Who or What Demands Your Time, Energy, or Focus? Who or What Programs You?
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Even though I haven't had cable in 8 years, I haven't owned a television at all for the last year, and I haven't watched the news for 8 years,
I can still tell who watches it in my social media feed. They all become like a herd in my feed, all mentioning the same event, buzz word, usually centered around petty bickering between sociopaths (politicians), and obsessing over the details of a stranger's life.
I also see everyone at once react in empathy to perceived injustices. But even that is a double-edged sword, my friends, for many of us know what it's like to have others mis-judge us because they got fed lies or distortions.
And all I can think is,
What a powerful tool the media is, to get millions of free-willed human beings at ONCE to CHOOSE to spend their valuable, limited life energy, turning and responding to something that 99% of the time does not directly relate to the every day physical, mental, and emotional needs of their family, friends, or themselves.
All the things you could be doing, I could have been doing, and with one broadcast, millions of people lose an hour of their energy to watching some people talk about some other people, mostly in an untrue, fabricated or distorted manner. Millions of people in one moment, watching the same thing, and it doesn't lift up, it doesn't improve them, it doesn't inspire them. Most of the time, not all, but most... it builds walls, fear, anger, division, and distorts and obfuscates reality.
And I didn't know how much it did until I turned it off for a long time.
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My life has only improved, and my mental clarity and emotional and physical growth has only improved... by leaving behind a facade, a bubble, a fear addiction, a drama addiction, and a lie that does not tell you about the real world the way so many assumed it did.
It is a known observation that the humans on earth who have been the MOST traveled (not just landed in different places, but spend time and life absorbing many different kinds of culture), are known for having the deepest and most abiding trust in their fellow man, the 'average' person. They've had to rely on them a lot, from all walks of life, different languages and cultures, and got to see how much most of us have in common.
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Culture, real human history, human relationships and how they work... you won't find these things in school or in the news. Entertainment and 'media' (duh, look at the word MEDIA) is not experience, it is the vicarious experience. Entertainment is not the devil, but what television has always been and has tended to do is not wholesome or good... and what good it provides has its place, I've come to learn.
Your mind is a powerful thing, but it is a muscle like anything else. It will only atrophe and decay if you don't BUILD IT UP. You have to give it food, to challenge it, and from this you build the foundations of an ever curious mind that is always learning and growing.
I didn't know this once, but now I do: We live in a world with a lot of things that will DESTROY your inner curiosity -- the inner part of you, that was there when you were a child, which you were never meant to lose. Study the lives, actions and words of intelligent, or accomplished or very skilled people and they all will exhibit an intense level of curiosity about SOME or MANY MANY things. They don't "get bored" and don't understand what boredom really is.
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I remember the one time I almost developed a concept of boredom and it was sad, and scary to me. It was when I was a teenager, having developed bad habits like playing more video games than I was playing tag outdoors, and eating more sugar and starch, and drinking acidic poisons like soda. I became over-entertained from so much screen time that I felt tired at just getting up to play or live life, and I felt a lulling draw to just SIT. To just SIT and WATCH and absorb something mindless.
Boredom didn't exist in our language til recently, that word was never a concept before entertainment. Watch very closely, the difference between those who are constantly in front of a television and those who are building relationships in life, being outside, in the real world, in nature. Watch closely, if you can, the difference between versions of yourself. Some of us have never known the luxuries and dark draw of modern entertainment and media and that is probably a better thing for you. I have had to re-awaken my inner child over the course of years, after media, entertainment, school and routine nearly killed it. I fought for it though, I left behind the desk job world and got serious about building my body up and understanding optimal living (how I should eat and drink for the best energy and health all around).
Some of you have fought for it too, and I'm here to say you absolutely still can if you haven't consciously noticed it yet or haven't fought for it.
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If you aren't conscious about what goes into your mind and what you consume through your senses as well as your food, SOME ONE ELSE is doing that for you even if it's coming indirectly from a myriad of influences. You are always being "programmed" in many ways, since the brain is an automatic processor of information...
...the important question is, what or who is doing the programming?
I bought a tv, in 1987, put it storage, gave it to my mom and then sold it in a yard sale in 1994.
I bought another one in 2014 so I could watch dvds. I watched them all put it back in the box and then sold it in 2015.
Every time I go to the gym (Gold's) I bitch at them about all of the tvs because it is suppose to be a health club and not an indoctrination center.
Namaste
xose
folow upvote and comment done
plz back dude, thanks
Quit watching TV in 1997. Wait until 20 years have elapsed since you sat glued to that screen.
I cannot watch TV at all any longer. Sometimes when I travel or house sit for someone I'll turn on the TV. I'm actually shocked by it, by how vapid and tawdry and insulting it is, especially the advertising. I'll flip through the literally hundreds of channels, perhaps settling on an old or new movie, but I often have a very hard time paying attention, can't follow it and don't really know what's going on. I'm not really watching it.
And the absurdity and gall of television is that they don't even attempt to lie about what they're doing to you. What you watch are television programs. They call these TV programs television programming. It's right there in front of you and nobody sees it. It's freaking insane!
You're right. People who watch TV all have that common world that they can talk about and waste their precious minds delving into. It's not an accident. This is a total immersion brainwashing technique. Television says, "Hey, look over here," while the insidious stuff we should be paying attention to goes on behind the curtains.
Sometimes I feel like the guy in the movie, They Live who puts on the sunglasses and can then see the aliens and their agenda all around him. It's scary.
I love it! Very well written. I entirely agree. Keep up the great work! :-)
Upvote, miss ya, we should talk :)
Totally. You may also like to read the book Propaganda by Edward Bernays, it is totally and eye opener.
So many truths in this article.
I turned off my television about 4 years ago and when I happen to be in a public place where there is one turned on it's so unbelievably retarded I can hardly fathom that people actually pay for these mind control devices and subscribe to pay televsion. Life is so much better without it.
xose
folow upvote and comment done
plz back dude, thanks
After over 15 years without TV, I can honestly say I am amazed at the malleability of people that revel in their indoctrination.
I can see that being a member of a group that works together is not only potentially useful, but emotionally rewarding. What I can't see is how such a basic and profitable biological function can be so clearly toxic, trapping people in such twaddle and vapidity that they abandon self esteem, and any hope for better from life.
I just don't get it.
Thanks!
Agreed, 100%
xose
folow upvote and comment done
plz back dude, thanks
i couldn't agree more.
Nice to hear it articulated so well.
i especially related to this:
"It is a known observation that the humans on earth who have been the MOST traveled (not just landed in different places, but spend time and life absorbing many different kinds of culture), are known for having the deepest and most abiding trust in their fellow man, the 'average' person. They've had to rely on them a lot, from all walks of life, different languages and cultures, and got to see how much most of us have in common."
It would be wonderful if everyone understood the value in that, but media also has 'programmed' many mainstream Americans to believe this is the place to be and there is no need to go and visit "scary" other countries. i just returned from India and had one of the most powerful times of my life, almost died a few times and was cared for by the kindest anonymous beings. i highly recommend international travel for exactly this reason.
"Television could be a terrific value for human purposes. It could help bring world peace, but it is not used that way. There is too much violence, too much crime. People are hypnotized by it. They look at it all the time. It's contaminating our society." —Vladimir Zworykin, Russian-born inventor of the television, Feb. 24, 1975