Even though I haven't had cable in 8 years, I haven't owned a television at all for the last year, and I haven't watched the news for 8 years,
I can still tell who watches it in my social media feed. They all become like a herd in my feed, all mentioning the same event, buzz word, usually centered around petty bickering between sociopaths (politicians), and obsessing over the details of a stranger's life.
I also see everyone at once react in empathy to perceived injustices. But even that is a double-edged sword, my friends, for many of us know what it's like to have others mis-judge us because they got fed lies or distortions.
And all I can think is,
What a powerful tool the media is, to get millions of free-willed human beings at ONCE to CHOOSE to spend their valuable, limited life energy, turning and responding to something that 99% of the time does not directly relate to the every day physical, mental, and emotional needs of their family, friends, or themselves.
All the things you could be doing, I could have been doing, and with one broadcast, millions of people lose an hour of their energy to watching some people talk about some other people, mostly in an untrue, fabricated or distorted manner. Millions of people in one moment, watching the same thing, and it doesn't lift up, it doesn't improve them, it doesn't inspire them. Most of the time, not all, but most... it builds walls, fear, anger, division, and distorts and obfuscates reality.
And I didn't know how much it did until I turned it off for a long time.
My life has only improved, and my mental clarity and emotional and physical growth has only improved... by leaving behind a facade, a bubble, a fear addiction, a drama addiction, and a lie that does not tell you about the real world the way so many assumed it did.
It is a known observation that the humans on earth who have been the MOST traveled (not just landed in different places, but spend time and life absorbing many different kinds of culture), are known for having the deepest and most abiding trust in their fellow man, the 'average' person. They've had to rely on them a lot, from all walks of life, different languages and cultures, and got to see how much most of us have in common.
Culture, real human history, human relationships and how they work... you won't find these things in school or in the news. Entertainment and 'media' (duh, look at the word MEDIA) is not experience, it is the vicarious experience. Entertainment is not the devil, but what television has always been and has tended to do is not wholesome or good... and what good it provides has its place, I've come to learn.
Your mind is a powerful thing, but it is a muscle like anything else. It will only atrophe and decay if you don't BUILD IT UP. You have to give it food, to challenge it, and from this you build the foundations of an ever curious mind that is always learning and growing.
I didn't know this once, but now I do: We live in a world with a lot of things that will DESTROY your inner curiosity -- the inner part of you, that was there when you were a child, which you were never meant to lose. Study the lives, actions and words of intelligent, or accomplished or very skilled people and they all will exhibit an intense level of curiosity about SOME or MANY MANY things. They don't "get bored" and don't understand what boredom really is.
I remember the one time I almost developed a concept of boredom and it was sad, and scary to me. It was when I was a teenager, having developed bad habits like playing more video games than I was playing tag outdoors, and eating more sugar and starch, and drinking acidic poisons like soda. I became over-entertained from so much screen time that I felt tired at just getting up to play or live life, and I felt a lulling draw to just SIT. To just SIT and WATCH and absorb something mindless.
Boredom didn't exist in our language til recently, that word was never a concept before entertainment. Watch very closely, the difference between those who are constantly in front of a television and those who are building relationships in life, being outside, in the real world, in nature. Watch closely, if you can, the difference between versions of yourself. Some of us have never known the luxuries and dark draw of modern entertainment and media and that is probably a better thing for you. I have had to re-awaken my inner child over the course of years, after media, entertainment, school and routine nearly killed it. I fought for it though, I left behind the desk job world and got serious about building my body up and understanding optimal living (how I should eat and drink for the best energy and health all around).
Some of you have fought for it too, and I'm here to say you absolutely still can if you haven't consciously noticed it yet or haven't fought for it.
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If you aren't conscious about what goes into your mind and what you consume through your senses as well as your food, SOME ONE ELSE is doing that for you even if it's coming indirectly from a myriad of influences. You are always being "programmed" in many ways, since the brain is an automatic processor of information...
...the important question is, what or who is doing the programming?