"Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television," Part 3

Television is deleterious for us, propitious for autocracy

This essay is Part 3 of a series devoted to Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander. Part 1, is here; Part 2, last week’s essay, is here. Any quotes are Mander’s unless otherwise indicated.

Image by whitedaemon from Pixabay

I’m sleeping better. I’m more patient. I’m not in so much of a damn hurry. Why? Because writing this series is getting to me, in the best possible way.

They say we teach what we need to learn, which is clearly why I was drawn to writing about Jerry Mander’s book. Yes, the book centers on television due to its publication in 1977, but in broadening the subject to include all screen influence, I’ve had many epiphanies in the past few weeks while researching Mander’s third argument:

ARGUMENT 3: The effects on human beings are deleterious.

“The third argument concerns the effects of television upon individual human bodies and minds, effects which fit the purposes of the people who control the medium.”

To write this argument, Mander went looking for scientific research to bolster what he suspected, and found very few studies. Is anyone surprised?

In my essay Best Thing We Ever Did as Parents, which kicked off this whole series, I wrote about the urgent-yet-flaccid social media advisement put out by the Surgeon General, in which Vivek Murthy claimed we didn’t have enough evidence to determine if it was safe for kids.

Nothing has changed since 1977, folks.

Here’s a classic sentence from an article from the Dana Foundation entitled The Truth About Research on Screen Time:

“Despite the dozens of articles on the dangers of screen time to the developing brain—and the corresponding counter pieces that suggest screens aren’t the devils they’re made out to be—there is a dearth of research regarding the effects of media use on the brain.”

The article goes on to list all the reasons why it’s just so darn hard to tell if screens are good or bad, then throws up its hands, Murthy-like, and says we just don’t know!

You know what? I don’t care anymore about any of them. I’m taking a page out of Mander’s book, literally. Here’s his statement:

“I have already stated my opinion that one major result of modern science has been to make people doubt what they would otherwise accept as true from their own observation and experience. Science, medicine, psychology and economics all deeply depend on people being mystified by their own experience and blind to the strict limits of scientific method. In this country, where intervention between humans and their inner selves is so very advanced, the mystification is virtually total.

In my opinion, if people are watching television for four hours every day and they say they can’t stop it, and also say that it seems to be programming them in some way, and they are seeing their kids go dead, then really, I deeply feel there is no need to study television.

Amen, Jerry.

I know how I feel when I’ve spent eight hours in front of a computer screen, or a few hours watching television, or when I’ve spent even five minutes scrolling through Instagram. I’ve seen the effects of television and social media — limited though their exposure was — on my own kids. I’ve heard anecdotes from parents, teachers, and the kids themselves about those media.

I have no problem painting all of digital media with the same brush, even the stuff I have no personal experience with, like gaming or virtual reality. To me, it’s all mediated reality, and therefore it all falls into the same slop pail.

Yes, there are differences between, say, the effect of playing Minecraft and watching a video on YouTube. One is more “active,” the other completely passive. But in the arenas that Mander discusses, the effects of all digital media are pretty much the same.

Even though Mander and I both agree that we don’t need experts to tell us what’s harmful, he still goes on to describe some detriments of tv-watching — and I will follow suit, to a point. I’m also happy to direct you toward articles that take up the topic in novel ways.

So, since Mander starts with how television affects the body, I’ll begin there, too.

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Years ago, after a showing of the documentary Screenagers, I facilitated a public discussion afterwards that included an optometrist who for over forty years, practiced in the specialized filed of behavior optometry and neuro-optometric rehabilitation.

A gentle, thoughtful man who was clearly passionate about his work, he eagerly accepted my invitation to join the panel discussion because he felt that many of his young patients were suffering the ill effects of too much screen time. Could he prove it statistically? No. But given his many years in the field, he felt qualified to share his opinions.

According to him, screens, by their very nature, impose a lack of varied eye movement that in turn weakens and impairs developing eye functions. Eyes are designed to actively scan, and they rarely stop moving and searching. But they cease to do that when they are focused on a screen:

“In fact, the eyes move less while watching television than in any other experience of daily life. This is particularly so if you sit at a distance from the set or if your set is small. In such cases you take in the entire image without scanning.”

Can you get any smaller than a smartphone screen?

According to the optometrist, weakened vision can be remediated with special eye re-training exercises, but often parents don’t realize there is a problem until much later in the child’s development, when rehabilitation is less effective.

Over the span of his career, he noticed that the number of kids with vision impairment was fairly steady until the widespread adoption of smartphones, at which point the number increased dramatically. He also noticed that the Waldorf kids he saw for regular check-ups had healthier eyes, in general, than the rest of his young patients, a disparity he attributed to the strong discouragement of screens within the Waldorf culture.

