TURN OFF YOUR TV!!- How Television Fuels The Class War

[Orwellian_Ghost]

I'm watching TV, But I find it hard to stay conscious
I'm totally bored, But I can't switch off

Only apathy from the pills in me, It's all in me, all in you
Electricity from the pills in me, It's all in me, all in you
Only MTV, cult philosophy

We're lost in the mall, Shuffling through the stores like zombies
What is the point?
What can money buy?

-- Porcupine Tree in the song Anesthetize from the album Fear Of A Blank Planet



The struggle between social classes, wealth vs. poverty, has overshadowed nearly every event in human history. Kings ruling over peasants has been the way societies have functioned for nearly all of recorded human history. "Human society has always consisted of masters and slaves, and the slaves have always been and are today, the foundation stones of the social fabric," spoke Socialist Eugene V. Debs in 1904. "Since the race was young there have been class struggles. In every state of society, ancient and modern, labor has been exploited, degraded and in subjection." The United States Government threw Debs into prison in 1918 for his comments opposing World War I and defining the class war in America. Times have changed and today the class war is highlighted every night on TV screens throughout North America and the world.

Whether we like it or not (and I don't) the medium of television has the capacity to shape society. "Television influences human behavior because their are 'routes' or mechanisms whereby the content of television can have an effect on what we do, and on how we act," explains John Condry in the book The Psychology of Television. "Part of television's influence comes about because of how we learn (by observation and imitation), because of how we respond to certain kinds of story material (arousal/desensitization), and because of the structure of our inhibitions and the way television provides the kind of stimulation necessary to release them (disinhibition)."



Television, actually serves two functions in the class war of today. Television not only fuels the class war - it is also used as a weapon of the rich. Television (and other forms of mass-market advertising) reaches into nearly every household and business in the modern world. Because TV is such a simplistic medium, its messages are reduced to quick phrases and short 'sound-bites.' Complex ideas are anathema to a medium best suited for brief verbal exchanges, cartoons and constant gunfire. Academic concepts such as freedom, slavery, capitalism and socialism are treated lightly and quickly: freedom = good; slavery = bad; capitalism = good; socialism = bad. Television works to shape conventional wisdom and blur complex ideas into bite-size McNuggets™.



At its core, TV is an advertising box. Through endless commercials, product placement and TV show sponsorships, companies utilize the hypnotic power of television to project their vision of the ultimate consumerist society.



http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/commentary/classwar/classwar.htm

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

1. It has also conditioned you to fight, go to war and hate.

[Thepricebreaker]

2. .. no thanks.. I have HD-TV and I LOVE it..

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Yesterday I found myself watching an OLD PBS program, since

there was nothing on. Once you stop watching for any length of time you do find that it is mostly pablum... though yours is pretty pablum

:-)

[nolabels]

10. Got the 60" with the 1080i

I only watch sports and DVD movies on weekend with it, but sure looks and works good for that stuff.

[Occulus]

11. 50" 1080p here

I actually use it as a TV fairly rarely. It's mostly my primary PC display device :D

[Berry Cool]

4. TV is a tool, neither good nor bad in and of itself.

Yes, it's there to sell you stuff. But no one is making you buy.

If you watch it, you can choose what to watch and not watch. It's really not that hard. You don't have to accept any messages you don't want to. And when you don't want to watch it, you can turn it off and go do something else. Easy.

[seemslikeadream]

5. .....

[scarletwoman]

6. I don't think TV "fuels" the Class War, it's a tool that facilitates the control over the rest of us

by the Ruling Class.

It's the perfect tool for conning people into cooperating with their own oppression.

sw

[snot]

7. Pls run don't walk to see Century of the Self --

it will add a whole new dimension to your understanding of the problem, I think. There are 4 parts, on Google video.

Another must-see, if you haven't already, is Manufacturing Consent featuring Noam Chomsky.

See also the recent article in The New Yorker. Links to all of the foregoing at http://c-cyte.blogspot.com/2008/01/must-see-century-of-self-by-adam-curtis.html .

TV is the premier instrument for brainwashing/pacifying us, for transforming us from active citizens into passive consumers.

The less you watch, the better off you are.

[cutlassmama]

17. SO, so glad I turned mine off a couple of years ago.

Now it's only the net or documentary videos for me

[tech3149]

8. For those who haven't heard Alternative Radio

I recommend you listen to a presentation by Sut Jhally "How TV exploits its audience". He presents a very good argument that can be distilled into one simple question. How does commercial media pay its bills? It doesn't take a brilliant mind to realize that the interest of the broadcasters is best served (as a commercial entity)by pleasing or not displeasing those who pay the bills. It seem ironic that as I type this, "Ring of Fire" is doing an interview with Susan Jacoby about her latest book. I loved the closing line, "reading is spinach, the internet is dessert". I would add that TV is a Twinkie laced with Valium.

