Sports Illustrated magazine runs a great weekly blurb titled, “The Apocalypse is Upon Us.” The paragraph is often a quote. Sometimes it’s an event. The section highlights a ludicrous activity or juxtaposes some statement or activity that is crazily abnormal with the reality of how we actually live in the world.
It’s worth a read if you don’t typically pick up the magazine. You’ll get a chuckle, raise your eyebrows, wonder if what they wrote is the truth because people are nuts, quite frankly.
We say and do things on a regular basis that put our world on the precipice. Then, the next week, we’re still here, having survived another onslaught of stupidity, ignorance and apathy.
Going through my notes the past few days, I came across a sign of the apocalypse upon us: “In 1992, the American Medical Association published a study that found the homicide doubles in almost any part of the world 15 years after television first appears there.” Hmmm…..
The study probably has holes and inconsistencies in it. And, quite frankly, I can’t Google it, so who knows where I came up with the information when I wrote that note to myself. Still…..
The stat doesn’t surprise me. Sometimes I marvel at the mayhem on the tube. I’ll watch previews for shows and within seconds view eight images of some form of violent act.
An action movie preview comes on, and you know how that goes. They ram us with as many quick images of things blowing up and people being shot as they can.
I guess that’s supposed to interest us. Or at least titillate our senses. But I think it starts doing the opposite. It numbs us to what we keep seeing. We distance ourselves more and more from real life violence through our exposure to so many cop, crime and action shows and movies.
Do homicides go up after the introduction of television to a culture? Probably.
But the problem is more insidious than that. If we watch a lot of violence as part of our personal fantasy worlds, unless you’re an extremely intelligent and able person who disassociates from that after turning off the TV, then you carry around in your head all shooting, stabbings, fist fights and blown up buildings.
It’s part of your reality. It doesn’t cause you to pick up a gun, but when you hear about gun violence it may not surprise you as much.
I remember years ago refereeing a junior varsity high school basketball game during the summer. After the game, I saw this tall guy in the hallway that I knew. I couldn’t remember where I met him. I thought maybe I’d caught up with him on the golf course.
As I got closer to him, he smiled, and I realized it was Jim Boeheim, the head men’s basketball coach at Syracuse University. I thought I knew him personally because I’d seen him on TV. But I didn’t know him. I just recognized his image.
It was a strange situation, but it also taught me how TV (and by extension, other media that hit you with images) makes you think you know, understand or recognize something when you really don’t. It’s your day to day interactions where you really learn the truth because you experience it first-hand.
We’re becoming more and more a second-hand world (and even a third-hand world as we take images and share on social media), relying on someone else’s images or views to formulate our own. That’s sad and scary.
Maybe if we get rid of all our TV’s the murder rate will go down. It’s worth a try.
It’s worth a read if you don’t typically pick up the magazine. You’ll get a chuckle, raise your eyebrows, wonder if what they wrote is the truth because people are nuts, quite frankly.
We say and do things on a regular basis that put our world on the precipice. Then, the next week, we’re still here, having survived another onslaught of stupidity, ignorance and apathy.
Going through my notes the past few days, I came across a sign of the apocalypse upon us: “In 1992, the American Medical Association published a study that found the homicide doubles in almost any part of the world 15 years after television first appears there.” Hmmm…..
The study probably has holes and inconsistencies in it. And, quite frankly, I can’t Google it, so who knows where I came up with the information when I wrote that note to myself. Still…..
The stat doesn’t surprise me. Sometimes I marvel at the mayhem on the tube. I’ll watch previews for shows and within seconds view eight images of some form of violent act.
An action movie preview comes on, and you know how that goes. They ram us with as many quick images of things blowing up and people being shot as they can.
I guess that’s supposed to interest us. Or at least titillate our senses. But I think it starts doing the opposite. It numbs us to what we keep seeing. We distance ourselves more and more from real life violence through our exposure to so many cop, crime and action shows and movies.
Do homicides go up after the introduction of television to a culture? Probably.
But the problem is more insidious than that. If we watch a lot of violence as part of our personal fantasy worlds, unless you’re an extremely intelligent and able person who disassociates from that after turning off the TV, then you carry around in your head all shooting, stabbings, fist fights and blown up buildings.
It’s part of your reality. It doesn’t cause you to pick up a gun, but when you hear about gun violence it may not surprise you as much.
I remember years ago refereeing a junior varsity high school basketball game during the summer. After the game, I saw this tall guy in the hallway that I knew. I couldn’t remember where I met him. I thought maybe I’d caught up with him on the golf course.
As I got closer to him, he smiled, and I realized it was Jim Boeheim, the head men’s basketball coach at Syracuse University. I thought I knew him personally because I’d seen him on TV. But I didn’t know him. I just recognized his image.
It was a strange situation, but it also taught me how TV (and by extension, other media that hit you with images) makes you think you know, understand or recognize something when you really don’t. It’s your day to day interactions where you really learn the truth because you experience it first-hand.
We’re becoming more and more a second-hand world (and even a third-hand world as we take images and share on social media), relying on someone else’s images or views to formulate our own. That’s sad and scary.
Maybe if we get rid of all our TV’s the murder rate will go down. It’s worth a try.
