Is TV like Plato's cave?

[ThinkingSapien]

I dare you to not watch it for a month, and then see how you feel.

I have not watched TV in 30 years, and I am extremely well-informed.

I’ve done that. It wasn’t really intentional, I just have other things to do. And when people approached me with statements like “Did you hear about what happened in Norway” or when they made some statement about riots in London I had no idea what they were talking about.

There have been local events for which I was uninformed from having missed the stories on TV like the time one of the major roads was essentially non-usable because of a new bridge that had been partially constructed in another state was being driven to it’s location. For some of the really important things (ex:new laws and restrictions) I have my family to thank for repeating them to me after seeing them on the news.

Of course I could get all of this information from the Internet too if I looked for it instead of clicking around in these forums

 

[Catholic90]

I dare you to not watch it for a month, and then see how you feel.

I have not watched TV in 30 years, and I am extremely well-informed.

It would be hard for me to fall asleep, since I have fallen asleep to the tv for several years! It all started when I would leave the bedroom and go downstairs to the couch when dh was snoring, drunk, and impossible to sleep with. I would go downstairs, turn on the tv to drown out the snoring, and then I would fall asleep. Now I have a very hard time falling asleep without the tv. It’s just the way it is.

 

[levinas12]

Oh brother! Tv in the days of Noah eh?

I guess you haven’t seen the new postmodern, dynamic equivalency translation …

 

[Schloppenheimer]

before they had TV in Sweden, Ingmar Bergman made a film, one of three from the first half of his career based on Euripides’ Bacchae, titled Ansiktet (in America translated as The Magician, in England more literally as The Face) which is often read as a questioning of the role of the filmmaker in society. At one point an alcoholic actor passes his hand through the beam of a primitive (setting is about 1850) “magic lantern” projector and quotes the myth of the cave: “En skuga av en skuga” – “A shadow of a shadow.”

 

[jkraso]

I do not think TV or the media is the problem in and of itself. The choices we make in what we watch and what is broadcast is. I think back to the days of Bishop Sheen, and shows like Wagon Train, and TV was a positive influence. Today it is more of what can be done to provide more “shock value”. As with any tool or device it is how the tool is used and for what purpose. Granted there is not much of value being broadcast these days, but there are some networks that buck the trend. EWTN has some good programs and I am sure if I thought about it I could come up with some programs with value on other networks. Society as a whole has been on a dumbing down course since the late 60’s and TV programming has had a hand in it, but it is in how it has been used and what people choose to watch. What brings in the most money is what will be shown. Hollywood is still trying to figure out why the move “The Passion of the Christ” made so much money for Mel Gibson, and where did it get him? There are forces controlling a lot more of what goes on than we can imagine…

 

[fred_conty]

We fail in many ways because of it. Looking up is one.

 

[KevJohn]

a good book on this is Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he argues that television is not neutral because the format of television shows has an adverse effect on the rational capacity of many people, because it is geared either towards unsubstantiated arguments, or simply entertainment. He likens it to the inverse of the transition from smoke signals to the written word, because it allows for a significantly inferior level of discourse. He then analyses how this affects education, religion, families, and various other things: all of these are now viewed by the criterion of entertainment value, thanks to the medium. As McLuhan said, the ‘medium is the message’. There is also Technopoly, which is an analogous thesis, but towards the concept of technology in general, and how it drives culture and intelligence levels. He basically claims that television is the new epistemology (meaning the source of knowledge, rather than the philosophical study of what can be known and how).

its a very tragic thesis, but very true, and even more so know that when it was written 20 years ago. for many people the television is teacher, best friend, idol, hope, world. It both leads to the death of families and has its grip strengthened by the death of families, the modern vicious circle. It reinforces the culture of image, inferiority, promiscuity, akrasia, vanity. Marcel said that materialism verifies its own postulates, meaning - I think - that if we simply live in a materialist fashion we will believe that matter is all there is, and I think that television reinforces atheism by rooting us in the transient. Oh yeah Marcel also said that technology separates man from his inner reality, and he was writing way before TV became popular (Man Against Mass Society).

the televisual culture is obscuring the identity of the people. man is not free, because his chains have become his identity.

so yes, I think the cave is a good analogy for the televisual culture. or the televisual culture is a good analogy for the cave!

 

[Qoeleth]

Here’s an alternative take. Strictly speaking, TV is not a ‘replica of reality’, but it has content which emerges purely from the mind (it is generated by conceptualisations of the authors). It involves a purely mental (i.e. non-sensual) involvment of the watcher. So, being more mental and less corrupted by the ‘filth’ of matter, to a strict Platonist, it must be more ‘real’ than reality. It is a disembodied thought-based world, and therefore more closely approach the ‘true’ reality of Pure Reason.

