“To all who are anonymous…”

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Disconnect to Reconnect

By Pierre Thérond

Translated and Adapted by Robert Burns

Copyright Library of Congress, USA

Copyright SACD, France - No 197379

Copy: August, 2008

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 NOTE TO THE READER

When translating this text from the original French, the question of gender

became an issue. In English, ‘he’ and ‘she’ refer to the sexes whereas in French, the

article le and la are attached to the noun and do not refer to any individual or group.

Because I believe in and respect equality between men and women, I first wrote

‘s/he’, ‘her/his,’ and ‘her/himself’ throughout the entire English version. This very

quickly became unwieldy and confusing. I therefore chose to accept the convention

of using ‘he’ when referring to both men and women whenever ‘human beings’ was,

for one reason or the other, unusable.

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 CONTENTS

Introduction ………………………………………………..………………… Page 5

Chapter I: A Question of Time………………………………………………. Page 8

Chapter II: Ideas That Come From Television…………………………… Page 13

Chapter III: Television as an Educational Tool…………………………… Page 46

Chapter IV: Television as Entertainment…………………………………. Page 66

Chapter V: Our Relationship to Television……………………………….. Page 83

Chapter VI: Television vs. Democracy…………………………………… Page 103

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………… Page 124

Bibliography………………………………………………………………… Page 130

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 INTRODUCTION

Most of us carry out the same daily ritual: we sit down in front of a television

set, turn it on and watch it. Without questioning ourselves, we repeat this act day

after day, month after month, year after year; throughout our entire lifetime.

Isolating me in my room, television gave me the illusion that I was unique;

that for it I was really someone special. But, in fact, I was just like everyone else: I

behaved like all the others, innocently performing this rite and not suspecting

anything untoward. By watching television on a daily basis, I was not only

perpetuating a modern custom, I was also becoming an adept of a new sort of religion.

An unarticulated religion without inspiring tenets, with a blurry god hidden within

billions of pictures and which, unseen by me, had become “the good word.”

I belonged to the great world-tribe for which television was the new totem. I

watched this totem with its thousand faces and I listened to its thousand voices. Over

the years, my attention was more and more monopolized by what had discretely

become the sole point-of-reference for almost all of humanity. Except for a few very

rare cases, not even the most remote places on the planet escaped its logic. Whether I

wanted to or not, I, just like everybody else, was paying allegiance to a new belief-

system: virtual, far from real and, thanks to which, this new god, coming out of

nothing, could shape my life in his image. And not only my life but also the lives of

just about every human being on earth.

Although humankind finds itself at its most technologically developed state

and never before has humanity attained an over-all material level of comfort as

advanced, I found myself asking the following questions: “What have we abandoned

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of ourselves that allows us to accept a state of such inactivity? By what paths have

we let reality escape? Why are we listening to a single machine to tell us what we

should believe, think and do?”

I and everyone around me, consciously or not, were being affected by the

issues that these questions raised. But, as far as I knew, there was no one that I could

speak with; nobody to ease my confusion. To find answers, I resolved to get rid of

my television for an unknown period of time.

Up until that point, I had found refuge in a sort of resignation; after all, I was

just another TV watcher - just like all the others throughout the world - and these

issues were bigger than me. But when I realized that no one else was responsible, that

I controlled my own destiny, I understood that it was up to me to search for the

answers. To find them, my life became my laboratory and I began an experiment for

which I now felt ready. I wanted to know what I had given up to the television to the

detriment of myself. My excitement at discovering new aspects of myself mitigated

the fear I had of separating from my TV set. And a new question resonated in my

mind: “What will become of my life if my free time is spent somewhere other than in

front of a television?”

The answer came with action. When I got rid of my television, my life took

an entirely new direction; a direction impossible to have imagined beforehand. My

way of looking at the world changed. My choices became based on values other than

those shown on television. My ideas became clearer. My body reacted differently. I

became a different person: I became myself.

These changes influenced every part of my life, not the least of which was my

profession. When I got rid of my television, I was the producer for a television

channel. At that time, I believed with complete conviction that there was good and

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bad television and that I worked for the good television. I had faith that the

documentary channel I worked for helped to diffuse both awareness and knowledge.

It was a good job. I had worked there since its launch seven years earlier and I

sincerely thought that, thanks this popular tool, I was contributing to the betterment of

my country. I supervised the production of more than one hundred documentaries a

year, the majority of which were high quality, and I was persuaded that they made

people more intelligent and more alert. The team of which I was a part was

interesting and I was well paid. Above all, I had the good fortune to be able to align

my skills with my personal beliefs and to work toward the betterment of society.

But the more I felt the beneficial effects from not watching television, the

more difficult it was for me to accomplish my work with the same conviction. Even

when producing quality documentaries, it felt inconsistent to contribute to a virtual

faith which I had escaped. How could I contribute to the perpetuation of a system

from which I had freed myself? As the years passed, the feeling of incongruity grew.

Then, one day, I left. Although I had seen television from both the outside as

a watcher and the inside as a producer, I realized that never before had I seen it from a

distance. By separating myself from television, by taking back my freedom, I saw it

from far away. I saw it beyond its pictures.

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 CHAPTER I

A QUESTION OF TIME

“The termite mound of the future terrifies me.

And I hate its robot-like virtue.
I was made to be a gardener.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry1

Whoever we are, whether rich or poor, single or married, young or old,

working or unemployed, woman or man, on the political left or the right, religious or

Atheist, living in the countryside or in the city, television makes no distinction. It

devours time; our time. In 2006, the people of the world watched an average of 4

hours of television per day2.

Most of us have schedules that oblige us to run from morning until evening

and then, when our work is done, we make the choice to sit down in front of a

television set. We complain about there not being enough hours in a day but we

spend the substantive part of what is available to us in front of a screen. Watching

television has become, in terms of dedicated time, the third human activity after

sleeping and working.

Time, one of the most sought after assets of our era, is being eaten up by a

machine. We voluntarily feed the television our free time. We spend our precious

lives sitting in front of an electronic box.

1
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Wartime Writings 1939-1944, Harcourt, 1986.
2
Calculation based on the average viewing time in industrialized countries.

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 Maybe 4 hours of viewing per day does not correspond to how much you

watch: you might be over or under the average. But whatever your viewing habits

are, television is cunning and cannot be trusted. It tries to make us believe that we are

only watching it a little. Too little: there is always another program that just cannot

be missed3.

4 hours per day equals 28 hours per week…

28 hours per week equals more than 60 days per year4…

We work hard so that we can go on vacation – yet the number of vacation days

pales in comparison to the time we spend in front of the television. And it doesn’t

stop there…

60 days per year equals 13 years of our lives5…

We spend on average 13 years of our lives watching television, 24 hours per

day non-stop.

In the space of half a century, television has succeeded in convincing the great

majority of the world’s population that spending 13 years in front of it is a good idea.

If our personal viewing time is less than the average, we might feel reassured but that

does not resolve the problem: television is a chronophage.6 It feeds on our time like

cancer feeds on cells.

Imagine that at the end of your life you had spent 24 hours a day for 13 years

in front of a television screen and that it was neither an obligation nor unavoidable but

your choice. A choice nurtured by the illusion that no better ways existed to entertain

or to inform yourself.

3
To calculate your exact viewing time, attach a piece of paper to your television set and write down the
time that you spend in front of it each day. Do this for two or three weeks, then calculate your daily
average.
4
Once your daily average has been calculated, multiply it by 365 to find your yearly average.
5
Calculation based on 79.15 years as the average life-span.
6
Chronophage: time-eater. From the Greek chrono meaning ‘time’ and phagos meaning ‘to eat.’

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 13 years represents a veritable fortune: a treasure that belongs to each one of

us and that we give away by remaining seated in front of a screen. Try the following:

take a moment once again to imagine yourself at the end of your life. Take back those

13 years that belong to you and imagine what you would rather have done with them.

Something personal, enjoyable. Find a comfortable position, relax, take your time

and have fun: let your mind go and give your imagination the freest possible rein.

Maybe what will come to you will be a personal urge, a wish, a childhood

dream or a long-repressed desire. It could be to play a musical instrument, to write, to

learn the names of plants, to do nothing, to take walks, to learn magic tricks, to

practice all the positions of the Kama-Sutra, to sail, to spend more time with your

children, to rest, to learn a foreign language, to travel, to understand the movements of

the stars, to dance the Tango, to read, to record your memoirs for your grandchildren,

to paint or to do one or more of countless other things. It doesn’t matter: the essential

thing is that it comes from, and is important to, you.

Now come back to the present time. You should have two images in your

mind: one engendered by a life where you stayed seated in front of a television screen

for 13 years and the other of you achieving something – fulfilling personal goals that

came directly from you. Compare these two pictures and see if you can perceive two

distinct emotional states: one coming from an attachment to television, the other

originating from a connection to that which lives in you.

While it is impossible to re-live our lives once they are over, it is possible to

decide today how we want to color the future. No one gets a second chance but using

this little mental exercise can help you make a good choice now.

It is interesting to note that both of these pictures belong entirely to you. They

came from you. In both cases, you produced them. You have seen what no television

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will ever show you: your own vision. This projection exercise reminds us that human

beings can produce their own pictures without the need of a machine. And, as George

Bernard Shaw7 reminds us, “…Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine

what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.”8

Our imaginations give us the ability to travel in time and space, as we please,

and for free: the opposite of television. More powerful than all the television stations

put together, imagination is the number one producer worldwide of pictures. The

pictures that it produces come from the depths of ourselves whereas those from

television are created by others; by people we do not even know.

And while we are attentively watching the television, others are busy

furnishing us with our pictures. There are two reasons why those people have a

vested interest in keeping us in front of our screens:

The first, obviously, is commercial: watching television has a financial cost to

the viewer. The most visible cost is also the least expensive: the television set, the

subscription, possible license fees, etc. The partially visible costs are all the products

that television suggests we buy. The invisible cost is the monetary value of our time.

If one considers in terms of money the hundreds of thousands of hours spent in front

of a television screen, one perceives that television, contrary to what it would have us

believe, is very expensive. We pay for the right to watch it with our time.9

But this financial reason hides another, more subtle reason. While we are

busy watching a television screen, we are not physically implicated either in our own

lives or in the lives of our societies. As such, we leave a void which others, logically,

7
Irish writer, dramatist, theatre critic (1856-1950). Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1925.
8
George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, 1st World Library, 2007.
9
The estimated cost of watching television over a life time is 1 million dollars.
http://www.savingadvice.com/blog/2007/07/17/101625_how-dumping-tv-allow

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fill. Not only do they decide for us what we are going to see but, more importantly,

how our lives should be lived.

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 CHAPTER II

IDEAS THAT COME FROM TELEVISION

“The medium is the message.”

Marshall McLuhan10

By focusing in the first chapter on the factor of time, I described television

beyond its contents. I did not talk about television programs as such. The object of

this book is to show television for what it is and for what it does, to describe its

mechanisms as well as their consequences regardless of the programs that it

broadcasts.

If, however, it should happen that I mention a specific program, it is not to

analyze the contents of that program but to illustrate my remarks about television

itself and how the specificities of television impose certain types of shows and not

others. Even though the debate about the contents of programs has its place, it

cancels the other debate, essential in my eyes: that of the medium by which programs

are broadcast. In this chapter, therefore, I will look at the ideas that are passed on by

television in order to see how they resonate over and above the programs themselves.

10
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man, Gingko Press, 2003.

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Television: an Extra-Ordinary Invention

The viewer and the television

The vast majority of us have a love-hate relationship with television. We love

it almost as much as we detest it. In spite of all the criticisms leveled against it,

television continues to attract a large number of us. Beyond the types and quality of

the shows, all television networks have one goal in common: to attract the largest

possible number of viewers and to keep them in front of their sets. Whether television

is watched on a traditional set or on a computer screen, the objective is the same: to

encourage the viewer to turn it on and not to turn it off.

Thanks to television, many human beings had the opportunity to see Man’s

first steps on the moon. That magic moment established the television as one of the

twentieth century’s great inventions. Yet in spite of all the beautiful pictures that it

furnishes, nothing that one dreams of doing or obtaining comes from staying seated in

front of a television screen. Because a television set is just another piece of furniture.

More sophisticated than others, true, but equally inert. Television viewers spend

hours in front of a piece of furniture.

Even if this piece of furniture broadcasts the most beautiful pictures and

sounds in the world, nothing actually happens to the viewer. He or she might take a

virtual trip somewhere but nothing physically happens: absolutely nothing, except for

the fact of remaining seated. And yet, the work of people who produce television

shows consists largely of convincing viewers that something does happen; something

so important that it simply cannot be missed.

While something important might happen to the cameraman or to the host of

the show, the same is not true for the public who remain immobile staring at a piece

of furniture. The cameraman might have spent a week on the other side of the world

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in order to bring back one hour of useable footage. The commentator is paid a good

salary to give his point-of-view. But the public does not leave on a trip and is not

being paid. It stays seated in front of its piece of furniture believing that it is living

intensely. But only the professionals who make television shows actually live the

event. They are the ones who choose the subject and give it the necessary intensity.

They are the ones who film it, edit it, score it and show it.

Producing a television show is intense. In a minimum of time and with a

limited budget, a team of journalists, technicians, directors, actors and announcers

have to work together to create a show which follows guidelines established by the

network. This ephemeral beehive exists for the sole purpose of producing pictures

that captivate viewers. And other than being captivated, the public does not have an

active experience: it vegetates. It is the professionals who have the real fun, not the

public.

Television wants its viewers to believe that they are in Paris or on a South

Pacific island when, in fact, they are inert in a closed space forgetting that nothing

important happens in their lives while they are staring at a television screen.

Think about all the major events that happened in your life, in the lives of your

friends, your family and in the lives of people whom you admire. How many of them

happened while watching television?

Inversely, you will see that the number of really interesting experiences you

had while glued to a television screen were few and far between.

Even the most passionate love scenes are not those of the television viewers

but of actors who are performing for the camera. Instead of being an actor in one’s

own life, television viewers only participates in the observation of the lives of others.

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 A single human being seated in front of his television set might not seem

significant. But this phenomenon projected to a national or even to a global level

takes on real importance. Television has the power to lull billions of individuals on a

daily basis into a gentle, monotonous apathy.

The television and itself

Beyond its pictures, the literal content of television is electricity. Pictures and

sounds are only end-products that begin with “the movement and interaction of

electrons.”11 Like electricity, pictures and sounds have no actual matter: as quickly as

they appear they disappear. In front of this intangibility, there is nothing for viewers

to touch. They might hold on to a vague memory but nothing solid. Television,

however, has to convince watchers that they are actually in front of something

concrete, otherwise it would lose its credibility. To maintain this illusion, television

pulses with a constant stream of closely-joined pictures that are changed into

sensations by the viewers. It is the reality of these sensations that encourages viewers

to believe that what they are seeing is real.

Whatever the contents of the show, it is this stream of pictures that gives the

illusion of reality, even of truth. As soon as the stream is interrupted, the sensations

evaporate and the illusion disappears. Television, therefore, is continually obligated

to provide pictures that are closer and closer to each other in order to satisfy the

viewers’ dependency.

Television’s obligation to this uninterrupted stream obviates any right to

pause. The worst nightmare for a broadcaster is to have nothing on the screen. The

11
Merriam Webster Online Dictionary: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=electricity

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impact of this technical requirement has repercussions on the content: no hesitation,

never a pause. No program can be constructed from “I don’t know” or “maybe.”

Neither perspective nor whispering has any place on television. When life

demands distance, stepping back in order to see more clearly, television offers only

the pseudo-impression of proximity. Carried along by a permanent flow of pulsating

pictures, viewers are unable to evaluate anything. Compounding this problem is the

fact that television shows only an incomplete, shortened and highlighted version of

life, totally devoid of what makes it so specific, so endearing and so singular to each

one of us. The precision of life, its intimacy and its myriad subtle movements are

banished. Life is represented only by visible action. And the more visible the action,

the more the viewers forget that they are sitting immobile.

As a result of its very mode of functioning, the uninterrupted flow of pictures

and sounds that television is condemned to produce are transformed into a flow of

reductive ‘yeses’ or ‘noes’, each one carrying a supposed truth. And it is not even

important if these truths are contradictory as long as they appear credible. It is this

sense of credibility that gives viewers the feeling that, to a greater or lesser degree,

they understand and are in control of the world. They feel safe and secure in relation

to the unpredictability and the risks of life. Based on its ability to reassure, the

television has quickly become incontrovertible.

But this overly-simplified, uninterrupted stream of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ shuts viewers’

minds in a system that is strictly binary. Without nuance, it eliminates the complexity

of a reflection based on multiple conscious or unconscious parameters. It takes away

the ability to chew over thoughts, to digest concepts; it bans access to new ideas and,

above all, offers comfort in an illusory reality.

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Television: A Window Open to the World

Technical effects

When people go to the movies, they are put into an arranged space and clearly

defined world. Movie-goers have to leave home, travel to the cinema, install

themselves in a public place, watch a movie that begins and finishes at precise times

and, finally, go back home. These actions, as well as another essential element to

which I will return later, create a separation between the viewer and the film.

Television is the opposite. Everything is done so that viewers do not feel any

separation between themselves and what they are watching; between them and the

show. The television set is in their homes, in their private space. It is always

available and it maintains the illusion that it is speaking to them. This latter

difference is one of the major reasons why television and movies are contrasting

media.

Although this book is not a comparative study between television and cinema,

in order to describe the functions of television without talking about the content of its

programs, I am obliged to describe certain cinematographic processes that television

and the movies have in common. But these processes, when used by television, have

a very different impact on the viewer. I am going to explain how television has

turned these techniques to its advantage.

For instance, in life one can never see a moment in slow motion or in fast

forward, brought closer with a zoom lens, suddenly perceived from a different angle

or observed from several perspectives simultaneously. Fields of wheat never have

pretty music underscoring them. When you are in the kitchen in your pajamas

preparing breakfast, the following moment in real life never skips directly to the door

of the office where you work. In television, this is not only possible but it is the

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norm. What is important to the television is the number of technical effects it uses.

Have fun looking for them – camera changes, long shots, tight shots, zooming close-

ups, foreground and background shots, musical underscoring, etc. – and you will be

surprised by how many there are. Looking for these effects while watching television

changes the way one sees the medium: it becomes clear that what captures the eye

first are the technical effects and not the contents of the program.

Any banal or uninteresting story, if it is well filmed and well edited, can

suddenly become very interesting. Editing images in very rapid succession with shots

and reverse-angles, close-ups and rhythmic music gives the sensation that something

is really happening, or that a truth is on the point of being revealed.

Since it is thanks to technical effects that television makes the viewer believe

that something really important is on the point of arriving, television takes advantage

of the only dominion that it has: that of technical prowess. This holds true whatever

the show: the images that glitter so brightly are the outcome of a series of

technological skills. In front of their glass screens, television viewers are like fish

attracted to colored bait. They take big bites, happy to catch food that they think will

do them good.

But television absolutely must hide the hook. It only shows a world in which

watching television does not exist: it would be unthinkable to spend hours looking at

people sitting silently in the act of staring at a screen. This is why the bait, more

commonly called pictures – montages of pieces of life long dead – has to be as shiny

as possible even in the best programs such as investigative reports.

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The Mirage

When a television show is pleasant, one can have the sensation of living a

beautiful adventure. But what sort of adventure? If watching television is considered

to be like living an adventure, it is one without surprises because everything is

programmed. It is, rather, a substitute for adventure. The experience of the world

that the television offers is vicarious. It is an experience that is indirect.

To walk in the mountains, for example, is a direct empirical experience. The

feet perceive the alterations of the pebbly trail, the lungs breath air particularly pure,

the eyes sweep over a large panorama, the skin feels fresh air caressing it, the ears

hear different sounds like the noise of animals anarchically arranged, and the nose

smells diverse odors that emanate from the earth. With the five senses in action, the

walker experiences a profound relationship with the mountains. He develops a link

with them: he bonds to them. By contrast, to watch someone on the screen walking in

the mountains is an indirect experience.

If the viewer manages to forget that he is seated in a room, which more often

than not is darkened, while having the illusion of living an organic experience, it is

because his senses of vision and hearing are strongly engaged to the detriment of the

three other senses. Smell, touch and taste are totally eradicated.

