Having "given up" on TV has made me realize certain things about the world we live in...
The world is a prison.
The television is an Orwellian telescreen. Orwell was being metaphorical with his abstraction of the television (telescreen) as a system of control and took some obvious poetic license (i.e. they can see us through the screen). They don't have to see us through the screen or force us to have them in our homes. We, as a collective, will put them in our homes and watch it willingly if we fear ridicule for not doing so... they create this fear by creating a system of thought, memes, that TV watching is normal. If it *feels good* and is *normal* it must also be good for us. It is *good* for them. Us watching TV is good for the people who control television itself. In the same way that you being hooked on junk is good for a junk dealer. You get hooked on junk, you give your money to a dealer, you give your life to the junk. None of this is *good* for you; it's good for your dealer and his dealer and so on. Follow the money.
Quitting any addiction starts first with your systems of thinking, then your methodology. First, understand who benefits from watching television. Well.... multinational mega corporations, they sell stuff on TV and they pay the people who own the TV transmitters for the right to make their illusions known to you. They hire scores of psychologists and marketing gurus to craft illusions that are sent through your TV set, into your mind. They ATTACK your systems of thinking with their illusions and break your mind down into nothing over a matter of years. Commercials in their present form are tantamount to covert psychological warfare. I'm not intending to be melodramatic but to be precise. People will never "give up" on TV unless they can *unlearn* the systems of thinking that TV has programmed (they use the word themselves!) them into.
Children have to watch TV because today's children are tomorrows consumers. Only a child would be innocent and trusting enough to buy
into the whole premise of TV advertising in the first place.
Your beautiful mind that took billions of years to evolve. The most significant and evolved piece of biological hardware in the known universe, your mind, in the hands of their minds and their illusions. You give it right away (Orwell gave us more credit than we deserved, I fear) and enslave yourself. I may be preaching to the choir here but nonetheless - who benefits from your willing submission of your mind into the hands of their carefully crafted illusions?? Is it you??
TV will destroy your ability to be creative, to forge your own identity and relationships, and your individuality. They (the people who sell you things) don't want you to be creative, or individualistic, or even have good relationships. They want you to be as lazy, impulsive and insecure as possible and TV is the perfect medium to create such a culture. You will buy things to fill the void of your wasted shell of a life. You will do this because you are not aware that another life exists... how can you know of such a life? Since infancy your mind was shaped by television.
After you turn off the TV for a good 8-12 months you start to notice something very eerie in your fellow denizens, something not quite right in their behaviour... and I've talked to other anti-tv'ers out there who have noticed this slight shift in awareness. People who watch TV ACT LIKE THEY'RE ON TV. They have no idea they're doing it because the patterning is so deep in their subconscious that they're more or less hypnotized pod people, blissfully unaware that their minds and bodies are being controlled by subconscious patterns put INTO them by a foreign entity (specifically, their television set)
Television itself is such a concentrated evil that I can barely understand it.
Good Day
Television Is Concentrated Evil
I grew up with the television on all the time in the home so used to spend as much time as possible when at home alone in my room. My mother would have control of the remote control and at the time I thought it was benign as 99% of the time only BBC One or Two was on as Channel Four didn't exist at the time. My mother claimed that she could do two or three things at the same time so would knit or read while watching television but one thing she wouldn't do while watching television was talk. It was always 'sshh' this and 'sshh' that. Even when we were staying at my Nan's in the summer and my aunt was visiting the television was on. My aunt would be able to resist and would be gossiping away nineteen to the dozen while my mother kept one eye on the television, half interested in the conversation, and my nan would drift off to sleep now and then.
My happiest times at home in the evenings was during the power cuts of the 1970's when we would light candles and play cards and one summer when visiting my nan and the television broke down. We had proper conversations then with everyone listening to each other fully. I feel like a TV orphan. I think though my mother would use television as a way to keep my father off her back with his emotional demands and tendency to bully and quarrel.
I hardly watched television in the eighties and found myself out of step with what was going on. I relied on the radio and newspapers instead. I couldn't understand office politics and was very naive not knowing what was really going on and how to defend myself against it. Some people were cruel and manipulative towards me because they picked up on this. I then started to use television particularly soaps and comedy to try and find examples of standing up to people. Television opens your mind up to the people around you and why they think and behave like they do which is influenced by television in the first place. It's almost like a case of you can't beat them so you might as well join them. On the other hand as you become less naive and vulnerable you become like those people who are too easily influenced by the television. Even somebody who doesn't have a television at home and never watches it is influenced by television indirectly because they are influenced by the people who watch television unless of course they belong to a strong social network of like minded people.
Well that's how I've been for the past few years' til I realised that even though I watch mainly BBC programmes it's been zapping my brain and not worth it. Even if you watch only worth documentaries and plays the electo magnetic stress affects your health.
My happiest times at home in the evenings was during the power cuts of the 1970's when we would light candles and play cards and one summer when visiting my nan and the television broke down. We had proper conversations then with everyone listening to each other fully. I feel like a TV orphan. I think though my mother would use television as a way to keep my father off her back with his emotional demands and tendency to bully and quarrel.
I hardly watched television in the eighties and found myself out of step with what was going on. I relied on the radio and newspapers instead. I couldn't understand office politics and was very naive not knowing what was really going on and how to defend myself against it. Some people were cruel and manipulative towards me because they picked up on this. I then started to use television particularly soaps and comedy to try and find examples of standing up to people. Television opens your mind up to the people around you and why they think and behave like they do which is influenced by television in the first place. It's almost like a case of you can't beat them so you might as well join them. On the other hand as you become less naive and vulnerable you become like those people who are too easily influenced by the television. Even somebody who doesn't have a television at home and never watches it is influenced by television indirectly because they are influenced by the people who watch television unless of course they belong to a strong social network of like minded people.
Well that's how I've been for the past few years' til I realised that even though I watch mainly BBC programmes it's been zapping my brain and not worth it. Even if you watch only worth documentaries and plays the electo magnetic stress affects your health.