Save the Children!
I have a short anecdote I'd like to share before moving on. I first wrote on this topic two short days before the High School shooting at Littleton, CO on April 20, 1999. I started out pretty tongue in cheek with the intent to poke fun at all the concern nowadays with the well being of our kids and the "evil shroud of darkness" settling over our society -- all because of movies and video games! Well, after the Littleton event, I didn't touch this page for a long time! I no longer felt like following that direction. I just let this page stay in limbo as I did more soul searching about it all. Here's an analytical article about the two killers entitled "The Depressive and the Psychopath".
I guess I should try to begin on a light, humorous note now and tell you about a George Carlin story. He starts off page 33 of Carlin (2001), saying that he's getting so tired of all the BS he's always hearing about kids these days! It's always something like help the children, save the children, etc. So George fires back with saying that kids are getting way too much attention nowadays and we should just forget about them already!
Then he goes on to say that they've been made into some sort of cult object by parents and members of the media! Finally, he simply notes that we all love our children. It's just gotten way out of balance......Now on with the show:
Images and memories play a significant role in the human body-mind-spirit equation. From them we build a sense of who we are and who we are not. Accordant with one's conceptual continuity, we tend to choose sensory input which is already in line with our existing memory constructures (memcons, for brevity). This allows us to avoid cognitive dissonance on a daily basis, and gives us a sense of consistency of Being.
Language, vocalizations, and nonverbal behavior are all we have to initiate social exchanges with each other. The finer tuned in we are to the other's sense of self, the more clear these communications can become. When people start to share more and more cultural elements, they begin having more in common with each other. This is in fact, an avenue into exploring humanology. Over time, it's like we're using the same building materials and similar designs. For example, by studying a culture's use of language (ie, popular idiom), architecture, work and recreational activities, one can gain insight into its values.
Colloquially, we say that things get "burned" into our minds or memories. That's an interesting choice of words (see the Flame Analogy). I would think that some events can leave behind an indelible or ingraining mark, as far as the "subjective entity's" field of perception goes. Simon (1991) would be an interesting example of this.
There seem to be many complaints around today that the media (TV, video games, music and movies in particular), is to blame for several societal ills -- including the alleged limited scope of imagination and attention spans of our youth, as well as runaway drug abuse and the escalating culture of violence. How are the media responsible? By inflicting inappropriate and savage memcons on their passive recipients, of course!
I hasten to point out, though, that this kind of thinking moves both ways. At one end, images emerge from the sound, print and picture media and flow into the memcons of the consumer. At the other end, we can consider what is sent out over the airwaves as projective exposés of those who produce the stuff!
We find ourselves re-visiting the validity of the frustration-aggression hypothesis (ie, Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer and Sears, 1939), which says in short, that when we are frustrated we tend to act aggressively to lessen our feelings of frustration. Could it be that some movie makers (for one example), believe themselves to be so ineffective in satisfying their wants and desires, that they then feel it necessary to direct their energy into this type of creation, to lessen the distress of their pressing preconscious frustrations? Think about it. How many times do plots include one group wielding their power over other groups helpless to stop them? Quite an infantile fantasy in my opinion. No person is all powerful or completely helpless. It's just that some people seem to need to entertain these memcons in order to boost themselves in their own eyes.
I guess my point about movie plots is, that when such circumstances are idealized, there is an unrealistic attitude perpetrated against an impressionable viewer. This does not a healthy, effective individual nor a benevolent society make. In fact, it does more to shape selfish, mean people...and mean people suck. I know some reader out there is thinking, "lighten up, it's just an escape!". That's cool too, I guess. Just put on your make up and get thee to the show.
Just what then do we do with our mental and physical abilities? We manipulate the environment. We're like little welding machines carving out our wants all around us. Our energies from inside get focused though our words and deeds and go out to our physical and social environments.
Sejie (a.k.a.) Sean Paul Nelson
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Everybody Loves Robert
Every now and then things don't work out as planned. In the sitcom "Happy Days", for instance, the character of Fonzie was originally a very small part. But it's popularity grew to the point that Fonzie is the best remembered character from the show.
In the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond", I believe the character of Robert is more memorable than that of Raymond.
The Franco-American War
Have you ever known someone who seemed to be getting all of his/r news about world events from the monologues of late night TV shows such as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno or The Late Show with David Letterman? It astounds me that such people manage to get by each day. It's a regrettable reality today, that someone can live in the US for any good amount of time, and not know some basic things about its history and cultural icons. This is repeatedly demonstrated in the Tonight Show's recurring segment called "Jaywalking". Camera-shyness explains some of these answers, but...! Being aware of the USA's cultural heritage seems to be getting less and less important to instill in our descendants. If so, I wonder where we're headed instead.
Then again, I do believe that we as a society want our history to be passed on to the next generation, but something is interfering with the transmission. TV programs and commercials occupy more of children's time than history and civics lessons do in school. I feel that this differential frequency of input, and hence the balance of informational substance available for memcons, simply takes its expected toll. People naturally become much more familiar with the lyrics to "Gilligan's Island", for instance, than they are with the social and political conditions present after the first world war.
Information that is repeated often enough becomes "truthful". That's why propaganda and advertising work so well; only one side is offered and it is offered repeatedly.