Tale-O'-Vision

I think most people just don't understand what "TV" really is....
Television is tool that we have adopted in place of the campfire. The campfire was the place in the evening which human beings all gathered around to converse, to settle down after eating and to muse about fact, fiction, dreams and news with each other before going to sleep and starting their new day. The community revolved around the campfire. It's where the heat and light was, where the food was, and subsequently, where the people were.

When we stopped living outside, the campfire most moved indoors to the living room or the kitchen....which is where we kept our fireplaces. Once Television came about, it slowly replaced the fires in our home but it's attributes were the same. It is where we gathered together to talk about fact and fiction, news, dreams and we watched and shared the common experience of stories with it. Now, with television, we could share stories with many people. A shared reality occurred as a DIRECT RESULT of our common experience in hearing a story on television.

As technology marched on, the attributes of television further mimicked it's campfire roots. Men who wanted to show their success bought televisions which were larger and larger. Very much like the old days when they would demonstrate their awesomeness by having the biggest campfires. Larger campfires/televisions meant more people would gather there and pay homage to the owner. This wound up being an attribute to masculinity. (because size matters) A large fire/set indicated a good provider.

So what was originally fine and good for everyone was eventually corrupted by those who began to see that they could manipulate people gathering around the televisions. They began to tell stories in such a way as to make people feel a certain way, and that's when television became a tool to manipulate those who didn't spot their own vulnerability to the stories that they were being told.

For some of us, A large TV is still a beautiful thing. It's a tool used to share stories about human experience. We watch and listen to the stories and we learn what we can from the vicarious experience of other human beings without having to actually experience the hardship we witness in our own lives. When it is over, we can walk away unscathed, but perhaps more experienced. But we are the people who have eliminated the televisions ability to sell us something by not subscribing to pay broadcast services or the "free" programming which fills our homes with the noise pollution of corporate pitchmen.

But even our limited exposure to the television is still something to be guarded about. Productions are so encompassing these days as to create a visceral experience, a peek into another world, and if we aren't careful, we can lose ourselves in the fantasy of that world. It's now more important than ever to remind ourselves, that this stuff is "just entertainment".

Of course, we can still learn useful things from the stories of fiction, because they are mostly all stories about the human condition, but we should always remind mindful that reality is right out that front door.