[Mb-civic] "Evil" Imprint

Wed May 11 08:08:42 PDT 2005

it sounds cruel to me
its a normal part of american childhood to let kids watch tv

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Barbara Siomos" <barbarasiomos38 at msn.com>
To: "Ian" <ialterman at nyc.rr.com>; "Civic" <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 11:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Mb-civic] "Evil" Imprint

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.

----------------

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.

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