I’ve lost contact with him since he retired, so I don’t know if his views persist. I do wonder what he’d say about the American Optometric Association’s (AOA) recent obeisance to gamers: “No one wants to give up their screen time, and no one is asking you to, either,” followed by AOA’s new video game called “Blink Land” where “gaming and eye health come together…Players can play mini games, answer trivia, and learn more ways to develop eye-friendly screen habits.”

I think the “road to hell” maxim could be inserted nicely here.

Mander spends some time examining the marked differences between natural sunlight and manmade light, explaining that sunlight is made up of a full spectrum of wavelengths of varying levels and quantities, whereas fluorescent, incandescent, (and LED) lights leave out certain segments and offer a different balance, creating disequilibrium. Apparently, full-spectrum LED lights exist, but they’re generally used for indoor plant growing.

The real issue is the “blue light” that we’ve all heard emanates from screens. The light that computers, televisions, and smartphones give off looks white, but is actually rich in the wavelengths that, if they were isolated from all the other wavelengths that come with it, would be considered “blue.”

It’s not that blue light is bad; in fact, it exists within natural sunlight. But the sun emits blue light in synergistic proportion to all the other wavelengths.

The Power Couple by Roman Shapoval

published a recent article entitled The #1 EMF you've forgotten about: how blue light alters our biology which I found (pun intended) enlightening. Shapoval writes:

“Red light helps us relax and regenerates our nervous system, while blue light keeps us energized and primes our fight/flight response.”

That’s why it keeps us awake if we take in too much in the evening. Here’s my own entirely unsubstantiated thought: might the present saturation of humanity in extra blue light — regardless of the content it delivers — be contributing to increasing levels of anxiety, stress, division, and violence we see in society today?

Mander references author of Health and Light John Ott, a researcher devoted to understanding the effects of light on human cells. Ott coined the term “mal-illumination,” saying “mal-illumination is to light as malnutrition is to food,” and believed that the “wrong” kind of light, or a lack of the “right” kind, could make us ill.

Mander takes that idea and runs with it, to what I consider to be a beautiful place:

“We can say that seeking food is instinctive in all humans. Even babies know how to do it, within their limits. If light is also food, then might we not seek it, as plants do? Is this why we look at the moon? Is this why we gaze at fire? Is there an innate longing for light, like a kind of cellular hunger?

If so, then I suppose [poet] Anne Waldman could be right. With natural light gone, we seek a surrogate light: television.

Well, I couldn’t possibly say any of that in a book.”

Which of course, he did. He continues, quoting an anthropologist friend who responds to Mander’s “unpublishable” musings:

“If photobiologists are correct, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t be, then they may be onto the biological foundation for the fact that every culture and religion in history has placed light at the center of its cosmology. ‘Receive the light.’ ‘Seek enlightenment.’ ‘The mind of light.’ ‘The luminescent soul.’

…Of course they are speaking in spiritual terms. I know you are speaking more in health terms, as with food. But why couldn’t the two be the same? It’s very efficient and sensible to develop religions around natural processes which are the bases of survival. Most indigenous cultures do that. Only ours doesn’t… As I think about it, except for Western medicine, there’s hardly a medicine healing system in the world where light is not used for health purposes . . . physical, mental, spiritual.”

I’m sure there’s not one study that proves or disproves the validity of the anthropologist’s statement. Take it as you wish, but this concept feels like deep truth to me.

As a final nod to television’s impact on the body, I want to mention an article in Johns Hopkins Magazine about a study published in the September issue of Brain Imaging and Behavior that concluded that greater amounts of TV viewing can lead to reduced amounts of cranial gray matter.

The title is inspired: NEW STUDY SUGGESTS THAT TOO MUCH TV REALLY CAN ROT YOUR BRAIN.

I bring up the article not to prove Mander’s third argument about tv is correct — though it certainly buttresses it — but because the article’s final short paragraph is just so telling. The author says,

“Just don't expect Netflix to make a documentary about all this. ‘No,’ Dougherty [the leader of the new study] says with a laugh. ‘I don't think that would be good for business.’”

Ha ha ha. No, it wouldn’t. See Part 2 to fully understand my bitter mirth.

If you remain unconvinced that screens are detrimental to the body, consider this: Does anyone remember the huge outcry a few years about about sitting? It’s the new smoking! everyone brayed, including Harvard Health Publishing, citing higher risk of “obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, deep-vein thrombosis, and metabolic syndrome.”

Hmm… what could be the big inducement to sit for so damn long? Reading Tolstoy? Too much meditation? An epidemic of knitting?

No one wants to implicate the over-the-top obvious screens, because they are the sun — yes, the light! — around which our little planetary lives revolve. Hell, I’m typing on one right now.

