[at-l] No TV/VCR

[egilroy@comcast.net (Ed Gilroy)]

Interesting views, but "crap detectors are in your cerebrum" makes your
argument sound like such pseudo-science, point-of-view bullshit that I am
forced to reply "poppycock" and discount your additional verbage.

I WANT MY MTV he says!!!!!

=====================================

----- Original Message -----
From: <cballs@mindspring.com>
To: <at-l@backcountry.net>
Cc: "kahley" <kahley7@ptd.net>
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2002 3:51 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: [at-l] No TV/VCR


> kahley <kahley7@ptd.net> wrote:
> > How is any of the following different with books.
>
> I understand the question, but it's very, very different from reading. You
can be practically brain dead and still take in television.  Television is a
sensual medium.  It bypasses our cerebrum and goes straight for our lizard
brain, bathing our brains in sound and light and color and movement.  It's
all limpic, all emotional.  Books require some learning and that you know
how to think and that takes some effort.  TV doesn't require any work at all
and it's inherently "fascistic" in that your perspective on whatever content
is being shown is dictated by where the director aims the camera and what
the producers decide to put in front of it.  Your crap detectors are fully
engaged when you're reading because you're crap detectors are in your
cerebrum and reading requires that you have an imagination.  You can stop
after reading a specific passage and turn it over in your mind or let its
meaning wash over you.  You can compare it to your own thoughts, your own
experience and the!
>  n !
> reject it or take it in.  You can add to it.  When you've digested it, you
can move on.  Open a book and it sets there until you decide to enter
through the portal of the markings on the page into the mind of the author
and the world she creates.  It invites you in, it doesn't demand that you
come.  You can enter the "conversation" with the author.  You are recreating
in your mind the issues or the world the author is writing about. You have a
LOT of room to recreate that and imagine it in your own relevant, specific
way. Books engage your mind. Television takes over your mind and does all
the imagining and all the "thinking" for you.  It doesn't talk to you, it
talks AT you.  Turn it on and it never shuts up. It screams incessantly,
"Pay attention to me!  Pay attention to me!" like a spoiled child.  None of
these ideas are new. Marshall McLuhan, a great supporter of television,
pointed out about TV nearly 50 years ago,  the medium is the message. It
isn't going to go away. !
>   I!
> t's going to become ever more effective at determining how you think.
Neil Postman has written brilliantly about the impact of television on us
and on our society.  Bill McKibbon has a fine book, "The Age of Missing
Information" about the relationship between our involvment with television
and the natural world.  Excellent thinking and fine journalistic writing.
Ought to be required reading for anyone who considers themselves a
naturalist.
>
>
>
>
> >IF and I mean IF you buy into the world that TV
> shows, how is that any different than buying into
> the world as depicted by an author?
>
> >I am NOT defending TV.    But  I find the idea that
> I can't intelligently evaluate TV programing the
> same way I do books is ...welll...sorta insulting.
> Besides..... Junkyard Wars is just plain kewl .
>
>
>
> I didn't say anything about the ability to evalute TV programming.  I
didn't say anything about TV programming.  I said that programming doesn't
matter.
>
>
> Curtis
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