At one and the same, television cuts up and alters the organic experience of

walking in the mountains while amplifying the intellectual experience that comes

from watching it happen. The perception of reality becomes purely mental. That

which the viewer takes in comes from a virtual experience and not from what he

perceives with his body. By projecting a fictitious world, television supplies an

arbitrary reality that most viewers perceive as real – and television does that very

well.

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 Scott, 28 years-old, San Francisco: “One day I was watching a documentary

about Niagara Falls and I realized that TV was making me avoid dealing with life. It

made me believe that I was somewhere, without ever having really been there. So I

turned it off and went out to discover my own part of the country.”

Sitting in front of his screen, the viewer really believes that he has experienced

a walk in nature. Little by little, cut off from his link to life and thrown into an

artificial world, the viewer loses the notion of what is true and false. Little by little,

the television adventure is accepted as a real event, while the organic experience of

life is pushed more deeply into obscurity every day. The distinction between what is

real and what is fiction becomes fuzzy. Soon, the amalgam is inseparable. With

television, the illusion of the experience becomes the experience. There are even

those who end up preferring the experience of nature via the screen than by having it

directly.

These people, when separated from their televisions, finds themselves feeling

bored in nature. In the middle of a wheat field, there is never someone explaining that

a country invaded another country, that an investigation was opened against a

government official or that an unknown actor is going to become a star. No, there is

only wheat in the process of growing…

When he is in this wheat field, the viewer could feel that nature is a place

where nothing ever happens. It is not nature, however, that is too slow: it is the

television that excites his senses non-stop. Cut off from his link with nature, the

individual has less and less respect for it and, as a result, is himself hurt. The wild

aspect of nature and the patience that human beings need in order to cohabit with it

become strangers to each other. In our civilized world of televised beings, the

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formatted and the spectacular are considered the norm. Silence and introspection are

hostile to us; noise and being scattered are obligatory.

Television viewers have become dependant on the rhythm of television to

such an extent that they forget their own biological rhythms when they are away from

their sets. Constantly bombarded by strong and rapid visual and auditory sensations,

they become rapacious, hurried, irritable and stressed in their daily lives. The more

they find themselves faced with the virtual on the screen, the more the reality of their

lives becomes insufferable. It is in this sense, among others, that television makes

viewers aggressive, even violent. Unfortunately, it is less the violence in the content

of certain pictures that makes viewers violent but the mechanism of television itself.

In order for viewers not to realize what is happening, television has to move

faster and faster. In this way, it is comparable to an illusionist whose slight-of-hand

succeeds because the viewers’ attention is fixed on, and distracted by, a single detail.

While the eyes and the ears of viewers are concentrated on this one point, television

has all the freedom it needs to pass-off what it wants. Thanks to the strength of its

technical prowess, which never ceases to be improved upon, television uses a subtle

mix of sounds and pictures to trick us into accepting the illusion that what we see is

special. Just like the illusionist, television does not reveal its tricks because, if it were

to do so, they would lose all their magic.

One can also notice that the technical aspects of television affect the contents.

Because its images are always in movement and there are rapid changes of camera

angles – a typical camera shot lasts between two and three seconds – television is

condemned to address every subject, even the most complex, at top speed. Imposing

a succession of interlocking, segmented ideas at high speed gives the illusion of

profundity. By proposing rapid solutions to human problems that need a certain

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slowness in order to consider them in all their complexity, television cannot but offer

fallacious solutions. It ignores the fact that life is also in the gestation, acquisition,

digestion, reflection, mediation, and elaboration of knowledge. It is also about

relaxation and patience. All these processes necessary for thought are eradicated from

the world of television; all to the advantage of what is immediate. Nothing can defy

the speed of the functioning of television. And to reassure the viewer of its

innocence, the television puts a remote-control into his hand so that he is personally

responsible for the amplitude of the rapid movement. After all, if the viewer is a

participating stakeholder, then the television cannot be blamed. (In the next chapter, I

will speak further about the effects of channel surfing on the behavior of viewers.)

By its simple velocity, television is a propaganda tool. Whatever the show,

television forces the viewer’s mind into a state of too-rapid thought. The viewer,

raised on the speed of television, is condemned to continually live in an excess of

speed. A certain slowness of life as well as the time necessary to discover himself

become somewhat foreign to him.

A stranger in his own kingdom, he takes on the habits and the customs of his

new god. Once the television is turned off, the viewer, who was so immobile only a

quarter of an hour before, feels moved to reproduce the same speed in his own life.

The result of this scenario is that either he never stops, gives his opinion on

everything, does several different things at the same time or becomes discouraged and

turns apathetic.

23
Television Brings People Together

The television bond

Television claims to bring people together. In fact, it shows us people that we

will probably never have the occasion to meet. And, in order to watch them and to

listen to what they say, the viewer has to cut himself off from those who are actually

around him. The more the viewer feels separated from others, the more voluntarily he

returns to sit in front of his screen. The more he feels alone, the more he looks to the

television for the pictures, albeit fictitious, that give him the sensation of having

company. In order to exist, television needs a public that feels solitude. It is the

necessary condition for the existence of television.

This feeling of solitude is constructed in two stages. First, the action of

watching television itself obliges the viewer to isolate himself from his entourage.

Second, this physical isolation transforms itself into a feeling of solitude. Whereas

television makes one believe that it links human beings in the world, it in fact

amplifies their solitude. Television isolates the viewer from the world, from his

friends, his family, his spouse, his children, and also from himself. While he is

watching TV, no one talks to him. Behind the sparkling pictures hides a real, rarely

admitted misery: human solitude.

Maggie, 36 years-old, New York: “Watching television with someone is sad

but watching it alone is pathetic. When I’m alone in front of the TV, I’m more alone

than ever: it turns me into something pitiful. TV reflects the fact that I’m single.

Alone, in front of the TV, there’s no way to avoid it: alone is alone.”

With a background sound track and emotion-inducing visuals, isolation

implants itself in a family’s life. Every day its members become a little more mute

and a little more deaf. People do not talk in front of a television; they do not listen to

24
each other. The television does not allow conversation. For discussions or arguments

to take place links have to be created and television destroys those which exist. And

little by little, the number of television sets in a family increases. Entertainment

becomes synonymous with shunning others.

Television cuts links between individuals; it also succeeds in separating

couples. It manages to make one forget the presence of a loved one by one’s side.

Once impatient to discover or to entertain the other, today we prefer to look for

someone in a virtual world or to be entertained through a screen. By taking this path,

we know details about the lives of television stars better than the details of those who

are close to us. Loved ones become strangers while virtual people on television

become friends.

Vanessa, 35 years-old, London: “Watching the telly together is boring

because nothing happens between us. We don’t talk and we don’t make love any

more. I had a chap who spent all his time in front of the telly and never took care of

me.”

In its need for the public to feel isolated, television distorts human relations

and hurts social life. Rather than learning to really know each other, each social

group sees the other through the prism of a screen. If it is not particularly easy for

different social groups to live together, the absence of communication makes it even

more difficult. By using a screen to separate groups within populations – rather than

inter-mixing them so that they can learn about their differences and than encouraging

them to know each other better – television destroys social connections by making

each social group individualistic.

Watching television puts one in a sort of bubble in which other people no

longer exist: the relation with the other is eradicated. People are thus obliged to

25
ignore those around them and their natural environment and to prefer a relationship

with a machine. Hence, human beings no longer have the pleasure of seeing what

they have in common.

Once the viewer is isolated, television has to inconspicuously replace the

solitude with a connection to it. The more an on-screen personality masters the art of

creating a feeling of closeness with the viewer, the more he is rewarded by both the

viewers and the network. The more warm-hearted the connection is, the more

successful the program is. This has reached the point where the quality of this virtual

connection predominates to the detriment of the show’s content.

Although television does not speak to anyone in particular, it needs to make

the viewer believe that it is talking to him individually. He has to, in effect, feel a sort

of ‘presence.’ The more he believes that the show’s announcers are with him in the

room and speaking to him, the more he feels important; the more he has the feeling of

existing. Television does everything it can to give the viewer the impression that it is

speaking directly to him, that it worries about him and that it is bonded to him through

friendship. The more the viewer has the feeling of having friends on the screen, the

more he stays in front of it.

The television series Friends is the best example of this. The friends make us

believe that they are our friends. “I’ll be there for you ‘cause you’re there for me,

too”12 they sing to us while the credits are rolling. We are pleased because they are

funny and lively and make us laugh. But they are not really there, in our living

rooms, having fun with us. Once the program is finished, we find ourselves alone

again without our friends. Since we then feel a slight emptiness, we unconsciously go

in search of new friends in another program. We attach ourselves to the warmth of

12
Original text taken from the song “I’ll Be There for You” by The Rembrandts; played during show
credits of the program Friends.

26
our friends and it is completely natural that we want that to happen again. We don’t

realize that these friends are not our real friends.

Our virtual friends don’t phone us to invite us to come over for a drink. When

we are not feeling well, we cannot call them for help: they are indifferent to our health

problems. These friends have nothing to do with us. The actors who are in this series

live their lives without sharing anything of ours. Not only aren’t these friends in the

same room as us but, on top of that, they would not want to be in the same room as us.

They don’t even know that we exist. If we died tomorrow, they would not even

notice. It is at the end of the program, when we turn off our sets and look around us,

that we finally see the truth: our friends are not there but the four walls that surround

us certainly are.

If television does its job well, the viewer will believe that he is seeing real

people on the screen. But those whom the viewer adulates are, like the viewer, cut off

from any interior life because they are, in fact, only performances. They are only

there to entertain us. Like puppets, they all have well-defined roles to play: one is

there to make us laugh, another to make us cry, the third to pass on information, etc.

Glued to his television set, the viewer forgets that life is only woven from the

meetings with others, with oneself and with the invisible. Television stops all of those

from happening. Instead of taking the risk to get to know the other – whether a child,

a culture or one’s own family – the viewer hides behind a screen of pictures,

persuaded that he is meeting the world. None of the couples I know met in front of a

television set.

By stopping him from expressing himself, from showing his worth and from

taking risks, television habituates the viewer to the absence of communication that

makes an intimate relationship with another human being difficult if not impossible.

27
 Sophia, 41 years-old, Rome: “I stopped watching television because I felt

like a prisoner. I had the feeling that I was a slave: I couldn’t turn it off and do other

things. I felt cut off because no one on the screen gave me a chance to talk. I

couldn’t express myself. I was completely frustrated. (…) I didn’t feel alive.

Television is really far from being interactive. I didn’t feel that I was participating in

life. I was receiving without the possibility of giving. Maybe TV can give me things

to think about and, later, something to talk with someone about and exchange ideas

with them. But that’s far from what was happening in my life. (…) I felt like I was

spending the evening with someone who didn’t listen to me. When I took

responsibility for that, I found it pitiful.”

Television thought

Even though there are lots of different networks, television is monotonous

because, in order to be accepted by the largest possible number of people, it diffuses

ad nauseam ideas that have already been accepted by everyone. It continues to gently

rock each viewer in his contented, general state of napping. All truly new thinking is

subversive to the world of television. Without realizing it, watching the little screen

condemns the viewer to be a receptacle for old, widely disseminated ideas and thus

forbids him knowledge that is innovative.

To keep viewers from noticing, television has to invent ‘falsely new’ concepts

like “reality shows.” But nothing different happens to the viewer who still has to

come back and, machine-like, sit down in front of a screen. There is absolutely

nothing new about putting oneself in front of a machine every day but the viewer is

reassured because he is constantly seeing new pictures there. Because the pictures are

28
constantly changing, they satisfy the viewer. He no longer sees that they are repeating

the same idea, a single thought: television thought.

Instead of letting the lives and realities of the world’s 6.5 billion people enrich

humanity by sharing their different points-of-view, television offers the same type of

pictures to everyone.

To encourage all its viewers to think the same way, television saturates them

with ideas that are not their own. By doing so, it condemns diversity and, above all,

asks everyone to be like everyone else. It causes the loss of personality, family

characteristics, local customs and regional cultures. Uniformity of thought is the

order of the day. Whatever the pictures are that it broadcasts, everyone has to watch

television. The result is that everyone is imitating his neighbor.

Television: Source of Information

Information and disinformation

Thanks to television, the monopoly of sources of information by the powerful

has been broken. Today, any viewer can access the same information as a Chief of

State. But what kind of information?

In its non-fiction programming, i.e. news coverage or documentaries,

television wants us to believe that it is showing us reality. Because of its technical

obligations, however, it does not show us an event as it really happened. There are

certain manipulations: the cameraman chose to film in the most visually spectacular

way, the director selected the shot that best reflected his point-of-view, the pictures

were edited in a non-chronological order (in the cutting room, the objective is to

prune the story to intensify it) and text or music was added to create a sense of drama.

29
The goal: to make the most compact story possible. The result: the story that is

broadcast does not reflect reality but only its montage.

Television acts like a gigantic microscope: it only lets one see an exaggerated

picture. It is this concentration of exaggerated pictures that, when put end-to-end,

give news coverage the illusion of truth. It is, in fact, only an altered reproduction of

a small part of the reality.

Even if everyone were intellectually aware of this state of affairs, it is

impossible to be conscious of it in front of each picture – especially if the pictures are

charged with emotion. It is in this way that television very largely differentiates itself

from other mass media.

Rather than warning the viewer about its machinations, television plays on the

power of illusion that it has over the viewer. Before diffusing a news report or a

documentary, it never says, “You are going to see some images. But be on your

guard: you will only see an alteration of part of the facts.” Instead, it says implicitly,

“Thanks to me, you are going to see what really happened.” Once the report is

broadcast and to maintain the illusion, no announcer says, “What you have just seen

wasn’t reality.” Rather, he says, “These images clearly show us that…” The next

day, what the viewers say about the news reports proves that they were convinced

they saw the reality of the story.

Television never promises to put the viewer in the position of an observer with

sufficient distance to objectively analyze what he sees. To the contrary, it sweeps him

along by what it shows him. In a program director’s ‘best of worlds,’ the viewer must

not be aware that he is seeing through the tiny opening of a screen. The viewer has to

experience the program as if it were real; as if the event had happened in the next

room.

30
 News coverage, therefore, creates a new reality made up of pictures gathered

left-and-right, edited in a certain order and commented on according to a pre-chosen

point-of-view. In passing this off as reality, television lies. Worse, because it mixes

elements of reality into a fictional soup, the television assumes the right to present it

as if it were real. By imparting minimal fragments of truth, television provides itself

with a clean conscience and the right to proclaim: “In truth I tell thee.”

Television cannot risk taking the time to show events as they really happened

for fear of being boring. That is another reason why television always has to bombard

viewers with pictures more shocking than the preceding ones. It is even the reason

why television is lively and can captivate the viewer’s attention. This mode of

functioning obliges it to simplify and deform everything. In this sense, viewers only

receive bits of information which put them on the wrong track.

These fragments form a single collective awareness imposed by only a few

people. It is the television, therefore, that decides what the public should think or, at

least, in which direction it should be oriented. Television only wants us to

understand a tiny part of reality. It says only one thing, “If you really want to

understand, come back and watch me tomorrow.” What television forgets to point out

is that tomorrow it will say exactly the same thing. And this famous, perpetual

tomorrow will never come…

Viewers are disoriented in two ways: first, the technical specificities of

television simplify the information transmitted; second, absorbed by the screen, we

don’t access that information that comes from a relationship to ourselves; an interior

insight unique to each of us. But to be revealed to us, we have to pay attention to this

personal information, so much more subtle than televisions’. We are cut off from our

senses by the pictures that television broadcasts which stop us from perceiving a

31
much higher quality of sensory information that our interior world offers to us each

second. Today, as it did yesterday, as it will tomorrow.

The consequence of this sensorial disconnection to ourselves is that we

apprehend the world as a virtual universe. On the screen, forest fires do not burn and

violence does not hurt. Thus, since neither fires nor violence reach us physically, they

become unconsciously acceptable.

This disembodiment puts us on a path where the road signs are false. We are

reassured because we are moving forward and, what’s more, the landscape is passing

by at a rapid pace but what we do not see is that we are going in the wrong direction.

Television functions in the following manner: broadcasting throughout the whole

world, it participates in the acceleration of a non-specific race going in the wrong

direction. That is where the machine is insidious and cunning. We end up by

accepting the alteration of truth as being the truth; sometimes even knowing that we

are doing it.

To well and truly hide this dysfunction, television makes its representation of

truth the most spectacular possible. The more impressed the viewer is, the better it

works. At the risk of losing him, television must be absolutely sure that its pictures

are stronger than the viewer’s immediate sensory landmarks.

From a purely visual point-of-view, what functions the best are spectacular

pictures: they grab the viewer and are simple to understand. For example, groups of

people who confront each other, natural disasters, despairing families and cars

embedded in each other, all these offer a “visual payoff.” These types of picture stir

up emotions a lot more readily than landscapes, mountains, wheat fields at sunset or

chickens incubating eggs. Pictures of peace and serenity do not catch the eye as much

as pictures of violence and hatred. That is a primary reason why television only

32
shows a certain type of human relation: the rawest and the most visible, i.e. conflict.

It is not about filming just any kind of conflict: the more violent the better the picture

is. Whether the conflict is between two people, two groups or two countries, it is

visually stronger than peace.

To keep the viewer’s attention, the television-machine cannot allow itself to

show the more subtle, more interiorized forms of human relations. For all types of

television programs, producers and directors systematically choose the pictures that

have the most impact. On television, all anti-social attitudes – violence, hatred, anger

or destruction – go over a lot better than serenity, humility or peace. It is simply that

these latter qualities sell less well. Their “visual payoff” is not profitable. In terms of

television, a “negative” picture contains much more force than a “positive” one. An

earthquake is a lot more interesting that a sunset.

Detail does not go over well on television whereas what is heavy and non-

specific does. This explains why television is a media of the sensational, of the big

spectacle. This is also true of sound: whispering and pauses are not possible and the

only thing that counts is tumult and noise. (When one takes the time to listen to the

television without watching the pictures, one notices the pattern of loud sounds. It is

gripping!)

It is easier to show love as pornography, which is more easily visible, than in

its emotional states. In a general manner, feelings that do not have an immediate

visible corollary are not “televisual.” Friendship, tranquility, well-being and

compassion appear quite pale in the face of animosity, agitation, suffering and

competition. Television, to the detriment of subtle pictures, condemns itself to

broadcast strong and superficial visuals. Television prefers action to contemplation,

quantity to quality, speed to slowness, vulgarity to subtlety and visible to poetic.

33
Although commonly blamed on the programs, it is television itself that obliges its

content to be violent and not the reverse.

Interpreting the news

The gloom and doom that television emphasizes provoke an unconscious

anxiety in the viewer that he believes will diminish by watching more TV. The

viewer’s fear of life, therefore, is due less to violence in the world than to his

perception of it. By watching television, he condemns himself to bathe in a

perspective of life that is dark, violent and pessimistic while being unable to analyze

the mechanisms by which he arrived at these feelings. The viewer accepts his

perception as truth and, even worse, as a social model. It is this pessimistic vision

that informs what he thinks, what he talks about and on which he constructs his ideas

about life.

By staying immobile in front of so many negative images, the viewer is

physically conditioned to be apathetic. If these images seem insoluble to him, it is

first and foremost because the television formats him to stay inert. When he returns to

his daily life, he has the tendency to keep his learned behavior: to face problems by

grinning and bearing them. The more he watches television, the more he forgets that

he can take action.

By explaining to the viewer all the dangers that exist in the world, television

increases the viewer’s already existing worries – we are, after all, human beings and

prone to existential questioning. Television, therefore, makes people scared. It

diffuses its pessimistic diagnoses in a specific jargon. Little by little, the world

becomes a place where it is better to not venture. “Since the world is dangerous, why

34
bother? Better stay home, safe and warm, and watch me,” it whispers to the viewer’s

unconscious.

How many of us have asked ourselves why there is no positivist television that

lets viewers see life with hope and gives them the desire to act? Why does this not

exist? The answer is sadly evident: if the viewer feels hope and is prompted to act in

the world, he will no longer be a television viewer. But what television wants at all

cost is for the viewer to stay in front of his screen. It avoids giving the viewer reasons

to act. To the contrary.

