"Axel Berger"  wrote


>
Admittedly I tend to dislike quite a few things and people, but there's
one and only one that I truly hate, the mind-numbing and brain-killing
gogglebox. And that goes for it's newer clones as well.
>

>
I am a critical reader but movies and visuals bypass your critical
faculties and directly affect emotions and perception. They're
unspeakably dangerous. I'm one of the few luck ones who even in the
sixties were able to grow up in a home without TV and have not got one
and will not ever get one.
>

 Ah, what fun! Heated debate to perk up a Sunday in
isolation. :)

  I gather that by gogglebox you mean a TV? I don't see
the problem as one of the medium but rather the usage.
TVs are useful tools. Music is a powerful art form. Computers
are useful tools. All of those can also be misused. A
conputer can be merely an entertainment
device, with people getting addicted to online shopping,
Facebook, gaming, or even programming, which lends
itself to a kind of linear thought compulsion. (I know
because I got into that myself and it took awhile to
get off the addictive thrill of coding until 4 AM.)

   Books can also be misused as emotional masturbation.
I know many women, especially, who use them for
that purpose, augmenting their normal life with a kind
of emotional dildo provided by fictional dramas. That's
often what the fiction bestsellers are. Many are very
well written. But they can still be used for  mere titillation.

   If you don't relate with emotions then you'll be ruled
by them. Then you'll be believing you're using critical
intellect when you're actually motivated by emotionality
or sexual energy.

   I've seen some amazingly moving movies that leave
me awed at the ability of people to communicate such
profundity in such a complex medium. For example, most
Arabic movies I've seen have been subtle explorations of
morality, with no clear good/evil characters like most
American movies have. Another example: "Square." Swedish.
A humrous commentary on politically correct thinking and
SJWs. "Leave No Trace". By Debra Granik who did "Winter's
Bone". A very moving portrayal of social alienation. Last
week I saw "Frantze". French. About the dissolute psyches
of post-WW1 people in France and Germany, trying to
come to terms with their own unspeakable insanity in war.

  All remarkable and potentially edifying movies, I thought.
If you try to live only in logical mind then you end up like
the horny young man who's trying to seduce a young woman
by explaining that if she stays the night at his house she'll
be 2.3 miles closer to her work in the morning... In other words,
feeling, sex andd body will fend for themselves and your
logical mind will be none the wiser.

  Perception and emotion are 2 of the 3 modes of human
experience. Thinking mind is the third, but it's only one.
If you don't integrate them you're doomed to be ruled by
them.

>
Have you ever once really watched a child in front of the box? The
trance they fall into is terrifying to see unless you are completely
dulled already.
>

   I don't think so. It's just absorption. Children don't
have notable self awareness. That's normal. What's worse
is grown adults I see on subways and buses. They pull
out their cellphones and scroll. Presumably checking texts,
Instagram, Facebook, etc. Then they put their phone away.
Not 2 seconds goes by before they pull it out again,
oblivious to the fact they just put it away. I watch that
process go in a loop, over and over.

   What's really an obstacle
is assuming that you're conscious. Try sitting for 10 minutes
in a quiet place and just watching your breath go in and
out. You'll be doing well if you even realize that you failed
to do it and immediately got lost in discursive thinking.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05