More on television

[C. Harald Koch]

[ This is in response to the "no really, TV isn't that bad" sub-thread. TV
  *is* bad for you. But I still watch it >:]

From: Anna White <inbalance@newdream.org>
To: "'conversation@newdream.org'" <conversation@newdream.org>
Subject: The disturbing truth about TV--Peter Saint James
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 15:52:56 -0400
Organization: Center for a New American Dream


From: Peter Saint James <peterstj@ix.netcom.com>


It surprises me that the following fact has not come up in this discussion
yet.  Is this not well known?
	
Within 30 seconds of beginning to watch television, a person's brainwaves
change. Instead of beta waves, which indicate alert, conscious attention,
the brain produces alpha waves.  This indicates a brain unfocused, overly
receptive, daydreaming, or--hypnotized.  

A tv viewer's left brain, which processes information logically and
analytically, turns off.  The right brain, which encounrters input
emotionally and noncritically is left on its own with no restraint or
guidance.

The medium, not the content, produce the change.  No matter what is
watched, the effect is the same and universal.  
	
Television does not deliver information to an alert mind.  This is purely
impossible.  It cannot be done.

Television hypnotizes viewers.  It does so very effectively.  

This means that much of what the television industry claims about the
medium is false.  People do not distinguish between right and wrong on
television, they do not distinguish between fantasy and reality.  That part
of their brain is not functioning.  

This makes television a mind control device or a drug delivery system.
It is not nor could it every be a communication medium that gives
information to rational minds.  It puts rational minds asleep.

Advertisers and politicians use this fact extremely well.  

Commercial are not designed to sell an item to viewers.  They are designed
to implant suggestions and create moods which people act on when
confronting the product.

Some of the best documented political examples were in the 1980 and 1984
presidential elections.  Studies show that millions of people voted for a
candidate they disagreed with.  Imagine what some latter-day Adolph Hitler
could do with such a medium.   

Some suggest that's what has happened now with things like the war in the
Balkans.  Were people getting their information from print media, they
might be far more outraged at it.  They could more easily see the
inconsistencies.
	
For those not familiar with these facts about how television affects the
mind, they are fairly well documented and discussed.  You can find more
information in the work of Herbert Krugman, who discovered this phenomenon
in 1969.  I believe the book "The Perfect Machine" by Joyce Nelson covers
this, as well as many others.

			Peter Saint James




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