Distilled drop-by-drop, worry becomes the basis of our behavior. And if bad

news makes the viewer anxious, it also has another advantage: it encourages him to

come back the next day to see whether things have gotten better. In this sense, bad

news functions much better than good news, which has exactly the opposite effect.

Once resolved, the viewer can forget about the problem: it has been dealt with.

Reassured, he can go about his businesses, engage in life and forget about television.

The other reason we see nothing but conflicts and problems on television is

because they are easier to film. For one thing, they already exist in quantity whereas

the solutions, often still at the idea stage, are fewer and much more complicated to

show.

If television informs, it is primarily to subtly deform the judgment of its

viewers in such a way that they react like a herd of sheep rather than as individuals

endowed with free will. The reason is because television does not want its viewers to

be free to act. Free, they risk not coming back to sit in front of their screens.

Karl, 21 years-old, Berlin: “Rather than sitting in front of my TV powerless to

all sorts of misfortunes that were going past my eyes, I preferred to do a Red Cross

training. At least then I better understood the stakes. And, if I’m faced with a

35
situation, I can do something to help rather than reproduce a television viewer’s

attitude; meaning watching without doing anything.”

Television Makes People Passive

A television viewer glued to his screen could be accused of passivity, but that

would be inaccurate. For a long time, it was believed that the television viewer was

totally passive because he neither moved nor even fidgeted. But this passivity is only

partial: to watch the screen the viewer has to produce an immense effort to remain

motionless. Yes, he is immobile; but not passive. To the contrary, his participation

consists of mobilizing all his attention and neurons to receive the messages coming

from the pictures and sounds on the screen. This concentration produces such an

important strain on the viewer that it replaces his natural movement and the

spontaneity of his life.

For instance, television has the particularity of not allowing eye movement. In

daily life, in order to gather up the infinite pictures that life sends it, the eye moves

constantly but in front of the television the eye has to stay completely immobile; even

to the degree that the viewer, mesmerized, manages to forget his body. Only the

inside of his head is solicited. With his intellect involved and cut of from his body, he

finds himself in a state that otherwise only hypnosis13 induces. More than that, cut off

from his animal ability to see and to the detriment of his health, the viewer takes in

large doses of artificial instead of natural light.

Sitting in a comfortable position, the viewer does not feel hypnotized but,

rather, entertained or informed. He does not feel his immobility because he is

13
“Hypnosis: An induced sleeplike state in which the subject may experience forgotten or suppressed
memories, hallucinations, and heightened suggestibility. (The American Heritage Dictionary, Third
Addition, Dell Publishing, 1992, page 412.)

36
hypnotized by constantly moving pictures. Identifying with them, he can even have

the illusion that he is moving.

Television does not make people active but neither does it make them passive

in the classic sense. When, in his session of hypnosis, television asks the viewer to

come back to see it again the next day, it does not induce the viewer to act passively

but, rather, submissively. Filled with pictures, persuaded that he has lived an intense

experience, not regretting the real experiences he is not having, he voluntarily returns

the next day.

Television: an advertising propaganda tool

A television network is a business like any other in the sense that it tries to

make money. Its income is derived from fees paid by its real clients: the sponsors.

These latter pay for air-time so that they can promote their products. As an example

of these fees, one 30-second slot of advertising on TF1, the leading European

network, costs between 70,000 and 118,000 Euros, depending upon the day of the

week and the time of day14.

The fundamental criticism made about television is that its programs taken as

a whole act like sheepdogs that drive flocks of viewers toward green advertising

pastures. And, once happily installed there, the flocks – watched over by the vigilant

shepherd, i.e., the network director – graze tranquilly on their daily content of

advertising.

This criticism is not false but, by concentrating uniquely on this one point, it

stops one from seeing the heart of the problem. What is more, this recrimination

14
Source: TF1 Advertising Costs, March 2007.

37
serves those who want the criticism of television to stay narrowly focused on

advertising. The reason for this is because it allows them to avoid a debate on the real

issue.

The former President and CEO of TF1, Mr. Patrick Le Lay, is one of those

people. In 2004, he said, “Let’s be realistic: underneath it all, TF1’s job is to help

Coca-Cola, for example, sell its product […] But for a commercial message to be

perceived, the viewer’s brain has to be available. It is the job of our programs to

make it available: meaning to entertain it, relax it, and prepare it between one ad and

the next. What we sell to Coca-Cola is the time that a human brain is available.”15

Mr. Patrick Le Lay is an intelligent man. He knew very well that his remarks

would provoke lively reactions. And that is exactly what happened. Yet, in spite of

all the criticism he received after his remarks were made known, a few months later

he persisted in a manner that seemed suspect: “The logic of TF1 is a logic of power.

We sell a mass audience to our clients; a number of individuals open to watching a

commercial. For the announcers, air time only represents ‘contacts with clients;’

[i.e.] human attention.”16 His hidden goal was to encourage people to continue

believing that the criticism of television should focus solely on the aspect of its

advertising

Feeling insulted, French television viewers condemned Mr. Le Lay not

realizing that he had made his comments only to reinforce the belief that advertising is

the number one enemy. It is essential that everyone keeps thinking that advertising

reduces the public’s mind to a subconscious murmur, “I’m afraid. I don’t have

enough things to reassure me. I have to have more things.”

15
The Associates of EIM, Les Dirigeants face au changement. (Trans: Directors Confronted with
Changes). Ed. du Huitieme Jour 2004. Topic taken up by the Agence France Presse, July 9, 2004.
16
Télérama No. 2852 – September 9, 2004.

38
 Mr. Le Lay is a man of television; he uses the same techniques as it does.

Like television, he indicates a direction to us but it is not the right one. The most

important problem caused by television is not that it advertises to us without our being

aware of it. Focusing on this single issue prevents us from seeing the reality of the

television phenomenon which is elsewhere and much deeper.

Television has devoured the space that was created by all those who fought for

the freedom of expression. Now that it is well-entrenched, it claims to be all heart

but, in fact, it has stifled off all freedom of expression worthy of the name.

Everything that is shown on its screen must first be approved by it.

Television thus established a tele-centric social system – i.e. one that is

centered on the television – because it now considers itself the center of the world.

This notion of being at the center is a sole way of thinking that looks for ways to bring

everything together according to audiovisual criteria. These, then, become the norm.

And everyone has to conform to the television’s norms.

Television has to preserve its audience but, above all, it has to negate

individual personality. It discourages all non-televised individual experience and

replaces it with a false, televised, collective experience that it says is the truth.

Television, considered a window open to the world is, in reality, blocked by opaque

shutters.

The root of the problem caused by television, therefore, is one of

individuation, which is defined as the fact of existing as an individual, distinct from

others17. In other words, by pushing us to stay in front of it, television hinders our

17
Individuation: the act or process by which social individuals become differentiated one from the
other. In Jungian psychology, the gradual integration and unification of the self through the
resolution of successive layers of psychological conflict. The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

39
individual freedom. It is a machine that stops us from becoming ourselves. If one

cannot become oneself, what kind of life remains for us?

Television Calms and Relaxes

One of the important beliefs that television maintains is that it relaxes. If one

believes that one relaxes after turning on the television, it is only because of its

capacity to anesthetize one in terms of life’s worries. Yes, in front of the television

one forgets daily hassles. But how does it make one forget them?

Do we know the exact impact of television on our brains? For example, if we

try to erase the picture of a famous news anchorman from our minds we realize that,

even with the best will in the world, it is impossible. Try it and you will see. His

picture stays in our memories because it is stocked there, just like the most personal

childhood memories.

Whereas our memory uses a method of natural selection, the television repeats

pictures so often that they impose themselves without this process. That is why a

picture of a famous anchorman lives in us without our having chosen to memorize it.

Reading or playing sports is relaxing at the same time as being fortifying. But

because of its technology, television excites, tires and weakens. That is why it is not

relaxing. After having turned it off, one feels emptier than before having turned it on.

One feels a diminished power of concentration, a feeling of emptiness and a sensation

of lethargy. If television relaxes the brain, it is only to subjugate it; i.e. to make it

submit and, finally, to subdue it.

“What is in our heads? Are they our memories or memories that come from

television pictures? Is our imagination the result of our lives or is it pictures that the

television has made us ingurgitate? Does our existence result from imagery implanted

40
artificially by television or are we still the masters of our thoughts?” It is not in the

television’s interest that these questions be asked. It prefers that the public continues

to watch it without knowing the importance of its impact on the brain.

Numerous in-depth studies have been done on the neurological effects of

television beginning as early as 1968 with the sociologist Marshall McLuhan in

Canada and, subsequently, taken up by other researchers including his son Eric18 who

confirmed the following to me:

• A television screen gives off bright light which is sent towards the eye. But

human beings are not made to receive light directly in the eye. Rather, for the eye,

light should be perceived indirectly, by reflection. We cannot look directly at the sun

or even at a light bulb. In this way, a movie house, contrary to television, offers the

spectator’s eyes a picture that comes from an indirect light source: the light from the

projector is situated behind the spectator and is not projected directly into his eyes but

onto a screen.

• The light that the television sends directly into the eye is a blinking light, a

sort of scanning light of the stroboscopic type, which projects 25 frames per second.

• In contrast to a movie house where the screen is the target of the projection,

the television screen emits a beam of light that targets the human eye. Whereas at the

movie house, by virtue of his position, the spectator is an observer physically

detached from the picture, it is the opposite with television. The television viewer is

physically engaged with the picture since his eye, towards which the ray of light is

sent, plays the role of the receptor of the bright signal. Whereas at the cinema the

visual experience of the spectator is external and, therefore, detached, in front of the

television, the “participation” of the viewer is total because the experience that he

18
Eric McLuhan, sociologist.

41
feels through his eyes is internal. Television thusly provokes a sort of immersion of

the viewer; in front of it, the viewer is completely absorbed.

• Light projected by the television directly into the eye causes activity in the

brain’s left hemisphere to diminish which benefits the right hemisphere and thus

provokes a neurological anomaly.

• The television has the tendency to produce a sleep-mode in the brain similar

to a hypnotic state; the symptoms are common to both.

• The sleep-mode of the brain obtained by watching television reduces the

viewer’s capacity to interact with the exterior world.

• The reduction of brain activity puts the television viewer into a hypnotic

state making him receptive to the exterior influences of the content of the pictures.

Not surprisingly, the results of these studies, which are taught at the University

of Toronto, Canada under the name “Fordham Experiment Program,” are not brought

to the awareness of the greater public.19

Although television has existed for more than 50 years, as of today no

government has begun national research to study the neurophysiologic effects on

television viewers. Without the results of such a government-financed study,

television will continue to affect our brains without us being consciously aware of it.

Since television is present in almost every home in the world, we, the citizens, are

unable to know the exact effects on the most fragile among us: our children.

19
Other studies that were done will be brought together and discussed in another book.

42
Summary

But before addressing the television’s effects on our children, here is a

summation:

- By over-developing two senses and annihilating three, television makes one

sensorially crippled. The good health of a human being requires a proper

balance between all the senses. One cannot be fully present in life unless the

five senses are functioning together and equitably.

- The television shrinks the field of vision, limiting a view of the world as

blinders do to a horse. Television shows so many pictures that viewers no

longer perceive anything.

- Television impoverishes the mind. Instead of opening the mind towards the

infinite possibilities that life offers, television closes the mind in a single way

of thinking.

- Television paralyses by making one immobile. By contrast, life is made up of

movement.

- Television weakens the imagination by substituting its own pictures for those

that are evoked, for example, by a book.

- Television weakens the brain. Its pictures leave a mark on the mind but do not

oblige the mind to do anything like, for example, the work of reasoning or

deduction: everything is pre-chewed.

- Television stops communication between people who live together.

- Television weakens the body because it asks that the viewer stays immobile.

A body is in good health when it moves.

- Television cripples the viewer’s eyesight by immobilizing the eyes. Whereas

the eye is made to move and to see in three dimensions with varying

43
 intensities of light, the television only offers two dimensions, a barely variable

light and a screen that makes the eye shapeless.

- Television cuts one off from oneself. By overwhelming the viewer with

sounds and pictures, it cuts him off from listening to himself and, thereby,

makes it impossible for him to be in contact with his interior richness and to

know himself.

- Television eliminates a human dimension because of its inability to put

anything in perspective: everything is close and flat. A human being without

perspective is in danger.

- Television reduces one’s vocabulary. The number of words used by television

is constantly going down and replaced by pictures that shock, short phrases

and rapid explanations. Whatever the subject, in order to be more efficient,

the same words are repeated over and over again.

- Television paints life in gray. The weather forecast is gloomy and the stock

market is gloomy. The choice of vocabulary serves the television: everything

is gloomy except, as if by coincidence, television itself which is always

exciting, in good form, entertaining, on time, colorful, glittering, cuddly, rich,

sportive, interesting…

- Television hypnotizes. It isolates, gives advice and decides. The exchange of

ideas, willpower and freedom are challenged.

- Television does not authorize any spontaneity. It does not allow an immediate

reaction. The viewer must stay seated, without participating.

- Television separates. It shuts the viewer in his home and stops him from

going out. If his friends come to see him, he cannot talk with them because he

is busy watching the TV.

44
- Television destroys love. It cuts the bonds of love between men and women

but, more generally, the bonds of love between human beings and the essence

of life.

45
 CHAPTER III

TELEVISION AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL

“Childhood has its ways of seeing,

thinking and feeling that are its own;
nothing makes less sense than to want to substitute ours.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau20

Among the people I met when writing this book, children and their parents

were those who touched me the most. Mostly in France but also in Asia, Europe and

the Americas, I shared moments with them, both without a screen and with one. I

observed children who did not watch television, those who watched it a little, and the

others.

Even if some of the effects of television that I just described act as much on

adults as on children, in this chapter I want to emphasize certain ones which

particularly affect children. As much those who grow up around us as those who we

once were…

Television and parents

Today, in most cases both parents work to provide for the economic needs of

their family. When they go home, maybe they do not have the time or the energy to

be with their children. For them the television is a useful tool. In effect, whether

children watch their favorite shows on a computer or on a television set, they remain

quiet. This gives adults the time to organize family life or to have a moment to rest.

20
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, or the New Héloïse (1761), Dartmouth College, 1997.

46
The television could seem like an appropriate solution to the parents’ overloaded day.

But this is only an appearance.

Slowly but surely, television insidiously takes the place of the parents. The

child, who in the past needed a parental relationship, now prefers to spend more time

in front of the screen. As a result, parents have difficulty controlling the amount of

time their children spend watching it. They are deposed in the role of their children’s

educator, which works in favor of the television. As a result, the children no longer

participate in family life. In comparison to what the television infuses them with, they

find family life uninteresting and they rebel. From that point on, parents have

enormous difficulty regaining the territory lost to the television. It deprives the child

of his parent and parents of their children.

A child in front of a television screen resembles a zombie. His eyes fixed, his

mouth agape, deaf to what one says to him; it is as though he were in another world.

He remains quiet and, as such, the television does its job as baby-sitter. But it is a

heavy price to pay because the child who spends several hours in front of his set

becomes capricious. Television’s virtual world provides a ton of emotions, as many

as he wants and without any effort. The real world, however, obliges him to accept

constraints, efforts and limits which do not inevitably lead to immediate intense

emotions. Frustrated to find himself in real life from which, for hours, he had

escaped, the child is grumpy, acts out and either has no energy or is over-excited,

sometimes to the point of being aggressive. More often than not, no one, including

the child, knows why.

Television does not tell parents about these collateral effects. To the contrary.

Historically, once television has taken on its role as a baby-sitter, it establishes itself

as an educational tool which then reinforces its position in the center of the family.

47
The parents, now happy to have a sort of educational assistant, find yet another

comfortable reason to leave their child in front of the tube. What they do not grasp is

that television cannot educate their children because it takes them away from the life

of the family and makes them unprepared for the subtleties of communication.

Children, who are easy targets, are deeply affected by programs aimed at the

lowest common denominator. But the television-machine, even armed with its best

programs, cuts children off from two vital relationships: with their parents and with

themselves. This act of separation is never addressed by those critics who comment

on the contents of television programs. They do not talk about the direct effects of the

television-machine on children and, thus, they shroud the real problem: the isolation

of children in front of a machine, regardless of the program. Although equally true

for adults, the effect is much more negative for children because of their relative

fragility.

Jordi, 54 years-old, school principal, Barcelona: “Children believe that if

something is shown on television it has the approval of responsible adults who

monitor what is broadcast and, therefore, that its contents are of a high quality.”

The education paradox

For the great majority of children, the principal activity of their lives, other

than sleep and school, is to be in front of a television screen. Seated in front of what

is only a machine, they find themselves, like adults, cut off from the empirical

experience of events. Like adults, the acquisition of information that nourishes them

is mechanized. But children are adults in the making and do not receive the pictures

and the sounds in the same way because adults already possesses a real experience of

life. While a child is constructing himself, he receives a multitude of virtual pictures

48
and sounds that subtly interpose themselves between him and his first-hand learning

experience.

All children have to deal with the same difficulty: to adapt to the world and

find their place in it. On the one hand, parents send a child to school to give him a

good education while, on the other, they sit him in front of a machine. At school, by

mixing the child with others, he is being prepared to become a citizen of the world

and is given an opportunity to find his place in society. In the opposite way, spending

hours in front of a screen cuts the child off from all relationships with others.

Television reserves him only one role in the heart of society, that of an apathetic

observer. It separates him from social life. On top of that, children unconsciously

feel that an interesting and exciting life is reserved for others: to those who are on the

“inside” of the screen. In his position as viewer, the child unconsciously perceives his

place in society, both for now and in the future: on a folding seat in the last row, cut

off from the world, a stranger.

The adult who, as a child, was nourished on television has great difficulties in

establishing complex human relations. Television does not teach that the key to

success in life is human contact. Personal encounters are what are fulfilling. One’s

capacity and sensibility in human relationships is what makes one’s life rich, whether

it’s an emotional, professional, familial or social life. These qualities are not learned

in front of a machine but by playing, by confronting difficulties, by talking, by

listening, by experimenting or by building something with others. Television

maintains only illusions; those of so-called relationships that propel children into an

autistic world.

Children who watch television develop a certain form of infirmity: speech

atrophy. The impossibility of expressing one’s ideas while in front of the television,

49
coupled with the absence of listening to others, makes the child a stranger to dialogue.

His acquisition of language no longer comes from his relation to other people but

exclusively from listening to the television spout.

A child has to learn to listen to what he feels so that he can express it. He

should also learn to listen to the needs of others in order to understand and respond

positively or negatively to them. But, with its incessant brouhaha, television makes

all listening impossible because the noise of television covers up silence. And

without silence, no listening is possible.

From the television’s perspective, the ‘other’ does not exist as a functioning

person since he is only a viewer, mute and immobile. If the ‘other’ does exist

somewhere, it is only as a picture since all movement and speech come from inside

the screen. The television is only a picture addressing itself to another picture.

Although television does everything it can to make it seem the opposite, nobody

really addresses himself to the viewer. The TV does not actually speak to anyone in

particular but, rather, imposes the same thoughts on everyone and, thereby, reduces

each viewer to an object. No interaction, therefore, is possible. For children,

dialogue, the source of all human exchange, is reduced to nothing. Without it, the

child no longer knows how to express himself. If it is true that the complexity of

human relationships makes certain exchanges difficult, the absence of dialogue opens

the door to all sorts of misunderstandings or conflicts.

The language of television

To reassure themselves, parents put their children in front of programs made

for children. But by watching only programs for children, the child only hears a

language for children. Even if they do not understand everything being said, children

50
need to hear the language of adults. It is a way of speaking that is distant from theirs

and also varied and rich. It is this discrepancy that encourages children to learn the

language of adults. By speaking like children, programs for children do not

encourage anything; they leave the child with his prattling. And, while the parents are

busy, the television is speaking non-stop to the child. If the television expresses itself

in place of the parents, children learn the dialect of television. This becomes their

mother-tongue and the way their parents speak to them appears like a foreign

language.

