unmanned aircraft, and attacking enemies.

Does TV alter our reality? I think so.

I remember how people treated each other before Soap Operas, now many treat each other like life is a Soap Opera.

Now the majority of people get bored easy ( seven minute entertainment blocks between commercials). We used to do something all day with forced breaks for meals etc. The type of dedication now considered akin to computer obsession (tool use or used by the tool?).

Cause and effect? Could be.

Are you familiar with the writings of Noam Chomsky?

No I wasn't, how credible is he in your estimation?

I just skimmed his web site but don't have the time right now to seriously research his writings.

Brad

He's very credible. His book, Manufacturing Consent is really a must read. You may not agree with everything he says, but it certainly will make you think!

Thank you, I'll check it out.

Brad

Take 20 homes on a real street named Wisteria Lane and they won't all be those beautiful people on TV. Crash land an airliner on a remote island and they won't resemble the cast of "Lost" either. TV is not real, not even the "reality" shows. Children see many programs which are patently ridiculous and unreal, but they think they are real because they pretend to be real.

How many villains are business people, religious people, Republicans, scientists, military men and bankers? Who are the heroes? The ones who are saving a tree, hopping into beds, being politically correct, supporting Democratic Party values, the socially conscious , the anti-gun & smoking types and the crusading supporters of the nanny-state. It is a constant and consistent attempt to indoctrinate everyone. The Global Warming crowd is in control and it is hard to get fair and balanced news or entertainment. It's not just a blur, it's a distortion of reality.

But Tagananan,

How do we determine reality? You seem to put a political cast on who you think are the hero's, among them the Republican monster in the White House, military, bankers, etc. This is certainly a political subject from the git go and I could take off in that direction.

But I won't. I won't because the most important issue here is what is reality and how do we determine it?

At risk of being called a Communist I would suggest that the issue has to be addressed in a materialist way, a scientific way, and has to start with the base question, how do we make our existence? The base of that historically is human origins in Africa, we are all African-American; the hunter-gatherer societies, and the communal social forms that were directly the result of hunter-gatherer economics and the impossibility of surviving as an individual.

From there trace the method of creating the material means of existence upwards, and the necessarily related social forms. In that material base one finds the social origins of any period and the controlling economic forces; hence the politics that shape the predominant propaganda, for that is what it is, and the expression of it today on our TV sets.

You are all, or ostensibly most of you, engineers. A materialist way of looking at social forms ought not be that odd to you anymore than coming up on a machine you have never seen before and figuring out what it does, how it does it, and what is wrong with it if it is broken and you need to fix it; or pretty much the same sort of view, way of seeing, if you need to create or invent a machine for a specific material purpose.

Having said that I would suggest that TV content is the software necessary to creating the audience necessary to selling advertising which is the whole purpose and intent of commercial TV or almost all of commercial media whatever such may be.

Obviously TV distorts the apprehension of reality of all of us because its prime purpose is advertising, i.e., making money, not telling truth. It is absurd to expect anything else.

Jack Jersawitz

404-892-1238

bigjackjj@yahoo.com

"...The Global Warming crowd is in control..."

By definition, the current administration and big industry (including the oil companies) are who is in control, and since they are also either responsible for, or irresponsible for, the anthropogenic contribution to global warming (better termed 'climate change'), I guess I have to agree.

However, it is not that kind of brainwashing that I have observed. Rather the 'mind control' is aimed at making better little consumers out of all of us. The images start in early childhood - commercials for the sugariest processed cereals, the latest toys and computer games, the slickest tennis shoes and baggy pants, and continues up through the age-based demographics.

For adults, the beef council tells us we'd enjoy black angus t-bone steaks the most, be happiest driving a Lexus, and look better in 'great pants, man'. Personally, I tend to shy away from buying anything I can avoid that I have seen advertised anywhere but in the store where I'm shopping for it, especially things advertised on TV. But sometimes that's way too easy.

Lately, I've been noticing an increase in TV commercials from Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, etc. for fighter jets, missile systems, and the like. Why? I'm not about to rush out and buy my own F-15, and neither is anyone in my social circle. I doubt these ads influence anyone except the marketing companies who create them. Those folks get richer, which is certainly an influence. Wasn't it General/President Dwight Eisenhower who, upon completion of his second term, warned against the influence of the 'military/industrial complex'?

Back to the question and answer - yes, television DOES blur reality. Everything that isn't news (and a lot that claims to be), straight science, or real documentary programming is scripted by someone who probably doesn't think like you or I do, so what is offered is a blurring of our reality.