From: Peshewegunzh <beaver.cs.washington.edu!gnosys!mthvax.cs.miami.edu!mamia!peshe>
Subject: RE: Northern Exposure
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:42:10 GMT

Original-Sender: Peshewegunzh <mthvax.cs.miami.edu!mamia!peshe>

>
> Original-Sender: Patrick Maun <AWIUNI11.EDVZ.UNIVIE.AC.AT!R5321GAB>
>
> TV, video etc aren't just
> going to go away. You can't force your kids not to watch it.
> I really don't think you can make MTV go away. Instead
> of wasting energy trying to do so, spend some of that energy creating
> media for minorities. One possibility is that of cable access television.
> Cable access are channels set aside for the viewing public (this is only in
> the U.S. as far as I know).

First of all, that is not entirely correct. True, in the current European
culture, family and spiritual values are almost irrelevant, and hold
very little power over people engaged in worship of materialism. Technology
as an answer is simply the belief that there is a materialistic solution to
every problem. Thus, from such a perspective, that person has difficulty
perceiving outside such a limited cultural milieu. However, I have found that
you can "force" your children not to watch it, as well as yourself. This does
not produce an overwhelming urge to watch it however, because they are
taught and understand for themselves why it almost intrinsically robs
them of a sense of reality and their self identity.

The TV culture is so pervasive (I hate to say "deep" when it is so shallow)
that it is difficult for people who have most of their "experiences" through
it to understand that it is not real, but an illusion.

When one walks through the forest, one is surrounded by spirit on all sides.
A TV program about the forest, however, will have none of the spirit
present, only a series of unliving still photographic images technologically
sequenced.  Technology cannot capture life. It is no wonder that for those who
"experience" through a electron dot across a phosphor glass tube, a blindness
to the fullness of reality becomes the norm. Virtual reality may one day give
the complete illusion of an open universe where anything can happen with only
changeable, programmable results, but that is not the one that we actually
live in. If this is not well understood before we reach that point with less
convincing technologies like TV, then there is likely to be disaster as
large masses of people base their actions on essentially schizophrenic visions
with little connection to the real world.

Someone else mentioned that rainforest tribes are using camcorders. It would
be naive to assume that this does not constitute a cultural attack in absence
of answers to some questions: who pays for the recorders or maintains them? If
the tribe has been forced to participate in the economic system of the Europeans
then its culture has already been compromised, as it becomes oriented towards
the "job mentality" of paychecks. If they have been donated and maintained by
someone outside, then has the tribe in some way been made dependent on those
outsiders, another compromise? Does the tribe, like an advertiser, begin to
have to consider the effect on the consumer, those whom they must convince
and thus even entertain?

--
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Peshewegunzh

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