Language is also learned by reading. But compared to television, books seem

dull: they are silent and their pictures are motionless. Sometimes there are not any

pictures at all. Between reading a book and watching the television, the child

systematically chooses the second option. Reading demands an effort whereas

television does not. The effort required by reading pays off: a developing vocabulary,

the ability to reflect, use of imagination and the capacity to synthesize. The

prostration required by television costs: autism, the absence of imagination and

depersonalization.

The effort needed to read develops patience as well as a commitment that puts

the child in an active relationship to the book. In effect, the child chooses his way of

reading: the speed, the rhythm, with or without interruptions or whether or not to re-

read a passage. Reading is organic because it is the child who acts whereas the

television is mechanical because it has to be watched at the speed that it imposes and,

in most of the cases still today, at the times that it dictates. Confronted with the

television, the child submits.

51
 Speaking, reading and writing are the products of both learning language and

also knowing how to align words with thoughts. Watching television does not require

any skills.

If a child does not master his native language, whether in its spoken, read or

written form, that child will suffer the day that he wants to study something. At that

point, he has no choice but to concentrate and learn. Those who learned language by

speaking, reading and writing have an enormous advantage over those who begin

their studies after having been raised by the television. Since reading and writing are

keys to success at university, these latter children have a serious handicap. Even if

they do not go on to higher studies, this decline of language touches all of us to

varying degrees. It goes hand-in-hand with the development of a television society.

Without words, without dialogue, without reading and without writing, illiteracy is

not far away.

Television: a rite

During the tens of thousands of years since leaving the caves, human beings

have struggled to improve themselves and to make things better. Our present society

is the first in the history of civilization to systematically put its children in front of a

regressive machine.

Carolina, 36 years-old, Buenos Aires: “In the morning, I felt overwhelmed by

things I had to do. I thought my daughter could have her quota of cartoons and, at

the beginning, I got what I was expecting: a TV tray, corn flakes, her mouth open,

frozen in front of the TV… She was like that for ¾ of an hour. It was better than a

hug for her and I had some peace.”

52
 The ancestral rites that used to help children pass from childhood to adulthood

have been progressively erased from our societies. These rites consisted of a voyage

to the interior of the soul. Organized by the whole clan, they permitted children to

understand that forces bigger than their parents existed. Realizing this encouraged

them to de-sanctify their parents, to reach autonomy and, thus, to become adults.

Thanks to its multiple pictures coming from other worlds, television also de-

sanctifies parents. In doing so, it presents itself as a modern rite-of-passage.

However, instead of offering a new horizon where children can blossom, it confines

them: physically confining them in a room and psychologically confining them by

stopping them from seeing or hearing the depth of their souls.

If there is no longer a real rite-of-passage, it is also because there is no longer

anything to pass through. All passages demand movement and the immobility in front

of the screen forbids that very thing. For television, a child no longer passes from one

place to another. First, the child comes from nowhere: for the machine, his place of

origin doesn’t matter since it broadcasts the same program whether in Europe, Asia or

the Americas. Second, there is no longer a place to go. When television shows the

child different regions – landscapes and worlds different from his own –being only a

television watcher, he is not included in them.

Attracted by the light of the screen, the child resembles an insect at night in

front of a light bulb. Blinded by the twinkling light, he can neither see the subtleties

of social interaction nor the richness in life’s details of. Indeed, his gaze leads him in

only one direction: fixedly toward the screen.

Carolina, 36 years-old, Buenos Aires: “… Afterwards, I got angry because

she stayed like that - her mouth open with her cereal getting mushy in her bowl -

although she had to get dressed, brush her teeth, comb her hair… but nothing

53
happened! At the end of ¾ of an hour, she was so frozen in front of the TV that she

had a magma of milk- soaked cereal that she wasn’t able to eat. She hadn’t eaten

anything.”

The wiring of the brain

When a child, frozen in his position as spectator, watches a program, he is

being educated not to react as himself. This is true in front of all shows, including

educational programs. In fact, if the child is inert, the word “educational” seems

dubious, even erroneous, because education demands experimentation and learning at

one’s own natural rhythm. But television does not encourage life experience. The

pictures, the sounds and the ideas are absorbed by a child while he sits there,

paralyzed. Even an educational show teaches apathy – whereas life demands

commitment and sometimes confronting adversity.

To smell, to touch and to taste nothing remain the only learning processes of

life that television offers a child. And yet, the brain of a child is ‘wired’ by touching,

tasting and smelling as well as by all the other bodily experiences. To be curious

with one’s body, to use one’s hands, to recognize smells, in short, to act summarizes

all learning by any child. Without this wiring, a child develops a modern and subtle

type of disability.

To see the effect of television on the brains of children, look at the following

drawings that Dr. Winterstein, a German doctor, asked 6-year old children to make.

The first page comes from children who spent less than 1 hour per day in front of their

sets; the second was drawn by children who spend more than 3 hours watching.

54
55
56
 Manfred Spitzer, neurophysiologist and medical director of the hospital in

Ulm, Germany explains, “… that a brain doesn’t correctly impregnate itself with

those things that it discovers by means of several senses; that is to say hearing,

seeing, sense of smell and touch. And, from this point-of-view, the television is a

much poorer source of information than is the real world.21”

A child needs to coordinate his mind with his body. It is necessary that he

learns to react to the world that surrounds him. He constructs himself by tactilely

rubbing up against life. Here he understands that it burns; there he finds a thing cold

or soft – thus, little by little, he knows how to defend himself. Whereas a child has to

identify his emotions in order to master them better, through television he

experiences, virtually, an avalanche of them. From the moment that the child believes

the avalanche is normal, he let’s himself be carried away.

In front of the television, he will let himself be much more captivated by his

emotions. It is there he feels he is in total safety actively discovering the world.

What he does not grasp is that he is living a simulation of reality without taking any

risks. But living infers exposing oneself to risks in order to obtain results.

What adults do not see are the consequences of assimilating a simulated

reality. The more hours a child spends in front of the television, the more static there

is between virtual and empirical reality. A child develops the tendency to become an

idle spectator of life unfolding around him rather than plunging into it, arms wide

open. The most difficult consequence: the fear of meeting life, which inevitably

requires leaving one’s comfort zone. These children, who become handicapped adults

21
Die Welt, May 2006. Manfred Spitzer is the author of Vorsicht Bildschirm! (translation: Attention:
Screen!), Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, 2006.

57
learning how to confront life ‘on the job,’ easily become sheep. They are

dispossessed of the tools that are essential for owning all their power. Their

fundamental learned behavior is to withdraw. Thus, each becomes solitary, with few

social concepts. Their attitudes will barely be those of a citizen: on the one hand inert

in the face of life, on the other locked in their individual bubbles. These two

dehumanizing characteristics are the foundations of constructing a-social beings.

A real education gives individuals the tools that make them stronger, that help

them better know and develop their interior qualities. ‘To be’ and ‘to have:’ the role

of adults is to teach children the essential difference between these two concepts. The

television does the opposite: its function does not help a child to know himself and,

consequently, does not encourage him ‘to be’. It thereby obliges him to root himself

in the ‘to have’ by developing a lust for material goods.

The world of the child is disappearing

When children are away from their television sets, they play and become,

according to their imaginations, firemen, astronauts, princesses or pirates. They go

from one character to another, effortlessly leaving a world they created to enter a new

one with the ease that many actors would envy. When these children play space

heroes, they really become space heroes. They interact with other children. These

imaginary escapes are essential for development. By going on round-trips between

their imaginary and real worlds, they organically learn the limits of both worlds.

Television does not allow them to do that. By imposing a multitude of pictures on

them, it stops children from producing their own pictures. Above all, it saturates

them with a virtual world. The consequence is that they have no way to externalize

58
unconscious fear or anger through play. They therefore store these emotions,

accumulating them through the years until one day they explode.

Thus, television destroys children’s play in several ways: physically by

paralyzing them and psychically by imposing its own forms of entertainment. But

play is to children what professional activity is to adults. Without it, children shrivel.

Play to a child is the exploration of two worlds: the interior and the exterior. But it is

also learning social codes as well as the recognition of the other.

Gaëtan, 38 years-old, clown, Paris: “The more the years pass, the more I feel

that children are becoming sad. They lack purpose; they’ve become soft. (…)

Children don’t play anymore. When children repeat adult concepts and words they

see on TV, I feel they’re sad. Children don’t have imaginations anymore. As a clown,

I can’t transform myself into a TV screen or video game! With TV, kids have seen

everything. In their heads, they have it all. They become rude, arrogant and even

mean.”

Television programs for children are obligatorily produced by adults. The

programs come from the professional world of adults that imposes itself on the

playful world of children, a world that is reserved for them and that adults, instead of

invading, have a duty to protect.

It is notably thanks to play that a child perceives that he has a particular talent

and a unique manner of expressing it. To the contrary, a child sitting in front of a

television set sees all sorts of pictures without any one of them revealing to him his

own worth. As a consequence, his natural curiosity is directed towards the same

pictures that all the other children see instead of the treasure that lives in him. Even if

a child has an idea of his innate talent, not one television in the world gives him the

possibility of expressing it since television constrains him only to watch. The Swiss

59
psychologist Jean Piaget22 confirms the importance of play in the life of a child by

writing, “Play is the most authentic expression and the most efficient learning process

for the child23.”

It is thanks to the identification of his own interior resources, then applying

them, that a child acquires confidence in himself. It is thus that he becomes

autonomous. In the opposite sense, by showing him pictures that do not directly

concern him, television cuts him off from himself. A child who loves to draw or to

put his hands in the dirt does not progress and does not explore his talents if he spends

his time in front of a television. In that case, he ends up forgetting his abilities until

he is no longer even interested in what had animated him only a few months earlier.

He ends up no longer having confidence in his capacities. A child without television,

however, has much more chance to be confident in himself and, therefore, in life. A

child who is nourished on television has the opposite reaction. The former has his

own centers of interest. The latter, his talents sickened, is raised to be dependent on a

source exterior to himself to stimulate him and to make him happy. He gets bored

easily. If one places a child in front of a television in order to have peace and quiet,

one puts him, above all, in front of a machine that will make him dependent on it.

Without any doubt, in so doing, one creates a real problem for oneself – because

managing a dependent child is anything but restful.

It is difficult enough for a child to find his rightful place in the world and,

when his is older, to discover a direction for his life. But adding a source of

confusion such as television makes it even harder. Television’s pictures of artifice

and reality are so intermixed that it is difficult for a child to separate them. For

instance, having watched a lot of documentaries about swimming, a child who is fed
22
Jean Piaget was the founder and director of the International Center of Genetic Epistemology from
1955 until his death 1980.
23
Naissance de l’intelligence chez l’enfant, Delachaux et Niestle, 1992.

60
on television will believe that he knows everything about the subject – but the day the

boat sinks, only the child who really learned how to swim will get out of the

predicament.

The appearance of a culture of violence

Television eliminates striving from the child’s personality. Since he

continuously receives pictures without having to lift a finger, he imagines that it is the

same in life. Television teaches him immediate satisfaction and instantaneous

pleasure. Pleasures that come as rewards of effort are foreign to a child who has been

brought up on television.

The only course of study that television offers is idleness. The distraction that

television imposes on a child kills his capacity to entertain himself. Moreover, once

the television has been turned off, a child who has been raised on television continues

to demand entertainment whether at school or in his family. Formatted to receive an

entire range of strong emotions without moving, he quickly becomes impatient when

he has to make an effort. He knows that efforts do not always produce immediate

emotional satisfaction.

For example, a child who regularly swallows thousands of pictures ‘down the

hatch’ will rebel when confronted in class by teachers who oblige him to concentrate

on a precise subject. Used to glitter and non-effort, a child nourished on television

defies a teacher who asks him to apply himself.

• Compared to a machine that fills a child with intense emotions, school is

perceived as slow and boring.

• Compared to a machine that provides immediate feelings, a teacher is a party-

pooper.

61
 • Compared to a machine that gives solutions, finding them oneself seems like a

waste of time.

Accustomed to surfing to a different channel as soon as a program does not

please them, children who do not like a class mentally turn off their teachers. If

children act-out and the teacher tries to straighten-out the situation, one of the options

available to the student is to resort to violence – verbal and sometimes physical. In

that case, violence does not come from a particular television show but from the

machine itself.

The consequences

Unfortunately, violence is not the only consequence of the effect of the

television-machine on children. A child behaves in multiple disorderly ways in front

of the television-machine without really knowing himself why he acts in that manner.

Below is a list of reactive symptoms identified by parents, teachers and school

principals in children who have spent long hours in front of their screens. Even if

these symptoms might also exist in children who do not spend lots of time in front of

their sets, they appear in a much more general and spontaneous way in children who

are fed on television.

62
 Symptoms and Consequences of Being Fed on Television

Aggressiveness

Attention deficit

Boredom

Chronic distraction

Dependence on others

Deterioration of social life

Difficulty in concentrating

Difficulty in following instructions

Difficulty in having fun by oneself without television

Difficulty in listening

Fear of the other

Feeling of being alone

Forgetfulness

Heightened emotionalism

Hyperactivity

Impatience

Impossibility to finish work or a job

Inattention

Incapacity to stay in one’s place

Instability

Intellectual laziness

Lack of organization

Lack of respect

Looking to be taken care of

Low self-esteem

Perpetual criticism

Rapid mood change

Responses not related to the topic

Weight gain

63
 Irene, 46 years-old, English teacher, Dublin: “When I used to give tests, the

children wrote in silence. Today, tests are impossible for some of the children; not

because of the difficulty of the questions but only because the silence is too painful for

them. It is a new phenomenon and when I ask a little about it I learn that the kids in

question spend hours in front of the TV and, therefore, in constant noise…”

A child perceives the television as a sort of representation of unconditional

love: whatever mood he is in, the child knows that he will find comfort there. Sad,

tired, happy or angry, the television accepts him. Whether he is badly-behaved or

well-behaved, the television gives him everything he wants. Take away the television

from a child and you will hear him scream like a baby whose mother is taken away

from him.

A child perceives the television as a good mother: always available and,

whatever happens, she will always feed him. A child has no reason to do anything to

change that. To the contrary, like a baby bottle that never empties, the television

allows him to suckle on pictures as much as he wants. Happy to be abundantly

nourished, the child feels protected. He feels safe: he can watch the whole world

without it doing him any harm. In this state of bliss, the child does not realize that the

nourishment is poisonous. Television acts like a bad mother; one who is all-

powerful, omnipresent and who smothers her child.

The child will grow physically but not emotionally. Instead of growing up,

the child regresses. His personality erased, he will have little will-power except for

watching even more programs.

The regression of a child who has been nourished on television will show its

real face when the child finds himself suddenly alone in front of himself. Having the

habit of listening to a television instead of his own conscience, he will find himself

64
totally without resources. Atrophied, he will turn in circles, roaming without a goal,

cut off from his being. He will not know what to do with his free time, will not

recognize his own needs and will feel empty and lost. Confronted with these feelings,

he will only have one solution: to return in front of the screen or, maybe, to look for

other stimulants or anesthetics…

He will never get out of this situation because television is not going to let go

of a good thing. It is always going to be there, ready to tell him what he should do.

Its goal is to get hold of the child in the cradle and not let go, following him like a

shadow until his death. It wants children, future adults lacking individuation, to

organize their time not in function of their own tastes but in function of its wishes.

In 2006, Babyfirst TV was launched: the first network dedicated exclusively to

children aged 6 months to 3 years-old. That television stops children from growing is

one thing, but it does not stop there. Infantilism also touches adults because TV

glorifies a world lived in by semi–adults.

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 CHAPTER IV

TELEVISION AS ENTERTAINMENT

“By seeing less, one imagines more.”

J.-J. Rousseau24

Television offers so many pictures that it gives the feeling of freedom:

freedom to choose what one sees and also what one feels. But this feeling of freedom

is nothing more than a sensation and there is a price to pay for children as well as for

adults. The price is one’s individuation.

The weakening of the senses

Television is all about weakening. In a consistent manner, television viewers

live by proxy: instead of expressing their ideas, playing sports or leaving on a trip,

they see someone else acting on their behalf. They do not live through their actions or

their volition but through those of other people. As a result, they get soft and their

psyches weaken. Less and less capable to deal with reality, they lose the capacity to

get in contact with it, to confront it and to react to it. This weakening puts them in a

vicious circle: aware of their weakness, they look for a way to avoid their realities

instead of confronting them. They watch more television because the virtual picture

is much easier to manage. Whereas life demands that one constantly be responsible

for one’s words and one’s actions, television frees one from this constraint.

24
J.-J. Rousseau, Letter to. d’Alembert and Writing for the Theater, Dartmouth College, 2004.

66
 This false sense of freedom is the great tragedy of the television era. It is a

tragedy because this mirage of freedom brings atrophied people to the fore. Let me

explain. If the television viewer unconsciously thinks, “Everything is okay: I don’t

play any sports but someone does it for me”, it’s only about athleticism. The

television viewer weakens himself only physically. But if one considers that it applies

equally to mental sports, like expressing feelings, having integrity, getting angry or

having empathy, then television’s weakening capacity takes on much deeper meaning.

The outcome of this is the emergence of beings who are cut off from a part of

themselves.

When, for example, the television viewer sees someone on the screen fighting

for a cause with which the viewer agrees, he is pleased. But beyond his satisfaction,

his capacity to express with vehemence, eloquence or integrity something that shocks

him is anesthetized. It is as though his satisfaction at having his unarticulated ideas

expressed gives him permission to be in a state of silent paralysis. And in this

condition, the television viewer lives by proxy. He amputates his capability to say

who he is. There resides the problem: to watch television often consists of living

through others who represent different parts of oneself - with all the dangers that that

implies.

By articulating our ideas for us, television separates us from the fundamental

need of self-expression and lets others say what we cannot say for ourselves.

It is human to look for models to attach oneself to. As a boat at night needs a

lighthouse, an individual needs landmarks in order to move forward safely. Today,

due to the overproduction of shiny pictures, true models are becoming invisible.

Apparently inexistent, they are, nevertheless, present but too often looked for in

television. But television does not propose models that allow people to grow. Rather,

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it offers anti-models: false heroes who stop viewers from individuating or from

becoming heroes in their own lives.

Kevin, 19 years-old, Los Angeles: “Instead of showing me how to express

what’s in me, TV makes me feel that I’m not as good as the clowns on the screen.

What’s important is for me to be who I am. That’s the only way that I can shine and

maybe get a girl who sees me and not an image.”

As well as erasing his personality in favor of picture-based heroes, the

television viewer annihilates himself with regard to other television viewers.

Although it separates everyone, the television provokes a phenomenon akin to a mass

movement since hundreds of millions of people watch it at the same time. It is this

mass movement that creates a second essential rupture in the viewer: he follows the

crowd instead of the life in himself.

Contrary to what television wants us to believe, the viewer has the keys in

himself to unlock his personal problems. To be in contact with himself and to express

what he feels in an accurate way give him an excellent basis on which to act. This is

as true for seeing what he should do as for having the energy to do it. Inversely, to

identify himself with a television model, gives a false image of his personal vision

and provides no energy to put it into action. In the former case, the result is a sort of

excitement: a mixture of a feeling of well-being, freedom and a certain joy of life that

should be our natural state. In the latter case, the television viewer always has the

impression of a discrepancy existing between his surroundings and him. The

excitement that he feels is due only to the absorption of pictures and quick sounds that

give him the illusion of being in the former category. In the long term, out of this

discrepancy between his world and himself is born a sort of unease that he feels

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without knowing how to explain. That ‘un-ease’ could, in some cases, become a ‘dis-

ease’.

What is more, by watching television the viewer compares, consciously but

above all unconsciously, his internal state with the external aspect of the people that

he sees on the screen. He always comes out the loser from this comparison because

the screen always shows something better than his interior state. Thus, he develops a

feeling of dissatisfaction. On a grand scale, the general dissatisfaction of our society

comes in large part from this effect of “superiority” of the televised picture.

From there, television takes away the viewer’s possibility of having a feeling

of gratitude for what he has as well as for what he is. This generalized dissatisfaction

of life creates a real social emptiness. Whereas deep fortune resides in the

appreciation of what one has and what one is, the public no longer perceives life in its

bountiful aspect but, rather, only sees its reductive side and feels a void. Without

knowing why, the viewer finds himself constantly frustrated and greedy.