There is real, physical harm in being on a screen for 9 hours and 15 minutes a day, if only because it means you are stationary for that long. Q.E.D. And don’t bother with the walking desk exceptions; I’m not buying.

Let’s move on to the mind.

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In Mander’s first argument, he introduces the fact that television drops us into an alpha state, a state of light hypnosis. In this third argument, he builds on that fact, referencing a study of television completed in 1975 at the Australian National University at Canberra. He says,

“…no matter what the program is, human brainwave activity enters a “characteristic” pattern. The response is to the medium, rather than to any of its content. Once the set goes on, the brain waves slow down until a preponderance of alpha and delta brain waves become the habitual pattern.”

In that alpha state, images stream into the brain with nothing to stop them, bypassing the conscious, critical factor and embedding themselves permanently in the subconscious.

Unless you turn off the flow completely, there’s no way to slow that stream. Unlike reading, where you can alter your pace to suit comprehension, watching a video is like shotgunning a beer: you simply have to accept it as it comes. [Note: Not an endorsement. I don’t even like beer.]

Mander says this acceptance creates a passive mental attitude: “Since there is no way to stop the images, one merely gives over to them.”

“You have opened your mind, and someone else’s daydreams have entered. The images come from distant places you have never been, depict events you can never experience, and are sent by people you don’t know and have never met.”

Mander maintains that act of watching tv generates a passivity that is the gateway to docility. If we willingly imbibe content and cede our critical thinking, what else will we voluntarily swallow?

His answer: autocracy.

Psychiatrist Dr. Milton Erickson developed a hypnosis induction technique called “confusion,” in which the hypnotist creates an overload of thoughts, focus, and stimulation until the client arrives at a crescendo of total confusion. At that moment, the hypnotist “comes in with some clear relief, some simple instruction, and the patient goes immediately into trance.”

I’ve experienced this type of induction myself, and I can attest: the relief to “sleep!” is extraordinary. It feels so damn good to just follow the simple command, after being in a state of destabilized, disassembled chaos.

Mander suggests that a society in great turmoil craves the relief that an authority can bring, just by offering a simple, clear solution. He makes the case that post-Weimar Germany’s social and economic conditions were so chaotic that the singularity of Hitler’s amplified voice itself “became a nationwide resolution of disorder. A clear channel of clarity out of confusion. Reassembly out of disassembly.”

He continues:

“One can draw parallels with the U.S. today. In a confusing society, with grounding lost and expectations sinking, we have the television itself as the guru-hypnotist-leader, opening a clear channel into surrogate clarity.”

I’m sure 1977, the year Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television was published, was a confusing time… but it’s hard to imagine any year more confusing than the insanity that was 2020. What a perfect opportunity to roll out autocratic measures like censorship, lockdowns, and mandates, all to keep us safe. Reassembly out of disassembly. What a relief.

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Let’s back up for a moment to pick up the thread about absorbing images created by “people you’ve never met.” What’s wrong with that? Don’t we take in images ourselves, all the time, from the real world? And don’t we create images ourselves, from anything that we read? Human beings are image factories, are they not?

Yes, and I’m going to walk through “what’s wrong,” starting with the least disturbing (in my opinion) to the most.

When I was 11, I read Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. In the first chapter, Scarlett O’Hara stormed her way into my imagination as a clear, vibrant visualization, only to be obliterated by the Selznick movie version I watched in my late teens. Scarlett became Vivien Leigh, forevermore.

“In any competition between an internally generated image and one that is later solidified for you via moving-image media, your own image is superseded.”

I’m sure you’ve had the same experience. (I refuse to watch the Harry Potter movies for that reason.) Interestingly, Mander’s statement holds up in an internal experiment: the Disney moving-image depictions of Winnie-the-Pooh do not supersede the book illustrations I read as a kid. Try out some version of this experiment for yourself.

Okay, so losing an original image is frustrating, but why does it matter?

Allow me to refresh your memory of Mander’s second argument: television is a colonizing experience. There are multiple definitions of colonization, but there was one from Part 2 I didn’t address: “the act or practice of appropriating something that one does not own or have a right to.”

I think this is where Mander attends to that particular definition, obliquely. Where once the images within our minds were our own, put there by choice, now we have pictures placed there by advertisers and other “programmers.” (Isn’t that an interesting word?)

Once we see an image on television, we cannot “unsee” it. I cannot unsee Vivien Leigh. In this way, television appropriates our imaginative sovereignty, completing the colonization experience laid out in Argument 2.

