[Mb-civic] "Evil" Imprint

[Barbara Siomos]

Excellent piece Ian..... So basic yet true, IF only parents could view the TV with their children...  While I was living on 88th St. in NYC there was a Psychiatrist living across the street with his wife and three children and the children were not allowed to watch TV except for an hour at a time WITH their parents, at the time (about 1970) I thought it was cruel... But thinking back on it now I realize how kind, thoughtful and gracious these children were, a couple of them used to baby sit for my son as a baby (born 1971).

At any rate this article is very meaningful and thank you for sending.

peace,
barbara

-----Original Message-----
From: Ian
Sent: Tue, 10 May 2005 16:48:33 -0700
To: Civic
Subject: [Mb-civic] "Evil" Imprint

All:

I came across this going through some old papers.  It is a few years old, and I don't know the origin of it, but I thought it was still relevant.  You may want to pass it along.

Peace.

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EVIL IMPRINT

 

The nation agonizes over the crescendo of violence and mayhem committed by our young.  A young boy is garroted by another.  School shootings pass as the norm: one out of five children in high school packs a loaded gun; metal detectors are now used routinely.  A boy burns down a house with his little sister inside.  Why?

 

Many have lashed out at the TV industry, claiming that it is programming too much violence, on the theory that TV violence directly engenders actual violence.

 

But is that, in fact, so?  Perhaps.  However, the connection between violent programming and the real thing is at best tenuous.  In fact, it may not be the violent subject matter on TV but the TV set itself - by interposing itself between the young and the parents - that is the primary means by which TV exerts its extraordinary influence, and alters the psyche of the young to create violent attitudes.  Only by doing this can the imposition of violent themes on TV - or from other sources - educate them in various means to commit such violence.

 

In nature's order, the newborn is always smaller than the parents, relatively helpless and uneducated.  The infant is totally dependent in matters of survival.  Parents must first undertake functions for - and subsequently teach - the developing child to function independently.

 

Since the education of the young requires discipline and the instilling of awareness of life's dangers, the larger and wiser mother and/or father accomplishes this by physically and mentally "dominating" the developing child: the lioness not only cuffs her cub when it endangers itself, she carries it to safety by the scruff of its neck.  These acts imprint their message of loving concern and caution in the cub's mind for life.

 

Television has created an inverted situation, where the child's principal source of education is smaller than the child, and is dominated by it.  In addition, the TV set is passive.  This represents a total reversal of nature's order.  The child is larger than the entire screen, no less the people, things and events portrayed.  The set displays no parental emotion to the child; it remains unreactive even if the child harms it.  A hand-held controller turns it on and off, and alters various functions.

 

To the child's developing mind, this controller is an instrument for eliminating disliked things or getting things it wants.  The child can touch whatever is displayed - gunshots, fire, wild animals - without being harmed.  TV tigers are little and don't bite (the child); TV fires are cold and don't burn (the child).  The child's sense of fear and caution is thus diminished.

 

This ability to control - and thus never elicit anger or be hurt - imprints the child's mind with a false sense of security: the child believes that it can control real situations unharmed and, furthermore, is imprinted to believe such burning or shooting of others in actuality is harmless.



Nowhere else in nature can a child control its environment without danger, and nowhere else can a child be imprinted to believe that harmful acts are reversible.

 

Video games reinforce this.  Undesirables can be zapped away and brought back to begin the game anew.  The use of handguns is clearly related: they zap away people.  Subconscious motivation makes no distinction between hand controllers and handguns, or fictional display and reality. Unfortunately, handguns can't zap people back to life.

 

When the child - TV-imprinted - ventures into the real world of school, work or street, the child dominates little, must interact with others, and must obey authority.  The child can't readily turn anything off or on, and must exercise caution or be harmed.

 

Reactions of bewilderment may quickly turn to angry resentment and aggression, too often leading to violence which, with their on-off TV-imprinted psyches, is not viewed by them as criminal.  Humans can change their minds about many things by using logic, but these imprints don't relate to pre-TV logic.

 

And the anger may run deep.  The child, along with TV-imprinted companions (street gangs?), attacks the established systems to assuage their TV-imprinted frustrations, while drugs often fill their need to withdraw when confronted with reality.  Theirs is the logic of war.  This combination leads directly to those violent crimes reported daily in the news - murder, rape, arson, mugging, etc.

 

Simplistic bumper stickers like "Don't Do Drugs" are no cure, and likely have an inverse effect on TV-imprinted minds; as a representation of traditionally imprinted wisdom, they are scorned and rejected.

 

Where the parents abdicate their roles to TV in return for its painless relief from responsibility, children watch TV more than 50% of their waking hours.  Society is now reaping the harvest of this phenomenon.  The new young continue to be TV-imprinted, joining ever-increasing numbers of TV-imprinted people of various ages, many of whom are parents themselves.  The American Psychological Association has estimated that, on the average, by the time a child enters high school, they have already witnessed over 100,000 acts of violence - mostly murder, gunplay (an oxymoronic term if ever there was one), arson, beatings and rape.

 

Like a contagious disease, those adults and children not overexposed to TV-imprinting often absorb duplicate attitudes from their peers.  The imprint knows no boundaries, and cuts across all social lines, all races, rich, poor, literate and illiterate.

 

Television has largely replaced the influence of parents.  The tube has become the surrogate parents - and all tubes have identical "personalities"  To the already frustrated disadvantaged, the overlay of TV's imprint is disastrous, leading to crime and carnage in endless permutations.

 

Whether the set shows muppets or mayhem, the child controls.  Unchallenged dominance over its new-found world-in-a-box imprints the child in ways that do not mesh with actuality.  Interactive TV is now coming on the scene, as is the widespread use by the young of computers - with their controllable displays.  And video games have taken on violent qualities that are truly heinous, with graphic depictions of bloody beatings and killings, including spines being ripped out whole.

 

The nation must refocus its views about this all-pervasive force if we are to understand how to deal with it.  It is a no-fault situation - including the imprinted - and not a simple matter.  Nor will simple solutions be found.