In my last article, The TV Will Never Be Happy, I overviewed some of the ways that television programming is used to manipulate perception. This article dives a little deeper into one aspect of manipulation.
Television
often uses an emotional state of ill-defined and frequently-shifting
boundaries to manipulate your perceptions and thus your behaviors.
By the end of this article you will understand what this means and
how to guard against it.
Emotional State
It's
not news to say that television generally relies on creating and
sustaining an emotional state. It requires less effort than
dispassionate thinking, it complements the passive experience of
watching television, and it suits our use of TV as a method of
relaxation and entertainment.
The
emotional nature of TV programming is the result, the cause, and the
complement of its audience's nature.
Even
if producers were good-hearted chaps they would have to use
emotionalism just to keep eyes on their own channels instead of
defecting to other channels – and they're not good-hearted chaps.
Shifting Boundaries
Because
TV is consumed as a passive, emotional experience, viewers rarely
enforce their own rigorous boundaries on the content. What are we
talking about? What is the desired end goal? How is progress
measured? These are not explicitly defined and viewers are unlikely
to notice when they shift from one day to the next.
The
content producers need not say “this is the topic and these are the
points.” Rather, content is pushed out without explicit
boundaries, leaving viewers to subconsciously piece it together for
themselves – an emergent process. Because the boundaries are
emergent and not specified they can be shifted and rewritten by
pushing out something a little new and a little different, which
viewers will subconsciously assimilate into a new emergent framework
just as they did for the framework that it replaced.
Done
once, this is an event. Done for a while, it is a habit. Such a
habit weakens individuals and defines the societies they compose.
People who do not practice critical thinking result in a society that
does not even know what critical thinking is.
Some Solutions
Since
TV programming will not provide an explicit framework or adhere to it
if provided, the viewer must do this himself.
Decide
what you want to know and judge content on its utility to that
purpose. Do not permit programming to distract you from your agenda.
Find
contrary coverage that arouses questions and conflict with the
original programming.
Better
yet, build a lifestyle that avoids the passive reception of media
programming. The vast majority of it is at best irrelevant to a
happy life anyway, so why invite it in?
The Danger
Not
only does TV give you the answers all packaged up with a saccharine
bow, it first gives you the questions which it proceeds to answer.
This is done by experienced experts and tested on other audiences
long before it reaches your screen, meaning that what you see has
already been preselected for the easy consumption of several audience
groups – and you are likely among them.
Don't
overestimate your ability to see the emergent boundaries of the
programming. Perceiving our own biases and assumptions is a
difficult and intermittent feat that rarely gives pleasure. After
all, each man's biases are the remainders after everything uncomfortable enough to be noticed has already been filtered away.
Conclusion
The
goal here is to stay in your lane – a route you determine towards
the destination of your choice. Television and other forms of media
will never stop attempting to wrestle the wheel away from you in
order to reach a different destination (or just cause you to burn
precious fuel and time going in circles). Don't let it. Stay in
your lane, hold media sources accountable, and never be afraid to
throw them out for not serving you.
You
are in charge, after all.
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