TV Delusions
Geoffrey Hamilton
October 24, 1995
Delusion is an under-rated ability. For example: without the created delusion that
children offer a form of immortality to parents, there might be no children. Or
similarly, without the instinctive delusions of the sex drive, many children would
not have been concieved. Other examples come through religious competition,
national rivalry, psychological states of denial and many others. Each form of
delusion offers people a sense of value (for example, in children) or prevents
a sense of value from being under-cut (for example, when people refuse to listen
to something).
However, gaps in our ability to continuously delude ourselves
appear from time to time and short term methods can be sought out which will
deliberately instill a state of delusion. What is called a suspension of disbelief
in storytelling forms one such family of short term methods. Suspension of
disbelief, in this case, means the suspension of reality.
Television, which is one species in the storytelling family, can be
understood as one of the methods for the suspension of reality. And for all
its detractors and failings, T.V. , while not being unique in its abilities,
does serve a genuine psychological need.
Without our taste for comfortable living it is doubtful whether
television could have become the dominent form of short term entertainment,
or delusion, that it is. However it is certain from the research into the
causes of desires for entertainment that significant proportions of society
are predisposed to avoid any challenge in the attainment of their required
intake of entertainment. Under these prerequisites it is therefore not
surprising that televison dominates as the prefered medium of delusion.
But these very same indicators point toward the novel developments
in technology for signs of the end of television's dominence. Virtual reality
and neural implants may be able to undercut television's low rate of
challenge in the near future and may begin to take a more serious bite out
of the mainstay delusions like sex or children.
It has often been noted how televison has reduced the frequency
of sexual intercourse and reduced the birth rate among user nations. If
some day the newer technologies are successful and they begin to colonize
the mainstay areas of delusion, like sex, there will be, if there is no
counter force, a marked decrease in world wide population figures. And all I can add
to that is - good.