[EVDebs]

9. And don't dare peacefully assemble and protest or dissent, or else

The Pentagon's Ray Gun
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/29/60minutes/main3891865.shtml

will be used domestically. I thought posse commitatus and the Constitution prevailed, but just in case, Shrub and the military will decide to do domestic "Milgram Experiments" as case studies in crowd control !

Milgram Experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

[otherlander]

12. It depends what you watch.

What I watch on television:
Countdown
The animal planet show about chimpanzees
Various anime shows
Nature documentaries
That one show on the food network where they make fancy cakes

About the kings-always-ruling-society thing... Societies with hierarchies & a division of labor produced more food & weapons than early tribal societies w/out hierarchies, so they were able to conquer them. I'm not trying to promote a return to tribal society, but it would have been interesting to see what some of them would have evolved into if they hadn't been conquered by the hierarchal type of society which now controls almost the entire population of the world.
:shrug:

[mike_c]

13. television is the most effective form of mind control ever invented IMO....

I've discussed this at length already, and it's late, so I'll just leave it at that. Turn off your TV if you haven't already. Yes it's entertaining, at least sometime, but there are much better ways to entertain ourselves. Turn it off.

[margotb822]

14. I will agree that it's an advertising medium

But, it's all about what you choose to watch. I don't watch most of the crap on network tv (people subjecting themselves to endless embarrassment for money), but I love Discovery, History, NatGeo, Comedy, Sports, etc. There are a lot of great things out there, you just have to be discerning.

[Whisp]

15. TV, the opium for the asses.

there's nothing of much worth on it, donkeys.
the only reason I have it is to spit on 24 hour news shows and have a barometer on how bad things are going against us lowers. most everything is a commercial of some sort. or to razor edged ice cream scoop whatever 'bad' thoughts you may have in your skull.

[tom_paine]

16. K & R

[blindpig]

18. Television is not a neutral technology

We need to understand how technology affects the whole system. Although we may find computers to be very helpful, or television to be entertaining, or cars able to move us rapidly where we need to go, these things also have serious effects on the environment, on the speed of life, on the way we think, on how we view ourselves, on how we react with nature, and on how power changes in the system. All of these are systemic changes; they are things that happen in the system as a whole.

It's not enough for us to say that cars are great because they will drive us someplace. Cars speed up life, they make oil wars happen, they create terrible waste problems, they require a lot of pavement, and they kill people. So you have to ask a series of systemic questions before you can make a judgment about whether cars are good. The same goes for computers, for TV, and for every technology.

http://www.frictionmagazine.com/politik/wave_makers/mander.asp

[KharmaTrain]

19. Controll Your TV...

Ignoring the corporate media is what caused Progressives and Liberals many of the problems we face today. By dimissing the propaganda and taking the moral high-ground allowed the right wing and the corporations to generate memes that served their interest while demonizing those who dared to question.

As the old proverb says..."keep your friends close, you enemies closer". It's been valuable to pay close scrutiny to what comes out of the TV, radio and from our corporate media and "popular culture". It's helped in gaining our voices and to refute the lies. Ignoring the corporate media with no alternative to offer is biting your nose to spite your face.

I control what I see and made it a point when my children were growing up to make them aware of the powers that be behind their favorite TV shows. They learned that just cause it's on the tube, doesn't mean it's true...and if anything, could be spun for someone's profit. The media needs to be watched, scrutinized, criticized as needed and applauded when, in the rare instances, it presents the truth.

Now you can avoid advertisers...such as I do...those that throw tons of money on advertising that could go into lower prices or higher wages. If the control of the airwaves and the profit motive changes, so will what we see and hear.

[blindpig]

20. It's not just the advertising

though the ads are the main point. The content is often insidious, be it product placement or reinforcement of classist attitudes.

Even apparently innocent programming can have an insidious effect. Nature programming, for example, is no substitute for direct experience of nature. Better to go out in the yard and watch bugs than to zone out on the lions of the Serengitti.

The thing about tv is that it is not direct experience yet it replaces that experience in our minds.

[KharmaTrain]

21. It Also Augments...

I agree that TV can't replace the real world...and that there are those who succumb to the escape into the tube and base their worldview on that...but I would venture to say that's not the case in these environs.

As one from the original TV generation, I've seen the medium go from basic to complext...from black and white to digital...and, if anything, it's added to my enjoyment and curiosity of the real world. It's given me a guide to explore the real world and as its become more sophisticated in what it shows, so does my curiosity.

Better to know about the Lions of the Sarenghetti or the Whooping Cranes of Wisconsin and other parts of nature as it's highten awareness of their plight and television has opened their world to millions. Yes, there is television that is exploitive and our culture will suck up the fantasy over the reality...it's still a broad brush to condemn that video invader as all evil...as with all technology, it's how it's used that makes it of value.

Cheers...

[Zorra]

22. Kicked and highly recommended. Kill your television. n/t

[Echo In Light]

23. Brainwashing device