Often unconscious of this frustration, the viewer searches consciously for

ways to satisfy it. Like a bulimic who eats too much to satisfy what he lacks

emotionally, the viewer turns back on the television that repeats the subliminal

message, “You cannot count on your own resources to resolve the problems that

overwhelm you. Stay inert, watch me because I, I hold the answer. You can find it

here, hidden somewhere. If you stay in front of me long enough, you will have a

chance to discover it…” In front of his lit screen, the viewer in search of what he

lacks never finds it because what he lacks has to be found inside himself.

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The perception of reality

Television is a collective representation to the detriment of a personal vision.

It unburdens the viewer of his responsibility to take possession of his own personal

perception of things. In this sense, television pictures are without real solutions, in

total rupture with a real human vision that is intuitive and imaginative.

On a daily basis, the great majority of people speak not of their own ways of

seeing things but, rather, of what they have seen through the prism of television. As a

result, they are striving in a television construct, reductive and closed. They forget

that the intuition of a single person can be much more accurate than the limited

projection of television.

The solution to a problem often comes from a new way of seeing it because,

by perceiving a question from a different perspective, one understands it. It is the

change in the point-of-view that is the key to a resolution. By always imposing the

same angle of view – a televised perspective created by others – television obliges

viewers to always address problems in the same way. This, then, cuts them off from

the possibility of finding their own solutions. In this sense, the word ‘screen’ –

meaning “a partition used to […] provide concealment25” – has great significance.

The viewer cannot have an accurate vision of life when looking through a screen.

Han Lee, 54 years-old, Hong Kong: “By wanting to explain to me how life

works, TV is no different than a small child trying to teach me astronomy…”

Television: generator of emotions

A director creates a show to produce an effect. His pictures are filmed in a

certain way, edited in a precise order and sped up or slowed down to surprise,

25
Oxford Dictionaries: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/screen?view=uk

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frighten, sadden, revolt, excite, etc. The bigger the effect is, the more the viewer feels

that he has lived something intense and the more alive he feels.

But in fact, the contrary happens: the viewer is less and less alive. He spends

more and more time being moved by television pictures and less and less being

moved by his own, non-screen generated feelings.

While life asks us to unify our mind and our body so that they are one, the

general idea of television is to separate them. The viewer’s body is inert and under-

exposed whereas his mind is busy and over-exposed. This is because all television

experience exists in the viewer’s mind and is predetermined by the director.

Disconnected from their bodies, viewers develop the habit to be connected to a

source exterior to themselves – to pictures on the screen – in order to feel emotions.

As a consequence, they become dependent on television not for the pictures that it

shows but to feel the emotions that it generates.

Ingmar, 43 years-old, Stockholm: “I started to be suspicious of the TV the day

I understood that, because of its capacity to distract, it had eradicated the feeling of

sadness from my life. Not that I wanted to be sad, but I wanted to feel the whole

range of emotions that life put at my disposal. TV bans sadness and wants me to be

glassy-eyed and happy.”

Although the viewer believes he is finding answers in the pictures he sees on

television, what he really is looking for, in a totally unconscious way, is to experience

feelings at a much faster rhythm than he feels them in his daily life.

This is the reason why the viewer is subjugated by television. And not only is

he subjugated but he participates in his own enslavement. No one else turns on his

television set for him. He is like a prisoner who every day voluntarily shuts himself

in a cell to which he holds the key.

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 The circle has closed: the emotional void that television creates, it proposes to

fill by supplying the viewer with new emotions. Its emotions.

That explains the reason why, in spite of decades of continual criticism about

its contents, television continues to attract the world with as much success as it always

has. As opposed to other media, such as the written press or the radio, television

alone makes its public totally dependent: once turned on, it is difficult to turn it off

even when the show is over. The emotions that television generates are so strong that

it is difficult to detach oneself from them. The viewer believes what he sees, not

because the pictures are true but because the emotions that he perceives are real.

Those responsible for television networks know this all too well. Moreover,

they pay a lot of money to those who master the art of provoking the right emotions;

those emotions that incite the viewer to believe what he sees, to stay in front of his set

and to come back again.

Although this dependence is invisible because it is only mental, it is easily

spotted. The effect is that, instead of being free and autonomous, the viewer has to

place himself in front of a screen. In the past, he had to be physically present in a

room; today he is offered a double feeling of freedom because of the portable screen.

The result is the same: he has to return regularly to a screen whatever kind it is. He

has no other choice if he wants to feel the emotions on which he now depends.

Television and addiction

Regularly turning on a screen to obtain an agreeable sensation is a repetitive

behavioral symptom. It resembles another: that of searching for a substance to alter

one’s mood. Whether it is the alcoholic going back to his bar, the drug addict going

in search of his fix or the television viewer regularly installing himself in front of his

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screen, one - like the other - constantly reproduces the same behavior. This repetitive

conduct shares a common goal: to feel the world in a way that is different from what

daily life offers.

The television, however, does not engender a chemical dependency therefore

it is not considered a drug. Available at home 24 hours a day at a price defying all

competition, it obviates the need to obtain one’s fix by searching dark streets for a

dealer. But the evasion that television offers strangely resembles what is proposed by

drugs: they both provide an escape that can be reached without moving from one’s

sofa.

Televised picture are intangible and are not, therefore, ingested like drugs.

One neither smokes them nor swallows them. One does not sniff them or inject them.

One only watches them. If one puts aside the notion of a chemical substance,

television and drugs share an aspect in common: addiction. In this sense, drugs and

television have two identical characteristics: one is to artificially change mental

perceptions; the other is to generate addiction to a virtual world. Consumed in all

legality, television is socially accepted. However, that does not make it any less the

source of a virtual trip taken daily by a whole society – ours. In doing so, this society,

whether it accepts it or not, is becoming addicted.

When the television viewer stops watching his television, he feels a void. This

emptiness is created by the absence of the emotions generated by television. It then

transforms itself into a feeling of solitude, of boredom but also sometimes of

withdrawal. When the viewer feels these different disagreeable sensations, he is

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addicted to television in order to no longer feel them. He is addicted in two ways: for

the pictures it produces and, above all, for the emotions it generates26.

Disconnection with oneself

I define addiction as the difficulty one has living by oneself thus engendering

the need for a crutch or external approbation. By imposing itself as a must in the life

of the television viewer, television obliges him to use it like a crutch. Fitted with his

crutch, the viewer cannot run properly. He is driven to live as if he were crippled.

Crippled of his talents. In this sense, television cuts him off from his particular

aptitude, unique to each individual. It makes him forget that his role on earth is to

express his talent. It cuts him off from the possibility of being happy and satisfied

through the manifestation of what lives in him. More than that, it stops society from

benefiting from those talents. It is not about being famous; it is about the specificity

proper to each one that asks nothing more than to be born. Television obstructs its

coming into the world. It stops the individual from knowing what his uniqueness is

by covering it with a layer of pictures that make even its conception impossible.

Lacy, 6 years-old, Sidney: “I don’t watch a lot of TV because if I do I can’t

stop. I say, “I’m going to stop” but I watch another cartoon and then another and I

can’t stop. Then I get tired and I don’t want to go outside. Instead of watching TV, I

draw, color, and play with my friends.”

Television demands a real commitment from the viewer: that he concentrate

on something false (i.e. that is not coming from him) while being persuaded that what

he sees is his truth. In so doing, television cuts the cord that links him to himself by

annihilating an essential talent of the human being: attentiveness.

26
Another more esoteric theory that, to my knowledge, has not been proven, suggests that the eye’s
absorption of photons coming from the TV screen is comparable to the absorption of a “substance.”
This ocular absorption could induce an addiction.

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 Attentiveness comes from a mind in a state of wakefulness, on the watch, not

from a machine that makes the mind flicker rapidly from one emotion to another.

Attentiveness is a subtle mix that unites concentration, introspection, curiosity,

vigilance and care. Inattentiveness is the source of misunderstandings and accidents

whereas being attentive allows one to seize good opportunities; something commonly

referred to as luck…

Silence vs. noise

Silence is a necessary condition for attentiveness. Unfortunately, the noise

produced by television has totally eradicated the art of listening to silence. Without

this listening, the human being is debased because it is precisely in silence that the

soul reveals itself.

If it is extremely difficult for someone to cope with silence, it is due to the

belief that silence is filled with emptiness. That is a false belief. It comes from a

mental construct that speaks to us in a twisted and sometimes repetitive manner. This

mental construct commonly rejects what it cannot grasp. De facto, it denies reality.

The reality is that silence is full and passionate. Hiding in the silence is the

immensity of life, infinitely bigger than any single mental construct. To a greater or

lesser degree, we are all victims of this.

It is interesting to note that the strategic imperatives of this mental belief

system – (1) obsessively affirming its identity, (2) compulsively seducing, (3) denying

the existence of others, (4) refusing inner silence – are the same as those of television

– (1) permanently affirming that it is incontrovertible, (2) spending its time seducing

the television viewer with the goal of increasing in importance, (3) annihilating the

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television viewer as an autonomous individual, (4) eradicating silence from its world

by broadcasting continuously.

If one transposes our natural need for silence to music, one sees that notes of

music need silence between them in order to form a melody. Without silence, there

are no notes. Without notes, no melody. Without melody, no harmony. Neither in

music nor in life. Silence participates in the harmony because it is the breathing of

the soul. Television is the loss of silence. And the loss of awareness.

The art of surfing

By stuffing him with sounds and pictures, television emotionally stimulates

the viewer. But it stimulates him while demanding him to stay calmly seated. Thus,

television has created a new type of individual: the over-excited apathetic.

Surfing is the best example of this state. Atrophied, the television viewer does

not look for a sense to what he sees but, rather, for a form of rapid mental excitement,

i.e. any emotions that allow him to feel something pleasant without him physically

moving. Surfing functions like concentrated television: it permits the viewer to

change the world instantaneously if it does not please him. It transforms the viewer

into a capricious child who zaps the world according to his desire.

Ahmed, 47 years-old, Cairo: “Surfing totally destroyed my ability to

concentrate on any one thing. I was all over the place. I spent hours in front of the

TV without seeing anything. I was over-stimulated by all the pictures. Afterwards, I

had to wait at least an hour before I could go to sleep.”

Far from his television, the indoctrinated over-excited apathetic viewer carries

this attitude with him everywhere. He looks for immediate pleasure, does not ask too

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many (or any) questions, uses a minimum of effort and the least personal investment

possible, has no or very little awareness of the consequences of his acts…

In front of his television and subsequently in his life, the viewer will have the

habit of running after an illusory picture. And this race reassures him. He will have

the feeling of controlling something. But by surfing from one picture to the other, he

will never have access to what he really searches for and that only a relationship with

a living being can give him. The television is only a machine and, as such, it will

never be able to offer life’s magic. It is merely an excess of the superfluous and the

absence of the essential.

Television and ethnocentrism

Television reinforces an egocentric vision of the world: everything turns

around the watcher and nothing can exist independently of him. For instance, on

television, birds fly for the pleasure of the watcher’s eyes. They never fly

independently of his regard. It is impossible to imagine television accepting the

autonomy of life without defining it according to its own point-of-view. In this sense,

television has created an ethnocentric society of viewers who are becoming more and

more egocentric.

By only showing a world exterior to him, television unconsciously reassures

the viewer. It comforts his mental belief system by showing him that the problem is

always somewhere else. In doing so, it proves to him that problems are always the

fault of others. If television accuses a viewer, it is another viewer, never the one who

is watching. If it criticizes itself, it always criticizes another channel, never its own.

Television never explains its own harmful effects concerning its functioning as

a machine. It induces the viewer to believe that everything that happens to him is,

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above all, not his doing. Not only does it not encourage self-criticism, it accustoms

the viewer to place the fault on others. Too absorbed by the screen, the viewer never

has the opportunity to evaluate his beliefs and, above all, like television, he never

questions his own actions.

Accustomed to receiving everything without moving, he allows himself to be

unconcerned with questions of integrity by saying to himself that what he does has no

consequences. After all, every day the television shows a world so horrible that his

in-action is a lesser evil. He finds it normal not to keep his word. But this attitude is

exactly what our world suffers from. It suffers from a collective lack of integrity:

people do not do what they say and do not say what they do. Television cannot

jeopardize encouraging the viewer to question himself because it risks losing him.

What is more, television is Machiavellian enough to send an unconscious

message like, “You, the viewer, I love you and all your unhappiness is caused by

others.” The result is that with television we are building a society in which no one

wants to question himself or accept responsibility for his acts: it is always someone

else’s fault. Little by little, the ‘other’ necessarily becomes the enemy…

Entertainment or diversion?

Television labels itself as a means of entertainment. The French philosopher

Pascal, in Pensées27, defines entertainment as “the means by which we turn away

from ourselves, that stops us from looking at the reality in front of us.”

Although it is natural to distract ourselves to decompress from the pressures of

daily life, television organizes entertainment as a never-ending flow. This constantly

drags the viewer outside of himself by turning him away from his reality. Cunningly,

27
Blaise Pascal, Pensées (trans. Thoughts), Penguin Books, Ltd., 1995.

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television takes our own healthy and natural need for distraction and amplifies them

to unnatural proportions. Above and beyond its contents, television entertainment

becomes a tool of separation from oneself and a dangerous tool of propaganda.

Television propagates diversion as a way of being. As far as television is concerned,

‘to be’ is to avoid oneself.

As we saw in the case of children, television represents a sort of inverted

initiation rite. Instead of putting each person in phase with himself, television turns

the individual away from his own truth. What is more, it obliges him to endorse

someone else’s.

Television urges us to believe that it is not possible to cope alone: that it is not

possible to live without it or without what it shows. It obliges us to believe in it. To

believe in television’s pictures induces us to not believe in ourselves. But the power

of each individual comes from a dimension so strong that we are neither able to

imagine it nor see it. Our real potential is in us. Our personal life consists of

harnessing this potential and seeing how it echoes in our surroundings. Television

serves to distract us from this potential; to not see it. Thus, television makes us

modern but impoverished, idle, cut off from ourselves, without our potential realized,

addicted to pictures and addicted to the emotions that they generates. It contributes to

the creation of addictive personalities.

Bandar Singh, 58 years-old, New Delhi: “Televised norms are a substitute for

your own ideas: you see things that everyone believes in and you try to imitate them

rather than having faith in yourself.”

Whereas life demands that one looks for one’s center and finds what gives

one’s life sense, the television un-centers us. It is, therefore, non-sense.

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 Developing our potential is good for us whereas television makes us believe

that its contents are what we need. There is, therefore, a conflict of interest. By

developing our own potential, we are in contact with our internal richness. What is

more, when we realize our potential, we are in tune with ourselves and we very

quickly become subversive with regard to the messages that television transmits.

Television: spiritual disease

But televised blindness does not stop there. While the television screen only

shows a small, distorted, visible side of life, life encourages us to discover and to

identify the many mysteries with which it abounds. The modern comforts from which

we benefit are the result of the interior visions of human beings who came before us.

By obliging us to concentrate our vision on what is visible and reductive, television is

a sort of false prison with only a single bar which the viewer keeps sitting in front of

and staring at…

Even if life allows us to explore and discover its mysteries, it also forbids us

access to certain information, to certain values that are sometimes considered sacred.

In its willingness to show us everything, television stops the viewer from recognizing

and accepting the existence and the place of the invisible and truly sacred.

For example, television eradicates the night from our lives. Instead of

welcoming its appearance, we fight against it with the glittering lights, noise and

pictures on the screen. We no longer look at the stars because we are hypnotized by

the other kind of stars. We look elsewhere, toward another twinkling. Television’s

radiance wipes out the one from the cosmos. What is more, it eliminates even our

smallest contact with the cosmic immensity and, thus, our acceptance of our real place

in the universe. In other words, the stars make us understand that we are not the

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center of the universe whereas television places us there. We are a magnificent link

between the infinitely big and the infinitely small while not being the center of either.

With its overdose of pictures, television stops us from accepting the invisible

immensities that surround us. By wanting to show everything, it refuses the invisible,

the miracle of life, the world as a magic and sacred place. That is what television

truly cuts us off from. Television cannot talk about the sacred because it does not see

it. The sacred is not a part of the televised world and, as a consequence, is no longer a

part of our world. Franz Kafka wrote, “You do not need to leave your room. Remain

sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and

solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice; it

will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”28

No television, no screen in the world, can grasp this dimension. The television

stops us from seeing the beauty of the invisible and the incomprehensible side of life:

what makes it inexplicable. Life is a truly sacred gift. It makes us a woman or a man

according to its will and that then takes us back again without our being able to

choose the moment.

Life is also the myriad galaxies that surround us, a tree that grows, the billions

of tiny atoms that make up our bodies, the heart of our planet and the price of gasoline

that keeps going up. Television only talks about the price of gasoline because that is

all it can show. As a result, our vision of life is reduced to only that. The more we

push aside the vision of the sacred, the more we do ourselves evil. The sacred has to

stay invisible. That is its place. By making everything visible, television makes it

disappear. No one, neither you nor me, can see the invisible or what gave us life. We

came into the world without the ability to imagine what it was like before and what it

28
Franz Kafka, The Collected Aphorisms, Penguin Books, Ltd., 1994.

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will be like after our existence. The human being’s task is to live with total respect

for this mystery. To accept the sacred in life is to honor it. The invisible world is

unacceptable to television: because it will never be able to show it, it prefers to

destroy it.

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 CHAPTER V

OUR RELATIONSHIP TO TELEVISION

“You should be the change that you want in the world.”

Anonymous29

Eleven years ago I decided to take my life in hand. I did not know that this

path would oblige me to regain my freedom from television. I ignored the notion that

this re-conquest involved choices. The ones I ended up making came from me just as

yours will come from you. But if you have been responsive to the different arguments

developed up to this point and if you wish to know what can be done concretely, I

have written down some ideas that have come from diverse testimonials as well as

from my own experience.

Freedom from modern slavery

If a television channel tethers the viewer, in order to free himself from his

chains he must free himself from his addiction. This involves turning things around:

he has to find a new behavior that will break the television chains that hold him.

Changing the television program is a false discussion. The solution rests in changing

the program of your day.

29
Gandhi is often credited as being the author of this quote but no written proof exists. According to
Peter Ruhe of the GandhiServe (http://gandhiserve.org), Arun, the grandson of Gandhi, could have
been the origin of this error by attributing this quotation to his grandfather.

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 The difficulty, or even the incapacity, to break the habit of television proves

one’s addiction to it. Not to be addicted to television means that one can easily do

without it. For certain people, not watching television demands a real effort.

This addiction to television creates behavior that stops one from leading one’s

life well. The less one is conscious of one’s addiction, the more it has to be taken

seriously – especially since television is now watched on screens other than the

traditional one. To stop watching television means on all screens where it appears.

Even if it demands an effort to stop watching television, it is not impossible.

People do it; others have done it. When they were young, our grandparents

entertained themselves without television. They danced, read, gardened, sewed or

went to talk with their neighbors… Today, those who give up their televisions share

points in common: they renew links with others, they develop their imaginations and

they create a living world around them.

It is possible to live without being stuck to one’s screen. If you stop watching

television today, in five years your entourage will bless you for it because the links

that you will have created with them will have come from moments you enjoyed

together. Whether it is your family, your loved one or your friends, each will

remember the moments that you shared. With time, the evenings you spend together

will weave living experiences into deep bonds.

Above and beyond the new links woven with people around you, you are the

one who will win. Your own life will be enriched. And that has a value that no

money in the world can buy.

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The power of intention

The ease or the difficulty with which you stop watching television will depend

upon your intention. The more your desire to stop comes from a deep motivation, the

easier giving it up will be. Because getting rid of it is much more than just simple

abstinence. The more well defined your intention is, the simpler your life without

television will be.

A well-defined intention will reduce withdrawal or frustration to the bare

minimum. When you decide to end your relationship to television, it is because you

will have a more important project to replace it. Stopping television will be the

natural result of your having something more interesting to do.

Maybe you will decide to live your life rather than watch the lives of others.

