TELEVISION
Television is a modern conundrum. Tantalizing possibilities exist with this modern means of communicative potential, for good, or for negatively influencing society. Information can be disseminated with ease, reaching into the very fabric of society. Unfortunately, this boundless potential has denigrated into a function that serves entertainments purposes almost exclusively.
Super-imposing images that reflect fiction, individuals are granted reprieves from social interaction via the pervasive presence of televised escapist depictions. Illusion becomes a replacement for reality. At times, television serves a nobler purpose. Information of importance can be readily accessed that provides insight into conditions of security, economics and advancement.
The epilogue to September 11th, 2001 events stand as a stark reminder of television’s ability to unite people in grief, determining action and cathartically providing an effective avenue of corporate diffusion of emotional angst. Even going so far as to render retaliatory assistance for functions that can make sense of the defensible actions that were launched against those who aspired to insert terrorisms grip into the American psyche, thus rendering a comfort level that facilitated the easing of wounded consciousness.
Legalistic Christians’ assertions concerning the need to avoid television can be viewed as problematic. The reductional equation that limits televised presentations into a peek-a-boo methodology, a disjointed representation of pericoptic images with no cohesive semblance appears to be an over-simplification of the overwhelmingly complex circumstances that encompass the realities of televisions provisions. To assert that all examples of the televised medium are inherently corruptive and pathologically influential fails to grant people the comprehensive ability to discern differentially the images of fabrication and that, which is real.
Perhaps a better focal point of consideration that explains the phenomena of social inactivity may be found in the extreme busyness modern technological advancements have wrought on individuals who must cede slavish control over to. Scientific achievement, originally viewed as liberating agents that would serve mankind’s pursuit of leisure, has created an increasingly complex society that breed’s insecurity. Knowledge’s rapid point of acceleration has reduced, rather than expanded, mankind’s ability to comprehend the forces that make up the environmental conditions of existence. The lack of expertise’s experiential mastery over systems of practice and thought has created a vast, expansive neurosis concerning informational acquisitions. Illusions of never ending knowledge have presented a fertile breeding ground for postmodern plurality of acceptance, or better yet, acquiescence to the fears surrounding loss of control environmentally. The procedural disqualification of assumed standards has been the net result of the informational explosion Western society has become a witness to.
The challenge to become an un-televised individual or society is a false assumption that could prove damaging in the greater scope of social realities. Although television provides an inebriating effect that is tantamount to escapism of a technical opiate of sorts, the superior understanding may be to view the television phenomena as a symptom, not the root causational force of postmodernism’s prevalence. Ignoring the power of the media may, in effect, marginalize the church’s ability to influence society in ways the church has yet to comprehend. Television is a method, not a standard. Utilizing television as a tool is proper. Falling under its influence negatively is not.
