Kill your TV
I want to quote something from Theodore Dalrymple
(it's a pen name--his real name is Anthony Daniels), a British psychiatrist and
social commentator. He spends much of his time treating prisoners in London and
has closely observed the British underclass and its pathologies. You can read
the full article in The
Spectator (UK), but here's I think a particularly profound
observation:
In the modern world, the availability, indeed ubiquity, of entertainment is the most potent cause of boredom. It causes boredom because the world cannot ever be as fast-moving or dramatic as audiovisual entertainment, and for most of the time interest has to be extracted from the world rather than merely absorbed from it passively. Hence the more people with vacant minds seek distraction by entertainment, the more bored they grow; and bored people create chaos in their lives because intense misery is preferable to ennui. I have long thought that much social pathology is an attempt to evade boredom by the propagation of violent crises; and, since television causes boredom, it thereby causes social pathology.
I recall reading a study done in South Africa, which had no television broadcasts until the 60's, that the introduction of TV coincided with a substantial increase in violent crime. This despite the fact that TV was heavily censored, so it is doubtful that the particular nature of the programming was to blame. People have of course speculated as to why television and violent behavior should be correlated, but I think that Dalrymple has isolated an overlooked factor which seems pretty compelling to me. Having gone cold turkey myself (when the cable company finally unplugged the live connection to my apartment which I wasn't paying for) I can say that it is a lot easier to get bored without the idiot box, especially when I'm alone. I've even had to resort to (gasp!) reading books, and writing the occasional blog. There really is something about TV that programs you to take in, and expect, a huge flux of information at an ever increasing rate. Like video games which move ever faster as we adapt ourselves to evaluate and react more quickly, TV (and film) has taken on the MTV style of jerky cameras, quick cuts, and dizzying edits. Amazingly we accept this and even manage to process it--a true miracle of the capacity of the human brain.
Then there is real life which so often hardly moves at all. For an educated person, there are of course alternatives. Work, which usually is in doors and requires no heavy lifting. Books or hobbies are others. The educated person has the ability to occupy themselves with interesting things, but what about the uneducated, or perhaps more precisely the willfully uneducated? When you know very little, you don't know what to do with yourself; your world is very small. How many violent crimes started out because "me and the boys were hanging out with nothing to do so we decided to ..."? The thrills of crime, particularly violent crime, satisfy that need to cure boredom. The frustration of boredom must be incendiary. Our entertainment--TV, video games, popular music, etc.--has conditioned us to observe at a uselessly fast rate, which might ironically be good for some, like the work-o-holic, but is disastrous for others. Lacking the ability to discipline themselves, the uneducated are constantly bored. They either drown themselves in ever more entertainment or create trouble. It is an interesting idea, and one that poses many challenges. If true, I don't know what the solution could be.
By the way, if you are interested in the rest of the article, Dalrymple goes on to discuss how the British underclass is absorbing much of the worst aspects of Americana (from the predominantly American TV shows), to the point of using American words instead of British (e.g. high school), without the corresponding positives of American culture. He believes that Americans compensate for their boredom by constantly striving for personal improvement and lets face it, making a buck, whereas the British, particularly the underclass, are socialist. They look to the government to provide and don't value individual achievement as much. Interesting cultural comparison. I wonder how well it might apply to our own underclass.
In the modern world, the availability, indeed ubiquity, of entertainment is the most potent cause of boredom. It causes boredom because the world cannot ever be as fast-moving or dramatic as audiovisual entertainment, and for most of the time interest has to be extracted from the world rather than merely absorbed from it passively. Hence the more people with vacant minds seek distraction by entertainment, the more bored they grow; and bored people create chaos in their lives because intense misery is preferable to ennui. I have long thought that much social pathology is an attempt to evade boredom by the propagation of violent crises; and, since television causes boredom, it thereby causes social pathology.
I recall reading a study done in South Africa, which had no television broadcasts until the 60's, that the introduction of TV coincided with a substantial increase in violent crime. This despite the fact that TV was heavily censored, so it is doubtful that the particular nature of the programming was to blame. People have of course speculated as to why television and violent behavior should be correlated, but I think that Dalrymple has isolated an overlooked factor which seems pretty compelling to me. Having gone cold turkey myself (when the cable company finally unplugged the live connection to my apartment which I wasn't paying for) I can say that it is a lot easier to get bored without the idiot box, especially when I'm alone. I've even had to resort to (gasp!) reading books, and writing the occasional blog. There really is something about TV that programs you to take in, and expect, a huge flux of information at an ever increasing rate. Like video games which move ever faster as we adapt ourselves to evaluate and react more quickly, TV (and film) has taken on the MTV style of jerky cameras, quick cuts, and dizzying edits. Amazingly we accept this and even manage to process it--a true miracle of the capacity of the human brain.
Then there is real life which so often hardly moves at all. For an educated person, there are of course alternatives. Work, which usually is in doors and requires no heavy lifting. Books or hobbies are others. The educated person has the ability to occupy themselves with interesting things, but what about the uneducated, or perhaps more precisely the willfully uneducated? When you know very little, you don't know what to do with yourself; your world is very small. How many violent crimes started out because "me and the boys were hanging out with nothing to do so we decided to ..."? The thrills of crime, particularly violent crime, satisfy that need to cure boredom. The frustration of boredom must be incendiary. Our entertainment--TV, video games, popular music, etc.--has conditioned us to observe at a uselessly fast rate, which might ironically be good for some, like the work-o-holic, but is disastrous for others. Lacking the ability to discipline themselves, the uneducated are constantly bored. They either drown themselves in ever more entertainment or create trouble. It is an interesting idea, and one that poses many challenges. If true, I don't know what the solution could be.
By the way, if you are interested in the rest of the article, Dalrymple goes on to discuss how the British underclass is absorbing much of the worst aspects of Americana (from the predominantly American TV shows), to the point of using American words instead of British (e.g. high school), without the corresponding positives of American culture. He believes that Americans compensate for their boredom by constantly striving for personal improvement and lets face it, making a buck, whereas the British, particularly the underclass, are socialist. They look to the government to provide and don't value individual achievement as much. Interesting cultural comparison. I wonder how well it might apply to our own underclass.
Posted: Fri - November 21, 2003 at 09:55 PM
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Published On: Nov 21, 2003 10:13 PM
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Published On: Nov 21, 2003 10:13 PM