Perhaps you will choose to be yourself, free from television-formatted ideas. Still

again, you will want to accomplish one of your dreams. These are examples of

intentions that will support you in your approach and help you remember your goal.

These are but three examples; there are many others. It is up to you to choose yours.

This step is vital. To stop watching television without this type of firm, meaningful

intention would be too hard. It is your intention that will help you and keep you

focused.

If you want to, you can write your intention on a piece of paper and hang it on

or near to your screen. Knowing why one does something, finding a profound reason

for doing it, eliminates the moments of doubt that lead to relapses. Your will-power

will quickly come back when you remind yourself of the intention that you fixed for

yourself.

Stopping television addiction is easier if you concentrate on what you are

going to gain. Psychologically, ‘stopping’ leads to loss and nobody likes that. By

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contrast, ‘gaining’ is a victory and much more of a driving force. Why say, “I’m no

longer going to be able to watch my favorite show?” You could say, “I’m going to get

back a maximum amount of time in my life.” It is not, “My life without TV is going to

be empty” but, rather, “I’m finally going to be able to do something fulfilling.” Not

“Without TV I’m cut off from the world. I’m not going to know what’s happening” but

“Without TV I’m going to be connected to myself and to what is close to me. My ideas

are going to be mine.” By forgetting about the tele-vision, you are going to develop

your own vision and put yourself on the path to realizing it. Without television in

your life, you will fill yourself with pictures that are your own. These will allow you

to spread your wings and experience all the happiness that comes from doing so.

“Can I live without television?” is a false question that identifies loss. It does

not respond to the real, core question, “Am I ready to live with myself?”

“What is the part of me that I sacrifice to a machine? How many degrees has

the television modified the compass of my life? What does watching television stop

me from doing?” are other good questions to ask yourself. Television cuts us off from

finding our own answers because it spoon-feeds us all its solutions. As a result, we

come to depend on it to bring us answers. But with these types of questions, you are

going to engender ideas that will necessarily be yours.

Think about all the time you have spent in front of the TV and try imagining

what else you could have done during that time. People who create or organize things

and who obtain results do not have the time to stay glued to a television.

The first action to take to reach your new goal is to stop watching your TV set.

To stop watching television is like quitting smoking, each individual has to decide the

best way to do it. One can stop completely, stop partially or not stop at all.

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Television networks act like cigarette companies: TV shows are produced in order to

hook the end-users, to make them addicted. Watching television poisons life.

Different methods exist to stop watching television. In order to help you

choose what works for you, below are some ideas that have come from actual

experiences.

Reducing your viewing time

This option consists of kicking the habit slowly: you continue to watch

television but much less. It allows for real awareness to grow.

You could select one day a month when you will not watch. Then, following

your own rhythm, go to one or even two days per week until you find your own

balance. Why not put a big cardboard box in front of your screen on the days you

have chosen not to watch and write on it your intention; for example, to create

relationships with other people or to develop your creativity.

Another practical trick is to install a mirror above your television set. By

observing yourself in the act of watching the screen, you will have a clear image of

what truly happens in your life.

For children, it is necessary to begin by limiting their daily watching to one

hour then to a half-hour, then to two hours per week, etc., all the while being with

them when they are in front of the screen. Parental accompaniment is important

because the television is a substitute for the emotional support that a child expects

from his parents. Once the television set is turned off, help children fill their time

with other activities. Suggesting games that you can play together can help while

they are looking for their own centers of interest. The same thing applies if they

watch television on their computer screens.

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 There are other tools you can use to help the transition away from television.

You can, for example, turn off the sound during commercials, look away from the

screen as often as possible, only turn on your set to watch a pre-selected single show

and turn it off once it is finished, only own one television set for the whole family and

do not watch it on the Internet or on a portable telephone.

Another way of reducing the habit is to no longer have a television set in your

home. When you absolutely want to see a show go to a friend’s house who

understands what you are trying to accomplish.

Francois, 39 years-old, Paris: “Looking back at different periods in my life,

first with TV and then without it, the one I preferred was when I wrapped the set in

brown industrial paper. It was still there but mute: I had muzzled it.”

Be careful if you choose the option of gradually reducing the time you spend

watching it. It is reassuring and can seem to be the easiest choice because it is gentler

and less brutal than a straight out, clear cut separation. But it can prove to be difficult

to sustain over the long term because it still leaves you in front of the television with

its sole goal of making you watch it more. Do not forget that you are alone facing an

army of people whose job consists of encouraging you to spend more time in front of

the television. Confronted by them, you start with a real handicap: you will need to

have a strong character to control the time you spend watching the screen.

It is very difficult to stay vigilant in front of a television. It is like having a

Trojan horse in one’s home. One lets a beautiful, entertaining object come inside

one’s fortress only to be invaded by a bunch of people who overrun one’s interior life.

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Abstinence

A second option is to get rid of your set. Doing this requires that you have

something else to fill up your time. The real problem is not so much finding things to

do but committing to really doing them. To go from an inactive to an unaccustomed

active state can prove to be difficult and demands patience.

Each person has his own specific reasons that he believes are insurmountable

to explain why he cannot give up his TV. There are people who live in the city to

whom it can seem more difficult to stop watching because there are fewer possibilities

of going outside into nature. For others who live in the countryside, it is harder to

stop watching because there are fewer possibilities to go out and find entertainment.

Each person has to find solutions that work for him.

If you have watched television for a long time, it is possible that you do not

know what you would like to do with your new-found time. In this chapter, you will

find a non-exhaustive list that will give you some ideas. Choosing an activity helps

you start gently by fixing some easily realizable goals: fixing a goal too high, one that

you might not be able to reach, risks frustrating you and leading you back in front of a

television screen. At first, it might seem to you that learning to otherwise occupy

your time is unappealing but very quickly it will become something that brings you

pleasure.

Fernanda, 27 years-old, Rio de Janeiro: “Now, without the dictatorship of TV, I

let myself be more motivated by the things I want to do rather than by the programs

imposed on me that interest me without really interesting me. I took up drawing. I

began to listen to music again. I love music. What the TV forced on me as music

wasn’t me at all. I now take the time to listen to the things that I really love. I listen

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to music sitting down and not doing anything else. Doing nothing also is really fun!

The TV had the tendency to stop me from doing nothing…”

Sarah, 32 years-old, Toronto: “When I want to see pictures I go to the movies.

That obliges me to go through a real process that has me making choices. It’s more

me. The TV is a bunch of stuff that they try to force onto you. I listen to the radio to

hear the news. I rediscovered radio. It is less intrusive than TV and much more

informative; journalistically more interesting. It makes me intelligent in the sense

that it makes my imagination work. I imagine the faces of the people who talk. The

advantage of radio is that you can do other things at the same time.”

The best way for you to succeed is to organize your abstinence. For example,

fix the date you will start. If it is possible, begin on a day that follows a vacation or

week-end in a place where there was no television. Prepare yourself mentally. Think

about why you are doing it. Write down on pieces of paper your strongest

motivations and then hang them up in your home, preferably where your television set

was.

If you believe in God, why not pray for help? Maybe you prefer to talk about

your project to those around you. Be careful to share it only people you trust and who

are sympathetic to your cause; the others risk demoralizing you.

You could also find a network of people who do not watch television and go

meet them. If you cannot find one close by, why not start one of your own?

Some people put a piece of paper and a photograph of themselves watching

television where their set was. On the page they write everything they have been

doing since they stopped staring at the tube.

Giving up television involves replacing the representation of experiences with

living experiences. It can be unnerving at first but, with a little perseverance, one

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feels many positive results. It is not so difficult to find activities to replace television.

What is harder is to change your habit and to go from a state of immobility to

movement. The choice has to be made to interact with both yourself and the world

rather than to be cut off from them. This involves accepting going toward the

unknown. Television will always be in the world of the known; a world without risk

in which one is not involved.

In the following list of things to do without television, some will not

correspond to your particular circumstances: whether you live in the city or the

country, whether it is summer or winter, day or night, you live alone or as part of a

family. Choose what suits you or, even better, make up something yourself. The idea

is to have fun and to re-find the playful energy and joy of discovery that television has

eradicated from your life. Do something that appeals to you. The goal, even if it

seems bizarre at the beginning, is for you to take back your life.

Whether it concerns the body or the mind, the principle idea is to be active.

Of all the physical activities, staying seated to watch television is the least healthy.

Whether occidental or oriental, allopathic or homeopathic, the majority of doctors in

the world recommend movement to maintain the body in good health.

As well as replacing the television with more classic activities like reading or

playing sports, I have listed, below, some that are more original:

- Spend time with people who do not have a television or who do not watch it;

- Go meet your neighbors (it is easy if you take a measuring cup and ask a cup

of flour);

- Offer to keep your neighbor’s animal or to water his plants when he goes on

vacation;

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- Join a group – there are all kinds (it is up to you to find them. Often run by

volunteers, they do not have money to advertise);

- Grow plants at home or participate in a community garden;

- Go mushroom picking;

- Move: dance, bicycle, do yoga, walk, ice-skate, swim, etc.;

- Become interested in the biographies of people whom you admire. See what

they had to go through to advance;

- Look at the stars and learn their names;

- Prepare a box of supplies for children’s do-it-yourself projects;

- Organize a treasure hunt;

- Do research on your genealogy;

- Find the significance of the names of the streets in your neighborhood;

- Discover all the parks and gardens in your city;

- Invent new words to express what you want to say. Make a list of them and

consider adding them to your vocabulary;

- Watch clouds pass by and imagine their departure and arrival points;

- Write your autobiography;

- Learn the art of massage;

- Involve yourself in a cause that is totally foreign to you. Try to understand the

point-of-view of people with whom you do not necessarily agree;

- Join a club;

- Go camping or sleep under the stars in your back-yard;

- See performing arts: dance, music, theater, cabaret, etc.;

- Plant a grape vine, make your own wine and organize a tasting (guaranteed

success in an urban zone);

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- Sit on a bench and make up stories about the people passing by;

- Prepare a picnic. Include musical instruments, poems and stories to read, etc.;

- Make a bonfire with the help of other people (not in the dry season) and sit

around it talking as you imagine ancient tribes would have done;

- Learn to work a puppet. Give a puppet show for children;

- Organize a water party: everyone gets soaked in one way or another;

- Make love in a new way;

- Re-discover a connection to food: cook, organize a cake-baking contest, etc.;

- Fix your old bicycle;

- Offer yourself some of the toys you used to play with (a chemistry set,

modeling clay, etc.);

- Meditate: look inside yourself;

- Sit down and have fun by mentally scanning each part of your body like an X-

Ray or MRI;

- Have fun calculating the world’s water reserves;

- Re-connect with a member of your family whom you have not seen for more

than ten years;

- Delve into themes that require a strong personal commitment;

- Join an activity or a class in your community;

- Organize thematic evenings (e.g. French, Japanese, Shakespearean, etc.) at

your home or in a small space. Have texts to read and, if possible, costumes to

wear;

- Organize an evening where each person brings food and a story from his

native region;

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 - Organize an evening of readings, debates or conferences. If you have a

speaker, organize a debate at the end of the conference;

- Organize an evening of theater. Have a small theater company come to your

home;

- Organize an evening of jokes. Give a prize to the funniest one;

- Organize an evening of “false TV”: cut out a screen from a cardboard box and

imitate a program or an announcer (game show, soap-opera, news…);

- And, lastly, keep a diary of what your life is like without TV!

This list is not exhaustive. The idea is to look for activities that encourage all

the different aspect of life as opposed to television’s virtual world. Many of these

activities necessitate friends or acquaintances. If you do not have any, it is normal:

television stops bonds of friendship from being created and kills bonds that exist.

When you stop watching the TV, you will find these human links – but not from one

day to the next. Please be patient. The fact of not having friends is one more proof

that television isolates you by making you believe that it is your friend.

If you still feel resistance, you can have fun by writing after each of the

activities, above, “…or watch television.”

Jacek, 44 years-old, Warsaw: “I’m living my dream rather than being in front

of a screen dreaming my life.”

If you have children

The best way parents can education their children about television is the way

they use it themselves. If television sets the family’s use of time and, therefore,

controls family life, the parents should not be surprised to see their authority refused

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by their children. In the same way, if parents abandon their children’s education to

television, it is normal that the child, mimicking his parents, will do the same thing.

In doing so, he forsakes the authentic education that he could have gotten from his

family, his friends, school, nature, etc.

If parents want their children to watch less television, they have to set an

example themselves. A parent who spends his time escaping from himself in front of

his television will not know how to impose boundaries on his child. What is more,

the child will not understand “Do what I say but not what I do.” He will rebel and his

parents will give up.

On the other hand, by watching less television or by not watching it at all, the

adult suggests a way of life to the child. This obliges the adult to involve himself in

his relationship with his child. Of course, it is less of an effort to distract a child by

sitting him in front of a television than it is by playing with him.

John, 51 years-old, school principal, Chicago: “Each time I say to a parent

that he should take the time to sit down for 15 minutes when he comes home from

work and talk about his day with his children, he says that it’s what he should do but

that he never does it.”

The time one spends with one’s child is precious. A child needs a loving

relationship with his parents in order for him to develop harmoniously. It is from this

emotional bond that his need for love is fulfilled and that he develops the energy and

the interest to become responsible for himself.

It can seem scary to oblige a child to stop watching television but it becomes

very easy when it is understood that it is not about depriving the child of something

but, rather, of putting something good for him in place of something bad.

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 Natasha, 28 years-old, grammar school teacher, Moscow: “If the parent is

accepted by the child as the guarantor of the child’s safety and the one who protects

him from the many traps that could befall him, the parent will have no problem being

heard by the child when he explains why television is a trap.”

It is not about focusing on the type of program that the child watches but of

concentrating on what he loses from his life by spending so much time sitting in front

of a screen. The time a parent spends with a child allows each one to better know the

other before the child grows up. These moments of exchange nourish the child’s need

for love and allow the adult both to see life through his child’s eyes and also to bring a

dimension of play to his own life.

Taking care of a child takes time. If you do not have enough time, put your

child with other children under the supervision of an adult. Everyone wins: the adults

because, by sharing the responsibility, they free up time, the children because they are

no longer alone in front of a machine.

Gillian, 34 years-old, Johannesburg: “When my daughter was in 1st grade, the

principal and the teacher explained to us that all the children who watch TV in the

morning arrive at school emptied, as if they had exhausted their reserves of

concentration. During the morning, when concentration is needed the most, these

children were much more quickly tired or irritable. When I heard that, I asked myself

how I was going to take TV away from my daughter. […] I ended up telling her what

the school principal had said. […] We ate our meals together without TV and I

explained to her that there were lots of other things to do; that if we turned on the TV

we would both be absent and that we wouldn’t be living anything together and,

knowing that we lived together only 15 days per month, that the goal was for us to get

to know each other. She accepted it really well. She never asked me to watch the

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television again. That’s when I saw the difference: I hadn’t taken TV away from her

because I was sure that she was going to react badly. Not at all; not once has she

asked for it since. It’s been one year.”

Coping with withdrawal

Getting rid of your television might make you feel uneasy. That is normal. It

is a step you have to go through so that you can find what you love. You will be

surprised by what springs out of you once you have coped with the void. Emptiness

does not exist: something will inevitably happen.30

It would be the same if you had to stop any habit. It would not be easy: first

you would suffer from withdrawal, then from the ensuing uneasiness but, following

that, you would feel the benefits.

Takashi, 28 years-old, Tokyo: “I got rid of my television by giving it to a

friend. The first days, I could feel an emptiness. I realized very quickly that I had to

reposition my furniture because, in fact, I kept sitting down in the same arm chair as

before except that now I was looking at an empty space.”

Jose, 42 years-old, Mexico City: “The first five days were the worst. Our

habits were upset: we had to find new sign posts and my wife and my children had

difficulty occupying their free time. We were all a bit anxious and pretty irritable.

But by the second week I could feel a general enthusiasm in the family for adapting to

a life-style that didn’t include the TV.”

If you feel depressed after having stopped watching television, it is a clear sign

that you were seriously hooked on it – another good reason to persevere until you

have broken off your relationship with that machine.

30
See quotation by Kafka cited in Chapter IV, page 79.

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 Watching television is neither necessary nor obligatory. It results from a

conscious choice for which you are responsible. Likewise, you can decide not to

watch it. Television should not control who you are, what you do or what you think.

Danger of relapse

During the first two weeks without television, you might feel slightly fragile,

therefore all contact with it should be avoided. This is especially true if you work on

the Internet: it will keep calling to you to look at it again. To watch it “just to see

what is on” can be dangerous. There are those who watch it and those who do not

watch it. Remember which side you have decided to belong to.

If you relapse, it is important not to despair or to give up hope. People who

succeed in this world do not automatically do so on their first try. They trip and fall

while moving forward but each time they get up again and keep going…

To say that a relapse is not important can, however, be misinterpreted. If it

happens, do not be hard on yourself but also do not let it trigger permission to

continue backsliding. Remember that the goal is not to relapse. To help reach that

goal there is a superb tool: the concept of 24 hours. It can seem insurmountable to

think about not watching television for the rest of your life so, instead of stopping for

life, just stop for today! Today is the only day you are not going to watch television.

Once this idea works for you, the only thing you have to do is to repeat it one day at a

time.

To go back to television or not

To bring back the television after a period of separation can be dangerous.

Believing that you have so successfully weaned yourself off it that you can allow it to

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come back into the house is to under-estimate its hypnotizing power and its strong

force of attraction. Slowly but surely, one forgets one’s original motivations and falls

back into old patterns. Television is cunning and powerful. Taking it back into the

home after a period of weaning yourself from it shows how much you really are

addicted to it.

Your addiction to television will only be completely gone when the question is

no longer whether or not to watch it. Once television has been absent from your life

for a time, you will have another vision of the world: your own vision. You will have

discovered so many things about life and about yourself that you will not have time to

watch it any more. For you, the issue will be elsewhere. Having weaned yourself off

television, you will have moved to the other side of the screen. You will live like

those smokers who long ago stopped smoking cigarettes: they no longer think about it

anymore – so much so that some of them are surprised by their past addiction. In the

same way, when you see people watching television, you will be surprised by the

attention that is demanded of them to stare at the screen. To stay immobile in front of

the television will become something strange because not only will you see it for what

it really is but you will also have a very different relationship with yourself. The time

will come when you will no longer be attracted by television. You could pass in front

of a television that is turned on without your eyes being caught or held by it. You will

pass in front of it as if it did not exist. You will have retaken the power of your life.

Without a screen in front of you, you will have re-found an accurate view.

You will see that television is not really the heart of the problem. It is only a screen at

the hands of more profound problems: the impossibility to see reality as it is, a

disconnection to oneself, a running away from oneself, a way of not taking one’s

place…

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The gift of abstinence

David, 52 years-old, Tel Aviv: “The more I stay disconnected from the

television, the more free I feel. The more free I feel, the more I realize the degree of

manipulation that those who watch it are the victims of.”

Helen, 37 years-old, Amsterdam: “I don’t feel disconnected to all those who

talk about TV during the day because the TV no longer means anything to me. When

people find out that I’m unemployed and that I don’t have a TV, they tell me that it’s

not that expensive and that I could buy myself one. I don’t even argue anymore.”

Monique, 65 years-old, Geneva: “It’s difficult to explain the sense of well-

being that life without television is. It would be a little like trying to explain the taste

of chocolate to someone who had never tasted it. Attentive to details, present in the

world, listening to others, clearer vision, a certain optimism, a feeling of lightness –

this is the range of notes that I now have the tendency to play.”

Joao, 31 years-old, Lisbon: “Since I gave up my TV, my life has become really

full so that, even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have the time to watch it. I go out a lot

more often to see my new friends. We don’t automatically go to a restaurant or a club

because that can quickly get expensive. In the winter we go to someone’s home and

the rest of the year we’re outside. With my friends there is a sharing. I get something

in return. I could watch TV for years and I would never get anything back. There is

no improvisation with the TV. With my friends there is spontaneity. The time that I

would have spent in front of the TV, I now spend with them. We use our time to build

real relationships.”

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 Alexis, 55 years-old, Athens: “It’s when you no longer have a television that

you realize what you were when you had one. I sleep a lot better since I no longer

have it. For me, no longer watching it has made me calmer.”