Here’s a chilling insight:

“Since we are educated and thoughtful, as we like to think, we believe we can choose among the things that will influence us… we believe we can choose among those [images] we wish to absorb and those we don’t. We assume that our rational processes protect us from implantation, or brainwashing. What we fail to realize is the difference between fact and image. Our objective processes can help us resist only one kind of implantation. There is no rejection of images.”

It’s sobering, but the truth often is. Which brings me to the next-most disturbing (for me, anyway) element of Argument 3:

What is real?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The problem for us all, in this visually-mediated time of our evolution on this planet, is this: all images are inherently believable. Seeing has always been believing, literally, because until very recently, human beings had no need to differentiate between “artificial images of distant events and life directly lived.”

If our sight had been untrustworthy, we would not have survived as a species. Exceptions like desert mirage illusions or lizards that camouflage themselves only serve to reinforce the truth that human beings will believe what they see.

In 2023, now that a few generations have co-existed with moving images and this most recent generation has experienced the utter disorientation of “deep-fakes,” we know that we can’t trust our eyes. We are starting to develop what Mander calls “sensory cynicism.”

But the images still march in, bypassing our critical factor, and take their place among images from the real world. Our subconscious cannot distinguish between real and non-real, between information which was preprocessed and then filtered through a machine, and that which came to us whole, by actual experience.

It’s true that after an image enters we can ponder its veracity, and perhaps identify it as unreal, but by then it’s too late. It has already found a home in the mind, never to be unseen again.

And what is the result of all that unbidden imagery skulking around down there in our subconscious?

Those images control us in ways we rarely consider. What was suggested early in the field of psychology is clear and accepted now: images have tremendous power to shape us, affecting our bodies and our emotional states. Athletes “mentally rehearse” to improve performance; patients use visualization techniques to improve health outcomes, both physical and mental.

It’s not hyperbole to say we become the images we hold in our minds; we become what what we see. Mander says: “And in today’s America, what most of us see is one hell of a lot of television.”

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We’ve finally arrived at what I consider to be the most disturbing — yet, ironically, the most hopeful — element of Mander’s third argument.

What is this process of “learning to repress millions of years of genetic programming to accept all images as real,” doing to us? What does it mean, on the most basic human levels, to interfere with our own instincts, to question, interpret, and override the sensory information that has always meant our very survival?

We are all, every one of us, placing our intellect above our senses. As we do so, we become more and more alienated from ourselves, in turn becoming alienated from our hearts, the seat of our connection to Source. Is that alienation contributing to our growing mental health problems, particularly among teens? I believe it is. I can’t prove it, of course. (We just don’t know!)

Here are some other voices that do know, either because they feel it in their bones, or because they’re more concerned with the consequences of humanity’s self-alienation than they are with alienating the tech industry.

Peco

, who writes the achingly beautiful Pilgrims in the Machine, says this:

“Our children are suffering, not because of inhumane physical labour, but because of the increasingly inhumane conditions bred by their digital existence. We have created for them an environment that has removed them from reality both mentally and socially…”

And

Ruth Gaskovski

, author of

School of the Unconformed

, pulls together an incredible wealth of resources in her article, From Feeding Moloch to 'Digital Minimalism'. She highlights writers like

Jonathan Haidt

and

Paul Kingsnorth

, among others, who eloquently — and urgently — warn us of the incalculable damage tech is wreaking on humanity.

She also provides, in that same article, guidelines for a 30-Day Digital Detox, a “game plan based on Cal Newport’s ‘Digital Minimalism’ strategy,” as she puts it. The guidelines are clear, and she makes them available as a downloadable pdf as well. Many of her readers accepted her invitation to participate during the month of May, and offered up their experiences — the joys and the challenges.

It’s by following a few of those very guidelines that I’m experiencing deeper sleep, more patience, and less-hurried days. I’m planning to do my own version of the detox this summer — I’ll let you know when. (Want to join me? Let me know in the comments.)

Mander summarizes his third argument this way:

“Television technology produces neuro-physiological responses in the people who watch it. It may create illness, it certainly produces confusion and submission to external imagery. Taken together, the effects amount to conditioning for autocratic control.”

It’s a fairly dark assessment, brimming with truth. But you never know when or where light is going to make an appearance. The aptly named

Make It Real

Substack essay by Alex Fox comes in clutch, striking a match:

Kids Are Rejecting The High-Tech Rat Trap

Maybe the children themselves will lead us out beyond our own fretful hand-wringing and cowardly dithering. Maybe they will follow their divinely given instincts for health and survival — even if it’s masked by a Sneetches-like desire to be the cool kids on the block — and show us all what resistance to the machine can actually look like.

I think Mander would be delighted at the prospect.

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Next week will be Argument 4, the last installment of the Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television series. I hope you’ll join me!

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As always, keep your light shining bright.

xox
M