 

[KevJohn]

what do we watch and hear with, if not the senses? it is the senses that enable the mental involvement in the first place, no?

 

[levinas12]

a good book on this is Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he argues that television is not neutral because the format of television shows has an adverse effect on the rational capacity of many people, because it is geared either towards unsubstantiated arguments, or simply entertainment. He likens it to the inverse of the transition from smoke signals to the written word, because it allows for a significantly inferior level of discourse. He then analyses how this affects education, religion, families, and various other things: all of these are now viewed by the criterion of entertainment value, thanks to the medium. As McLuhan said, the ‘medium is the message’. There is also Technopoly, which is an analogous thesis, but towards the concept of technology in general, and how it drives culture and intelligence levels. He basically claims that television is the new epistemology (meaning the source of knowledge, rather than the philosophical study of what can be known and how).

its a very tragic thesis, but very true, and even more so know that when it was written 20 years ago. for many people the television is teacher, best friend, idol, hope, world. It both leads to the death of families and has its grip strengthened by the death of families, the modern vicious circle. It reinforces the culture of image, inferiority, promiscuity, akrasia, vanity. Marcel said that materialism verifies its own postulates, meaning - I think - that if we simply live in a materialist fashion we will believe that matter is all there is, and I think that television reinforces atheism by rooting us in the transient. Oh yeah Marcel also said that technology separates man from his inner reality, and he was writing way before TV became popular (Man Against Mass Society).

the televisual culture is obscuring the identity of the people. man is not free, because his chains have become his identity.

so yes, I think the cave is a good analogy for the televisual culture. or the televisual culture is a good analogy for the cave!

Very nice analysis indeed!

With TV’s emphasis on “disconnected” visuality, it is quintessentially “pornographic”. It is powered by the “gaze” that sees and does not see. The ultimate “dumbing down” that devours civilizations.

I’m going to get the Postman book.

*Technopoly *sounds very Heideggerian (i.e., interesting).

And I’ll rummage around the house for my Marcel which I haven’t read in years.

 

[KevJohn]

Very nice analysis indeed!

With TV’s emphasis on “disconnected” visuality, it is quintessentially “pornographic”. It is powered by the “gaze” that sees and does not see. The ultimate “dumbing down” that devours civilizations.

I’m going to get the Postman book.

*Technopoly *sounds very Heideggerian (i.e., interesting).

And I’ll rummage around the house for my Marcel which I haven’t read in years.

shalom!
Sorry for the delay. I think it would be interesting to subject television watching to a critique using the philosophical anthropology, say, of Blessed Karol Wojtyla. If the human being truly finds herself in relation with truth and with other subjects, what a deleterious effect it would have for one to be largely in relationship with TV characters who offer nothing in return (i.e. with those to whom we relate as objects rather than subjects). If we are made to flourish by the gift and receipt of love, what happens to our personhood when we relate to things which don’t relate to us in return (the same could be said of many things).
I think its also interesting that if we are ultimately made for the beatific vision, Satan has seduced so many souls using the televisual culture and its idols. We are made to see God and be seen by God. Instead what we have is a culture wherein we see television, and dream of being seen on it.
I dont have the philosophical ‘papers’ for this - I don’t even have the philosophical papers to propose or surmise it - but I think it would be interesting. If we find life in communion with subjects, do we not die by simply staring at televised objects? I’m aware there are some TV programmes which break the mould, and might actually enable us to learn and grow, but on the whole it seems to me - speaking as a former devotee - as rubbish.

Actually perhaps it would be enlightening to know what Monsieur Levinas would think. I am sure that his stress on alterity would leave little room for soap operas and the like!

 

[levinas12]

… it would be interesting to subject television watching to a critique using the philosophical anthropology, say, of Blessed Karol Wojtyla. If the human being truly finds herself in relation with truth and with other subjects, what a deleterious effect it would have for one to be largely in relationship with TV characters who offer nothing in return (i.e. with those to whom we relate as objects rather than subjects). If we are made to flourish by the gift and receipt of love, what happens to our personhood when we relate to things which don’t relate to us in return (the same could be said of many things).

You raise some interesting questions.

The real Levinas, who died in the 1990’s, probably had a big problem with TV culture.

Persons thrive through face-to-face encounters where the “other” is experienced precisely in his or her “alterity”.

Our “facebook” society is a misnomer because there are really little or no meaningful face-to-face encounters.

Philosophy, and, in particular, phenomenology has a lot to tell us about the indispensability of “bodily presence”.

JP II was acutely aware of this.