Continuing to watch television makes it impossible to answer the following

question: “How would my life be without it?”

Stop watching television and it will no longer be the screen that you look

right in the eyes but life. Everyone who separated themselves from their televisions

has been surprised. They take it as an exciting adventure. They cannot believe how

interesting their existences have become. They re-own and become the masters of

their lives. They re-discover the innate talents that TV made them forget. They start

to do things again rather than watch others do them.

Those who have stopped watching television find themselves more relaxed,

more alert, more creative and more responsible: they feel empowered. They develop

rich lives. They get to know themselves and discover their talents. They recover a

positive image of themselves. They retake possession of their interior worlds and of

their existences. They find a dimension of play, of playful energy that had been lost.

They have more energy for the next day, for work or school. Their ideas come from

them and they know how to take a stand. They gain in wisdom, notably about

television! Their connection with the heart of their families grows. Their money is

better spent: they no longer buy things that they do not need. Their health improves

because they start moving again.

To stop watching television brings with it the pleasure of reconnecting to the

most subtle events in life. One stops and notices forgotten details like clouds in the

sky or a flower blooming. Recognizing a cloud’s changing forms or a flower allows

one to empirically feel the miracle of life unfolding in front of one’s eyes. To feel the

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creativity of life, to see it in its movement of incessant renewal in every instant, is

much more enriching to the soul than to subject oneself to the repetitiveness of a

machine like the television, the repetitiveness of the viewer’s position sitting in front

of his machine, of the glittering pictures, of the types of shows...

The less time one spends in front of one’s screen means the more time one

spends outside; thus less single, less solitude. Spending time in the outside world

means that life returns to neighborhoods or neglected towns. This results in more

exchanges between people, more social life, more civism. As a result, our seniors are

less afraid, the streets are less deserted, life comes back…

Without television, our society as a whole would become more intelligent,

more mature and could find the level of social interaction that once existed. Because

that is what it is really about. Watching television as an individual not only has

consequences for you but when a whole country, a continent or even the world

watches it constantly, the consequence is societal.

Not only does television stop individuals from being themselves, it creates a

society of weak clones. What would be the state of our society if its citizens were not

reduced to nothingness by television? What would be the state of our world if it was

not subordinated to the television empire?

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 CHAPTER VI

TELEVISION vs. DEMOCRACY

“Telecracy is not the cause of all our problems

even though it is the principle cause,
that by which all these problems seem insoluble.”31

Bernard Stiegler32

To free oneself from the stranglehold of television is a real gift to oneself. But

the gift doesn’t stop there: it expands in many surprising ways.

Once liberated from the hypnotic power of the Tube, one’s newly found

freedom opens ones eyes and, especially, one’s mind. One begins to see oneself and

one’s surroundings in a new way. The understanding that comes from being freed

from the effects of television which, at first, was aimed at oneself, delicately unfolds

in a more global way. We realize that the choices our new vision leads us to make

affect us and, in doing so, affect our relationships with the people who are close to us:

our family and friends. From there we grasp effects that are still more far-reaching as

the widening-circle grows to touch people we don’t even know!

Overview

In 1939, the American network NBC began the first regular television

broadcasts. The war slowed the development of television and it was only in 1948

31
La télécratie contre la démocratie, Flammarion, 2006.
32
Bernard Stiegler, contemporary French philosopher.

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that Americans started buying sets. From 1948 to 1955, the television entered 75% of

American households – a commercial incrustation unique in the world since it took

only seven years to accomplish this degree of market success. In comparison, the

telephone, which was commercialized in the United States in 1890, took 67 years to

reach 75% of American households.33

Since 1948, the development of television in the world has been phenomenal.

Today, there are several thousand television stations across the world that broadcast

day and night. Recently, the reception of television via the Internet makes watching it

even easier.

But the number of television stations is not synonymous with diversity. Over

the years, small stations have been eaten up by bigger ones. Television stations

belong to fewer and fewer businesses whereas the number of people who watch them

throughout the world has gone up dramatically. Today, a handful among them such

as Disney, Time-Warner, Sony, Viacom, Beltersman, General Electric and News

Corporation hold the majority of networks in the world.

Network directors have always understood that they have to improve technical

performance in order for the public to stay loyal. Pictures were first broadcast in

black and white, then in color. Later, the remote-control and the possibility to watch

television in the daytime revolutionized the behavior of viewers. Today, digital

signals and flat screens allow viewers to see clearer pictures. Tomorrow, the portable

television will be as widespread as the telephone is today. All of these technical feats

that are marketed as ways for viewers to have more freedom exist, in fact, only for the

opposite reason. They are a counter-balance to the poverty of the programs:

television has a lot of trouble coming up with any truly new content. Afraid to lose its

33
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000.

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attractiveness to viewers, television ceaselessly improves its technologies to give

watchers something new and innovative. In fact, the only thing that is new in

television is technology that better reaches the goals of hypnotizing, of transmitting a

message and, above all, of keeping the viewer distant from himself.

If the political powers do not reconsider the function of television, it is

because these same powers use television for their own ends by manipulating the

content of the programs. In certain countries like the United States and Russia,

candidates can buy air-time for political advertising, the contents of which are not

verified for authenticity by the networks.

More subtly, the politicized manipulation by television goes beyond a simple

advertising insert. One example is the continuous news network Fox News. Watched

by more people in the United States than CNN, Fox News officially supported the

reelection of George W. Bush. Passing itself off as a traditional news agency, it was

nothing more than an indirect propaganda tool for the administration in place. 34

Political disinformation in televised news programs is a form of manipulation

that exists worldwide. One common practice is the technique of exaggeration or

selective reporting. For example, “In France between January 7, 2002 and the

second round of the presidential election, televised news shows consecrated 18,766

stories to crimes, thrown rocks, car thefts, break-ins, interventions by the National

Police […]. Crime was therefore in the media twice as often as employment, eight

times more than unemployment. According to estimates from the Ministry of the

34
Fox News is the property of Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the News
Corporation, the largest cable operator in the world with 130 million subscribers. The president of
the News Corporation is José Maria Aznar who, while Prime Minister of Spain, supported the
American-lead attack on Iraq.

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Interior, however, no appreciable rise in the number of crimes and misdemeanors was

officially reported during the same period.”35

Whether, then, for reasons of content (for example, the manipulation of programs for

political ends) or for reasons of the container (the television-tool itself), 60 years after

the beginning of television we find ourselves very far from what it promised: more

freedom thanks to a panoramic vision of the world. When the television appeared in

the world, its technical prowess was, quite rightly, marveled at because it was new

and revolutionary. One could believe that this technology was going to improve daily

life. But 60 years later, the facts are in: if daily visual life has improved in terms of

technology, it has been to the detriment of human connectedness. A heavy price to

pay that dramatically affects our daily lives…

Today and Tomorrow

The beginning of the 21st century marked a turning point in the history of

television. It succeeded in moving beyond the frame that confined it; that is to say, it

is no longer obliged to be stuck in the viewer’s home. Located almost everywhere, it

imposes itself on human beings outside of their homes in ways that make it

impossible to avoid watching it. In more and more countries, screens are found in

subways, airports, bars, restaurants, streets, buses, schools, banks and waiting rooms.

Reducing even further the places where human beings still have the possibility

to look at other things, television can be seen on mobile telephones. Television has

thus assured itself an intimate place in the viewer’s life by following him everywhere

he goes. Most mobile phone service providers offer television to their subscribers.

35
Serge Halimi quoting an article in Le Monde, May 28, 2002, entitled “La télévision a accru sa
couverture de la violence durant la campagne.” (Trans.: Television Increased its Coverage of
Violence During the Campaign.” In The New Guard Dogs, Le Seuil, coll. Liber, Reason to Act,
Paris 2005.

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Television production companies are following the trend and are starting to produce

shows designed to be watched on mobile phones.

But television is not stopping there. Like a sort of miniscule insect that

devours our time and eats away at our visual space, it is insinuating itself everywhere.

Thanks to enormous technological advances, by offering to be seen on portable

screens, television is succeeding in making “My TV where I want, when I want” the

new fashion. The portable television will soon be common place. Pocket televisions

are already on sale. Wherever you are, the mobile television, in the same way as the

home television, will soon allow you to receive or to store programs so that you can

see them at the time of your choosing.

In terms of content, television’s stroke of genius at the beginning of the 21st

century is no longer turning the handheld camera on the star but on the viewer

himself. Today, this gives the viewer the illusion that he is someone special and no

longer an immobile object in front of a screen. This amazing feat succeeded in two

ways: in terms of content, television viewers are now on stage; in terms of production,

the viewers have become technicians, directors and broadcasters. The films created

by viewers are easily broadcast on mobile telephones or on the Internet (YouTube,

Dailymotion, etc.).

If television is made by the viewers themselves, it has all the more legitimacy to exist.

This reinforces its position. Its credibility, finally uncontestable, confirms its place

among us as the popular expression incarnate. What is not being acknowledged is

that the viewers produce pictures by using the same techniques that television uses.

The circle is closed: the television viewer produces the images himself and the

prisoner becomes the jailor…

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 Technologically speaking, the immediate future will bring into general

widespread use the all-numeric “interactive” television on all screens: traditional

(regular TVs), computer (desktops and laptops) and portable (‘smart’ telephones and

portable TVs). Thanks to this new “interactive” technology, the viewer will believe

that he can master whatever he sees on a TV screen. This is because he will be able to

order whatever show he wants whenever he wants it. But when he calls up his

programs, pushing on the button will identify him. It will thus be the viewer who is

being observed, dissected and measured by professionals who will then propose other

shows for him to watch …

This will be paradise for the network directors: they will know in real time

exactly who watches what, by what means the public has come to them and how it

reacts. Surely, they will use this precious information to increase their control.

The loss of the social bond

Today, we are witnessing the “televisionization36” of society where everything

becomes ‘look’. The priority is the representation rather than the reflection. All the

pieces of our life are affected by it: our ideas, our perceptions, our memories, our

customs, our creativity and our relationships.

We find ourselves in a society, therefore, where human relationships are

woven in response to a tele-visual dictate. The whole social fabric that took years for

our ancestors to piece together evaporates like snow in the sun in order to make way

for a screen that separates us from each other.

36
I invented the word “televisionization” to describe a television vision of life and, above all, a sole
way of thinking: tele-visual.

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 Our social bond is annihilated and replaced by a bond with the media. Instead

of our society being solidly anchored to the earth, it is gently sinking into a sea of

pictures. Lots of people float on virtual rafts that are perpetually adrift.

The television viewer, bombarded by pictures, only sees the short term. He

finds himself stuck in a present moment that endlessly repeats itself as if his universe

had become a broken record. Slave of the emotions generated by television, he is cut

off from his past and sees only a fuzzy future.

The great promise of connectedness, endlessly repeated by those who sell

screens, has proven to be a mirage. All the screens that are supposed to bring us

together are having exactly the opposite affect; all-the-while manipulating us without

our being aware of it.37

Political impact

Television is not interested in our social assets. The political leaders are

muzzled and cannot do anything because they depend on television to promote their

images. Their political opponents keep quiet, too: they also need television in order to

take power. The television, therefore, reigns as master and imposes its own law.

In the same way, our politicians have to adjust their messages to fit

“television-speak” so that they can be heard: short ideas, punchy sentences,

everything superficial. We are no longer attracted to them because of a true political

vision but, rather, by a speech prettily put into pictures. Television has sounded the

death knell for the generation of strong Statesmen or Stateswomen. It replaces them

with administrators; specialists in communication techniques who are evaluated by

37
In order to be as clear as possible, I am purposely not writing about video players. They, in and of
themselves, are the subject of a new book.

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their capacity to react to issues which are made important because they are televised.

Instead of being leaders, they have become the followers of events.

Philippe, 72 years-old, Brussels: “For me, politics is largely incompatible with

television. On TV, politicians become actors: they overplay a role that isn’t

necessarily theirs and certainly not what I expect from them. The TV creates an

enormous discrepancy between the political image and the politician who is supposed

to govern. That doesn’t help anyone. The danger is that, once something is said or

seen on TV, it becomes the truth; it’s a little like a guaranty of quality. They say to us,

“You want the proof; here’s the picture.” So, the picture becomes the truth. In

politics that seems to me incompatible and even dangerous. TV is fast and, above all,

ephemeral. To do something well takes time; to elaborate something takes even

longer. The television prods politicians to do whatever it is as long as we see them in

a way that makes them look good. That’s what has become important.”

The growth of television happens without any control by political leaders.

Completely left behind by the speed at which television extends its power, politicians

cannot react except to validate the television’s reach38. Television’s tentacles reach

into every level of society: economic, social, cultural, artistic, psychological and

political.

Left behind by the speed of its development, crushed by the strength of its

power, forced to ally with it in order to be elected, today’s politician has no other

38
The last major development approved by politicians and directly concerning European viewers was
the European Directive TSF called “Television without Borders” that was adopted by the European
Parliament on its first reading, December 13 2006. The European Parliament backed a proposed
overhaul of TV advertising rules for European networks that included a new approach to product
placement. By widening the scope of the so-called “Television without Borders” Directive to cover
all Audiovisual Media Services, MEPs also voted to include new means of broadcasting. Parliament
agreed to allow pauses every 30 minutes for commercials in movies and some other TV programs.
See: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/039-1359-345-12-50-906-
20061207IPR01149-11-12-2006-2006-false/default_en.htm

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choice but to bow down in front of it. He can neither criticize it nor blame it. The

State has given up its duty to make television responsible by letting it act in an

irresponsible way.

Today, the television is a common object, an established fact. It has become

impossible to question it on a national level. That means that we, human beings, have

unconsciously accepted to place the functioning of our society in the hands of a

machine. The consequence of this is that our entire world only exists from the

moment it is made visible through a screen.

No one today is able say in a way that can really be heard, “Is there a way to

see other than through the prism of television?” We, our society, have abandoned

something fundamental into the hands of this machine: our way of seeing and of

understanding things. Although we should, as a group, be able to question that, we

are totally incapable today of doing so because so much importance is given to the

TV.

No political party could say today, “Television is not good for our society”

because that would signal its own death. However, in 1938 Franklin Roosevelt39 said

that “The liberty of a democracy is not safe. If the people tolerate the growth of

private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself,
40
that, in its essence is, fascism” reminding us of the fragility of the democratic

system.

Paradoxically, it is us as television viewers who attract politicians that fit the

image we demand of them. Unconsciously, we want them to respond to our

39
President of the United States of America, elected in 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944. He was one of the
principal architects of the Allied victory in 1945.
40
Address by President Roosevelt to the American Congress, April 29, 1938. Source:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15637

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expectations as TV spectators. Television cannot do otherwise than emphasize the

form rather than the substance because that is its function. But if the picture becomes

the truth to the detriment of the idea, it is because we, the television viewers, have

given it this power.

The more power we give it, the more it takes. Television has gone from

observer of our world to a director of it. In the 1960s, it acted as a witness, at the end

of the 1970s it began to referee, now it directs our lives. It only took 60 years to take

power and to decide who does what. This situation is new in the history of humanity;

we have had an imperceptible drifting of society. Imperceptible due, paradoxically, to

an excess of pictures.

The ideology of television

This raises a new and very real problem. Like all entities, the television wants

to preserve itself, to reproduce, to improve its profits and, above all, to extend its

power. Its goal is neither the well-being nor the education of viewers. Quite simply,

it wants to keep its hold over them. It does not want them to question anything,

especially not it. Its goal is that the viewers continue to watch it in either its classic or

modern form. Viewers are condemned to be more and more compliant.

The main problem of our society today is that ideological authority comes

from television. Television, now a virtual government, refuses the emergence of new

powers that could oppose it. The Internet, the latest counter-power, has already been

largely appropriated by television. This is the case as much in terms of content (on

the Web, one can see classic television shows, shows made by private individuals and

broadcasts of political parties) as in terms of technology (certain television channels

only exist on the Internet) as in terms of the media-related and financial controls (the

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television networks are already installed at the helm). In July 2005, Rupert Murdoch,

the owner of Fox News, in addition to his immense television empire bought the

largest Internet site in the world for 580 million dollars. This site, called MySpace,

had 100 million subscribers as of August 2006, principally young people41.

All those who oppose the televised vision of life become pariahs. They have

fewer and fewer possibilities to express their ideas because all ideas today must be

transmitted by television. Thus, entire parts of ideological, artistic, spiritual or even

technological expression are dismissed by the audiovisual apparatus.

This reduction of expression sounds the death knell for an important part of

creativity. But it is the human being’s specificity to be creative: it is his most

precious gift. His prosperity even depends on the possibility that he has what he

needs to create. A healthy society is one that allows him to express his creativity. A

society that stops him from creating hurts itself.

In an ideal society, the growth of all commercial business should benefit the

ensemble of that society. That a commercial business such as television wants to

grow to the detriment of the mental health of those who watch it proves once more the

self-serving vision of the television oligarchy.

The future

Television dreams of creating a sort of ‘telecracy’ in which citizens no longer

decide the type of life they desire but the TV decides in what sort of society it wants

to see them function. It thus also erodes the social bonds that past generations have

built and leaves a world of screens to future generations. In their futuristic novels,

George Orwell and Aldous Huxley predicted a world in which television would be the

41
The French newspaper Liberation, August 20, 2006.

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center of our lives. In The Best of Worlds, Huxley predicted a television dictatorship

that predominated thanks to entertainment whereas in 1984, Orwell anticipated a

televised propaganda based on fear. Today, we find ourselves in an even more

devious system because it alternates between these two models according to its need.

There is not a lot of time left to act. It is better to turn it off now while the

television screen is still at its present state, while we still have some distance from it

and while we are still the masters of it. A not-too-distant future could offer us a

television without a screen: under the pretext of ecology (television is very good at

hijacking humanist slogans to use for itself), television could replace screens with a

ray projected directly onto the viewer’s retina whether he is at home or elsewhere.

Above and beyond this futuristic vision, it is up to each one of us to imagine

what television is going to do to keep growing. There is no reason to believe that it

will not follow the same rhythm of development that it has in the past. The

fascination that it engenders suggests that it is going to continue to take all our visual

space until it makes us partially blind. Reality will become more and more difficult to

discern. The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be to act. The future will not be

the status quo. Television will want to keep stretching its tentacles.

The world

Armies of televisions occupy the world influencing political power and

controlling minds. Day after day, people are stripped of their hearts by television.

Televisions are installing themselves in force throughout the world with very few

people reacting. Year after year, they are destroying a once-strong social fabric.

They buy us with pictures as shiny as the paste jewelry the Conquistadors used in the

New World to mollify the Indians to more easily invade them. People, put to sleep by

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these jewels, are letting themselves be robbed. Discouraged by television’s fabulous

power, they think it’s too late to change anything. Hypnotized by pictures, they have

become mute. Stuck to their armchairs, they are immobile. Observing them, their

children learn resignation reinforced by non-combative silence. These children,

drowned by so many pictures, feel as if they have no roots, no hope and no vision of a

solid future. Television has dispossessed them of a human being’s essential treasures:

confidence in himself and in life.

People will discover their greatness the day they become the masters of their

thoughts. The power of televisions will disappear on the condition that each citizen

shakes himself out of his lethargy and wakes up. Each one of us has the power to

rediscover his real conscience, free from all of television’s propaganda. The turning

of the world’s men and women into autistic children must stop. All of them deserve

to take back an adult and personal vision of life and bury definitively television’s

over-diffused vision. People will find their critical senses again the day they stop

allowing themselves to be subjected to a daily battering by the world of pictures. By

doing so, they will be stronger than the pictures. As for television’s lethargy, there is

one single answer: action. Confronted by the immense power of television, the only

conceivable action is to disengage from the screen.

If we, the world’s citizens, do not take our societies in hand, the worst will

happen. Too much power is at stake. We are sliding from democracy toward

‘telecracy.’ Disengagement is no longer only an act for preserving today but also an

act for future generations. In this sense, disengagement means involvement; first with

oneself, then with others. Whereas television wipes out action and commitment and

replaces them with illusions that reduce our common freedom, the absence of

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television leads to a personal engagement that guarantees and strengthens the freedom

of every one.

Whereas television makes one totally apathetic, to disengage from television

demands a refusal to submit to it. By changing our individual attitudes, we will soon

form a group sufficiently strong to both be heard and to apply pressure. This pressure

will create a snowball effect. Such was the case for tobacco: if fewer people die today

from the effects of tobacco, it is thanks to an awareness that first began on an

individual level. One by one, people took responsibility for themselves and stopped

smoking. Isolated individuals, they soon constituted a collective force that became an

example for others and powerful enough to put pressure on the State.

Disengagement:

Disengagement means that, on the basis of a personal decision, I can live my

life much better if I go in a different direction from that in which TV wants me to go.

It’s not that I am in conflict with TV; I am just going in another direction.

There are two types of disengagement. First, no longer having television in

our homes is individual disengagement. Second, by no longer having television, we

recuperate a major force that television has eradicated from our society: the capacity

to organize ourselves as a group! By isolating us from one another, television

encourages us to believe that our personal ideas are bizarre and inadequate because

they do not conform to what is broadcast. By default, it makes us believe that we are

the only ones to think what we think and, by extension, that what we think is without

value and, therefore, it is useless to try to act as a group…

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 Without television, you will be free from the slavery of solitude. You will

therefore be able to see that others share your ideas. You could even participate in

collective actions and encourage your friends to do the same. This is group

disengagement.

Here are several examples of what can be done at a collective level once you

have freed yourself from the television42:

- Make the news, stop watching it;

- Join or create an organization that encourages people not to watch television;

- Talk about it to those around you;

- Suggest to those around you to commit to one day a week without television;

- Help others stop watching television;

- Lend this book to your friends;

- When you see a television turned on in a public place, ask that it be turned off. If

there is no one to ask, unplug it (public space is the property of the citizens, not

the networks!) or carry a TV-B-Gone, a universal remote control that turns off

televisions in public places. Jean Lotus, a 39 year-old American mother, used a

TV-B-Gone for the first time in her pediatrician’s waiting room, “… a little room

full of nervous patients and a screen broadcasting commercials. So I dared…

Nobody objected! Even the nurse, after several seconds of surprise in front of a

blank screen, went back to work.” Or Peter Altenberg, a 40 year-old a musician

and graphic designer: “Each time, I have the impression that I’m freeing humans.

I turn off the screen and they start doing things. Just a few seconds earlier, they

42
I will expand upon these suggestions and add others in a future work.

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 were in a trance in front of that insipid lit-up skylight. Even my 7 year-old son

finds it hilarious43”;

- Drop off your old television sets at the nearest television network;

- Become involved in the “TV Turnoff Week”44;

- Start a ‘no-television’ group. Find a place that is easy for everyone to access, post

announcements everywhere you can, focus during the meeting on the goal of your

actions, e.g. beginning a small newspaper to explain what you are doing, starting a

library of books against television, etc.;

- Make a detailed study of the history of television, its evolution and in whose hands

it is in today. Start with your own country, then your continent, then the world;

- Write to your senator explaining your decision to no longer watch television;

- Write to your senator and ask him to propose that a national neuropsychological

study on the effects of television on the brains of children be done by an

independent organization and that the results of the study be widely diffused to the

general public;

- Stop the use of televisions in schools;

- Use the idea of “Smoking Kills” labels on cigarette packs and demand that your

senator pass a law forcing manufacturers to write on their sets, “Watching

television hypnotizes your brain.” Likewise, television networks should add the

following line to the pictures they broadcast: “This picture is not reality”;

- Use the precedent of successful law-suits in the United States against

multinational tobacco companies and bring suit against the television networks for

“Fraud”;

43
The French newspaper Libération, Thursday, January 6, 2005.
44
More details can be found by going to http://www.tvturnoff.org/week.htm

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- Strengthen limits on the power of media/communication companies. (In France,

for example, laws passed at the end of the last World War make it illegal for an

individual to own or control more than one political daily newspaper45);

- Make it impossible for politicians to hold an interest in a media/communication

company. (The President of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, is also the president of the

holding company that controls the majority of Italian television networks);

- Stop all professional links between political power and the power of television.

(Professionals in television work for politicians and vice-versa);

- Following the principle raised by Eisenhower46, stop all contact between

media/communication companies and the arms industry. “In the councils of

government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,

whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for

the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let

the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.47”

Two examples that illustrate this danger: General Electric, the holding company of

NBC Universal which has 30% of the television penetration in American

households, produces, among other things, warplane engines. In France, the group

Lagardère, which controls 95% of the corporation EADS, (among other things, an

arms manufacturer) also owns 11 ‘theme’ television networks as well as 16

production companies.

- Ask governments to create autonomous watchdog organizations to monitor the

power of television networks.

45
Serge Halimi, The New Guard Dogs, op. cit.
46
Commander-in-Chief of the forces that beat the Wehrmacht in 1945. President of the USA from
1953 to 1961.
47
Farewell Address to the Nation at the end of his presidency, January 17, 1961.
http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/speeches/farewell_address.html

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 Given the opportunity, life will know how to find things to do that are suited

to your own personality. The ones I have listed are only suggestions. Be inventive.

Whatever you undertake, be constant with your resolve. Perseverance is the wave

crashing on the rocks; one day, it will turn those rocks into sand. Your message will

be even stronger if you do all of this with joy and compassion and without animosity

or violence.

‘Telecracy’ vs. democracy

We are only passengers in this world: we do not have the right to disregard its

delicate balance. A successful life should consist of leaving the world a better place

than it was when we arrived. Our children are going to live here. They also have the

right to enjoy it without having to be stuck in a world of clones born from a television

dictatorship.

Certain events in the history of humanity have shown us with what naivety our

ancestors believed in totally insane ideas; for example, the Inquisition or Nazism.

Other than a few trailblazers and enlightened groups, the rest of the people accepted

the ideas, most often through ignorance48. But we, like our predecessors, have the

same capacity to fall into huge traps. Clearly, modern technology has not vaccinated

us against being duped. To the contrary: we remain fragile beings, inclined to fear

and manipulation.

On a political level, television emphasizes the image of a candidate, possibly

his proposals, but it never poses a critical look at the political system itself. It cannot

because it profits directly from the sliding of democracy towards a “telecracy.”

48
By ‘ignorance’, I mean the fact of not seeing the truth.

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 Television participates in the functioning of the State whatever its political

leanings. Thus, there is an objective complicity between the two, not the

manipulation of one by the other. They cooperate because their interests converge:

maintaining an interventionist system that stops individuals from growing by cutting

them off from their true potential.

A thriving democracy should always look for ways to raise the levels of

education, freedom, initiative and responsibility of its citizens. The opposite occurs

with television: we move slowly away from the democratic system and are directed

towards a sort of political ideology that goes against individuation. What is favored

is irresponsibility, both individual and collective, that results from this single way of

thinking.

Television blinds the world

Let us hope that the blinding of humanity caused by television is not

comparable to what Mankind has experienced in the past. History has shown us that,

because of ignorance or denial, reality is not always visible at first glance.

Even if it is easy to judge history after the fact, it is much more difficult to see

into the future. The history of humanity is strewn with the artifacts of civilizations

that did not see the enemy arrive. The rich and powerful Inca culture, for example,

was decimated by a handful of Spanish Conquistadores49 whose power they totally

under-estimated. Paradoxically, television insidiously manages to belittle us all

while, at the same time, encouraging us to believe that we are the best. This arrogant

49
In 1532, the Conquistador Pizarro with only 180 men seized the emperor Atahualpa, killed him and
took power of the entire Inca kingdom.

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sense of superiority places us on a dangerous course. Like other civilizations in the

past, if we do not open our eyes we will not see the enemy arrive.

Let us not hope that one day the world will wake up and discover that billions

of people have had their brains incinerated by an excess of searing images. If that

were to happen, it would mean that men, women and children had been hypnotized by

machines more sophisticated than today’s sets without anybody having noticed.

The Austrian-born philosopher Karl Popper believed that this danger already

existed in 1994 when he wrote, “Democracy consists of submitting political power to

control. That is the essential characteristic. No uncontrolled political power should

exist in a democracy. But today, the television has become a colossal power; one can

even say that it is potentially the most important of all, as though it had replaced the

voice of God. And it will be thus as long as we continue to support its abuses. The

television has acquired too sweeping a power at the heart of democracy. No

democracy can survive if it does not put an end to this all-powerful entity.”50

Television has already imposed itself in hospital and hotel rooms. While it is

still possible for an occupant to refuse to watch his set, there are other places where

the choice has been taken away. Under the pretext of being a practical solution and

adapted to different social groups, TV screens have installed themselves in prisons,

retirement homes and some schools. Without meeting effective resistance, the

television takes advantage of opportunities to implant itself; a condition which then

quickly becomes the norm.

Marcel, 86 years-old, living in a private room in a retirement home, Paris: “If I

had nothing left to live for, the TV would interest me; but that’s not the case. Between

spending 3 hours in front of a TV and 3 hours in front of my window, I prefer my

50
Karl Popper and John Condry: La télévision, un danger pour la démocratie, Angolia, Paris, 1994.

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window. I can imagine life in what I see. When I’m not watching TV, I can think

about lots of things; they come to me naturally. If I watch TV, so much information is

being sent to me that I don’t have time to really think. Here, there is a television set

in each room turned on all day long; in the evening, too. The people who watch too

much have the tendency to believe everything. On a basic level, people already have

a hard time expressing what they are and the TV doesn’t help them with that. In a

retirement home it’s worse. We don’t communicate very much because each one of us

is alone and glued to his screen. I don't have much longer to live and when death

comes for me I want to be able to look it right in the eyes: I don't want to have been

blinded by an overdose of images!"

Hope

Very good news does exist, however, because a simple, fast and efficient

solution has been found. It is easily applicable. It is possible to get out of the

stranglehold of these gigantic television powers. The era of the taking of the Bastille

is not over; only the type of fortress has changed. The new fortress is virtual but very

real. To defeat it is neither overly difficult nor insurmountable. Even if its powers are

very strong, turning a TV on or off is a choice. That is its Achilles Heel.

Being upset by television is not enough because, even in that state, a television

viewer still is consensual. The very fact of putting himself in front of a television

screen means that he accepts his condition. He gives his consent because he makes

the decision to sit down in front of his screen without knowing beforehand what he is

going to see. After he ingurgitates the pictures, he becomes doubly consensual

because he does not say anything. His only meaningful act of revolt would be to turn

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off his television but he does not do that. He does not turn off his screen because

everything has been constructed so that it stays turned on.

However, disengaging from television is a growing phenomenon throughout

the world. For several years and in different countries, individuals and groups have

found several solutions. They share the goal of not watching television, at least for a

period of time, because that is the only way to free oneself from television’s

stranglehold.

Many initiatives have appeared in the world. Up until now, the best example

is the “TV Turnoff Week” that was started in 1991 in a high school teacher’s class in

the state of Connecticut in the United States. Since then, first one and then several

groups have spread this idea throughout the entire USA. In 2003, one of these groups

exported the concept beyond America’s borders. This resulted in 2006 in the

participation of 7.5 million people in the United States and 2 million people in 30

other countries.51

Telecracy: social cancer

I am completely aware that my proposal to abstain from television could seem

extreme. But it is only after having measured the progression of television’s power,

observed the consequences and read a large number of analyses about television that I

have come to these conclusions. In spite of all the warnings proffered for years by

eminent sociologists, philosophers and doctors, nothing has been able to stop the

progression of television’s power. To the contrary, television has multiplied itself.

And, in spite of measures supposed to control it, it seems that nothing can stop it. It is

51
“Center for a Screen-time Awareness.”

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a sort of autonomous system, beyond human control; a Frankenstein-type of machine

that we invented and that has escaped us.

Since it does not listen to anything or anyone, the solution is to un-plug it. In

this act lies great power. It has to do with the preservation of democracy. Just as the

television maintains the illusion of reality, it also maintains the illusion of democracy.

The only civic solution that the viewer has left is to change his point-of-view. What

television does not say and will never say is that, if the television viewer concentrates

on transforming himself, the problem is reduced to a minimum. It is by changing

oneself that one changes the world. To stop being a television watcher is to become a

citizen.

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 CONCLUSION

“Everyone should be respected as an individual,

but no one idolized.”

Albert Einstein52

My choice to leave the documentary channel I worked for seemed to be

obvious to me when I understood that it was not about the distinction between good

and bad television. Although I was working for a quality channel, above all I was

working for television and was indirectly encouraging viewers to turn away from

themselves. The word television comes from the Greek word tele meaning ‘far’; thus,

‘tele-vision’ is literally far-vision – so far from oneself that most viewers forget to see

what is close to them and, above all, what is in them.

Although it is not bad to see far, watching TV was stopping me from seeing

close. Each year without television in my home, I have been becoming more and

more able to listen to the life within. My life, i.e. my personal laboratory, was

beginning to yield genuine results. Ideas that were going through my head were now

mine. I was gaining in the ability to see clearly and in focus. A life that was really

mine, organic, was taking form. The more that it resonated in me, the more I felt that,

professionally, I could not continue where I was. I left my job when I understood that

the tele-vision will always substitute itself for the other vision: the interior one that

allows individuals to be in contact with a much deeper reality.

Listening to the more profound reality in me set in motion the writing of this

book. When I began, I did not realize all the creative processes attached to it: a tiny
52
Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, Citadel Press, Inc., 2006.

126
something coming to life in me, then beginning to vibrate internally and, finally,

coming out and materializing in the world. Thanks to the writing of this book, I was

able to experience a birthing; an event that I had thought was reserved for women.

Although it took me well over 9 months to bring this book into the world, I

understood the importance of the process of gestation, so contrary to the energy of

television. During this period, I studied, listened, discussed, observed, interviewed

and, above-all, meditated patiently on my topic. I was only able to do this by

directing my vision inwardly.

Unfortunately, by writing this book, I am aware that I might be helping

television since it adores being criticized. Not only does it adore it, it feeds on it.

Television has even become bulimic in the sense that it searches out criticism and, in

spite of all those that have been leveled against it for the last 40 years, has not stopped

growing.

Finally, I decided to write this book because it is addressed to you, television

viewers, not to the television. It is up to you, the viewers, to once again become the

masters of your time. It is through the acquisition of this mastery that you will decide

to turn off your sets or, better yet, to get rid of them altogether. Doing so will make

television mute and powerless. Once it has been turned off, it will no longer grow –

which it does only through your participation. By turning off your set, you put the

television in its rightful place and you take back the reins of your life. You will once

again be the principle actor in your life.

Although there are many today who want to go on television to give

themselves value, a different value calls to me: that of anonymity. It is by not being

on television that the fundamental principles of life take precedence over personal

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image. Television only knows how to idolize the image while forgetting these

principles.

The television encourages us to believe that in order to be someone, in order to

have value, it is necessary to be seen. I do not believe this. A lot of people know

their own value without needing to be on television. Some of them even work for the

general well-being and choose voluntarily to be anonymous. Those people, who do

not demand that their egos be rewarded, discreetly and with natural determination

cultivate life wherever it is found. I have met some of them and they have all been an

exemplary source of inspiration. Not only do they exist but they fight for our well-

being and we don’t even know it. They are the real heroes of our century.

THE END

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 EXTRA

Testimonial

Marianne, 33 years-old, French Riviera: “I began weaning myself off TV

during the summer I was on vacation. I stopped watching because I realized that I

was running away from myself. I used to get up in the morning and I’d put it on to

have company. I realized that it was an addiction the day I saw that, if I didn’t turn it

on, I didn’t feel well. I decided to stop when I understood that I was no longer

choosing to turn it on. I had been in denial for a long time. It was a good way to

avoid meeting myself. The morning, the evening, it was so easy: as soon as I had

nothing to do, I latched onto it. It filled the void. Since I had anxiety about being

alone, even if I were only home for 5 or 10 minutes I would turn it on. Today, looking

back, I see that it was pathetic. Some evenings I would say to myself, “it would be

good to read a book” but I didn’t manage to do it or I would take one that I would

read in front of the TV, meaning that I didn’t read it.

I wanted to stop but I couldn’t. I was ashamed of my own powerlessness.

Finally, I talked about it to a friend who had stopped watching it for quite a while.

He said to me, “Try not to turn it on for just one evening.” That same evening, I went

home and I didn’t watch it. The next day I felt such a relief; I understood that it was

over. Even so, I had a yearning that lasted a dozen days. It was hard because my

goal was to not fill the absence with another escape.

I had made a plan for the first day I stopped watching TV that had something

different to do every 10 minutes. Then, very quickly, I realized that I wasn’t on the

129
right path. I had stopped watching TV to find out who I was, not to distract myself

with new tricks. So, when I got home, I sat down and I did nothing. It was horrible!

I crossed over a void… and at each moment I said to myself “I’m alive, I’m alive…”

or “I’m doing it; I’m crossing over…” Now I laugh about it but I spent 10 pretty

awful days. Since I didn’t do anything, I listened to noises and, after a few days,

something happened: I felt something move in me. I felt my body. It was very

strange. I felt it breathe. I could feel what it touched. I felt it from the inside and not

from the outside as though, for example, I was in front of a mirror. I finally felt truly

alive.

I let myself be directed by my body. I didn’t decide on anything. I went

wherever it took me. To my surprise, it looked for a piece of paper. It took some

pencils and it started to draw. Several days later, it took me to enroll in the municipal

library, something that I hadn’t done since junior-high school. In fact, I went back to

what I was before; before I was hooked on TV.

I rediscovered childhood sensations; especially noises. I realized that I

hadn’t heard when the TV was on. Surprisingly, I also found smells that I had

completely forgotten… smells from my childhood. I also rediscovered the flavor of

foods. Even if it was difficult, finding these sensations again was a real gift and made

it much easier.

I always used to eat in front of the TV but now I started to eat in other parts of

my apartment. My body would sit somewhere other than in front of the TV. I started

to interact differently with my apartment. It was a revelation: I discovered my

apartment. I saw it differently.

At one point, my body sat down in one of the new places it had discovered in

the apartment and started to write. I didn’t know what it was going to write. The first

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sentence that appeared on the paper was “I want my mother to love me” and, for a

whole page, I wrote about my mother; something that I had never done. I had never

written like that; from my guts. A lot of things came out of me and I cried a lot.

Before, with the TV, I never would have done that because I never would have

felt the need to write. Even if it was painful, it was a good pain. The TV also was

painful because I wasn’t well when I was in front of it. Deep down I was ashamed of

me. When I was in front of it I used to tell myself that I was bad. It had been hurting

me but I had kept doing it anyway…

Without TV, I rediscovered the world; like a child who discovers it for the first

time. I started looking around me again and I had these feelings of discovering things

- angles of view, colors. Later, I discovered music. Instead of watching TV, now I

listen to music. I even started playing the piano. The greatest thing is that I even

started to compose…

I used to not go out in the evenings because of shows I wanted to see. I didn’t

like them but I would go home to see them anyway. I would also spend Saturday or

Sunday afternoons in front of my screen. When I gave up my TV, I was pretty afraid

to go home. I noticed that I was trying not to go home early which ‘forced’ me to go

out. It obliged me to speak with people at the end of work. To discover that the

outside world could be fun was revolutionary. As a result, it completely changed my

relationship with the exterior world. What’s more, by speaking to people around me

about what I was going through, I got very good feedback. Some of them would even

say to me “Bravo” and that helped me. I could congratulate myself for what I was

doing. But one of the results was that I discovered how TV was also a problem for

lots of people. I thought that it was only me; in fact, no.

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 Since I stopped watching television, I haven’t been alone for one moment: I

am always with myself! In fact, I was much more alone with the TV; very alone. My

life was full of things but, in fact, was totally empty. Today I can compare these two

states: with and without TV. Now I feel good about myself. I feel in harmony with the

world. I’m here, living, present.

The cherry on the cake was re-discovering those childhood sensations. I even

imagined pictures of me as a child: vivid pictures. I saw myself as I was in a very

detailed way; in my little red skirt or in specific places. I now see myself with that

kind of creativity and spontaneity. I even took up that way of drawing I had when I

was little. That bothered me at first but, at the same time, I took it to be a gift. I re-

connected myself with the child in me. I took back that child from where I had left

her: in front of a screen…”

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