Slashdot Mirror
Cable TV Ruins Bhutan
Christ-on-a-bike writes "This article in The Guardian discusses the negative impact of TV on the population of Bhutan. It has only been legal there for four years. Violence, crime and drug use are on the up. Was this inevitable, and what does it say about the influence of TV on Western cultures?" Our previous story about Bhutan talks about the radical impact of television, but without as much emphasis on the darker side.
Still, it's gotta be worth it. Maybe they even get the Simpsons.
People learn by example, and with so many bad examples to choose from on TV, it's not surprising that a previously "untouched" culture should be negatively affected.
Seems to me that the problem is the programming, not television itself. Maybe instead of opening up television to everything, the country could have opened up selectively: educational programming, non-violent programming, etc.
If the US can prohibit nudity and profanity on television, it seems pretty reasonable that other countries might prohibit violence, greed, commercialism and consumerism, etc.
Now all my fears are justified. I guess the internet is supposed to be better for you?
Sounds like culture shock. Here we have an isolated religiously traditional culture suddenly exposed to new ideas and different lifestyles and we don't expect some kind of shock?
I don't think we're seeing negative elements suddenly overtake their society but the expression of human nature in a very dramatic way. The religious take on the "good life" simply folded for many of them and new avenues of expression opened up. This is the teething stage, soon they'll learn to live with information or, much less likely, crumble under the weight of it.
Culture shock has happened countless times through history. Technological advances, influx of immigrantion, sudden changes in government leadership, etc all contribute to the destabilization of the status quo. Its far too easy to bash television here, its just the medium and whats more important is how the new messages interacts with old messages.
Expert Quotations on TVs Cultural Impact
I'm not Seth.
Been reading fark then?!?!?
These stories were listed there a few hours ago....
Correlation != Causation.
Just look at the article itself:
In June 1999, Bhutan became the last nation in the world to turn on television. The Dragon King had lifted a ban on the small screen as part of a radical plan to modernise his country
Call me naive, but I seriously doubt cable TV was the ONLY thing done to 'modernise his country'. But, telling the whole story never sells eyeballs, now does it?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
your wrong - there are no planets with intelligent life...
I mean, I'm sorry, but who cares? If people can't control themselves that's their problem. Perhaps if they just watched the good things that are on tv, such as the news, wildlife shows and the Simpsons?
wait until they get GTA3...
"We cannot blame the schools alone for the dismal decline in SAT verbal scores. When our kids come home from school, do they pick up a book or do they sit glued to the tube, watching music videos? Parents, don't make the mistake of thinking your kid only learns between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m."--former president George Bush
If you came and found a strange man teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of your house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don't think twice about it."--Jerome Singer
"Television is basically teaching whether you want it or not."--Jim Henson, Muppets creator
I'm not Seth.
Violence, crime and drug use are on the up. Was this inevitable, and what does it say about the influence of TV on Western cultures?
It says what we've always known: that behaviour is heavily influenced by observation. Put a kid in an environment where everyone throws their rubbish in the bin and he'll do the same. Put the same kid in an environment where everyone throws stones at people with red hair and he'll do that too.
Bombard a kid 24/7 with images of guns, explosions and murders left, right and centre and he'll want to join in the action. We learn by repeating what we've seen so it's a natural reaction. Why expect a kid that watches violent cop show after violent cop show to be a perfect angel?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
no, you're wrong, there may be no intelligent life on your planet, but don't rule out mine
tho you certainly proved your point that there's no intelligent life on your planet by switching your and you're
Every week, the letters page carries columns of worried correspondence: "Dear Editor, TV is very bad for our country... it controls our minds... and makes [us] crazy. The enemy is right here with us in our own living room. People behave like the actors, and are now anxious, greedy and discontent."
Is this stupid? Funny? Bizarre? Remember that Bhutan does not follow the same societal traits we are accustomed to in the west. I'd be inclined to see this report in a different light for just that reason.
fat people can now sue cable companies in the USA?!?!?!?
What TV show was it where the guy goes nuts and drives his terrified in-laws off a cliff in a drunken rage?
There are clearly larger issues at work here causing these people to go nuts (looking in the direction of Communism...) The article makes little mention of the cause-and-effect of this behavior, other than this stuff happened to start around the same time westernized television showed up.
And I'm sure that marijuana which grows all over the place there was only used to "feed the pigs" before TV, as well. Right...
One of the quotes from My Other Post is
If you came and found a strange man teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of your house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don't think twice about it."--Jerome Singer
I'm not Seth.
Has anyone bothered to corolate against other conditions. Seems like if TV is just becoming legal there are other MAJOR social changes under way, and attributing any result to TV is kind of silly.
FWIW, I have not read the article, as this kind of voodoo sociology has never interested me. If someone who HAS read it feels that Slashdot put the wrong spin on it, please let me know, and I'll spend some time actually reading it.
In Fiji, a big woman was considered to be beautiful. But after tv was introduced in 1995, Fiji saw a sharp rise in anorexia among girls.
m
But surely there must be more beneath the surface than blaming our beloved television? TV seems too simplistic of a cause and too easy of a scapegoat, much like rock music/Doom is blamed for corrupting our youth.
Fiji story:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/347637.st
what does it say about the influence of TV on Western cultures?
um...dont you mean "what does it say about the influence of TV on Western cultures?" who gives a shit about the west, it has some of the highest standards of living in the world. But moreover, its WESTERN TV that has fucked up this non-western country, so its them that we should be concerned about.
It takes a typical westerner to exemplify what true selfishness means, and this poster displayed his attitude quite clearly.
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
I know when I see people who Rape, Steal and Kill, they are just victims of TV.
When will we learn that we don't have freedom and are doomed to do what ever
(negative) thing we see on TV. Bullsh*t.
I really have to doubt that this article is truthful for a number of reasons.
According to the article the MIDDLE class citizen makes 1000 pounds a year. Just
the cable subscription would represent 5% of their income. The article later
states: "Almost 50% of the children watch for up to 12 hours a day." 50% of what??
The whole population? BS. They could never afford it. But if a culture is letting
ANY large amount of kids watch 12 hours of TV(out of a maybe 12-14 waking hours), rather
then say oh, I don't know, educate them, don't be surprised if it is a sh*twhole.
TV, is not crack cocaine. It is just entertainment. People used to sit and
listen to radio just like they watch TV and little Timmy didn't cut people
like pirates or shot-up banks like a cowboy.
For a change, take personal responsibility.
Do you say that because it is true, or because you want it to be true?
As much as you (or I) may not want to admit that people are effected by television, vidio games, etc, the evidence on the contrary needs to be considered. What if what we are is shaped in part by what happens around us? Should we ignore the possibility of any negative (or positive) affect that entertainment has? Maybe we should be more careful about what we are entertained by.
Oh, and by the way, I do play some FPS games, but I am not going to claim that because I don't want those games to have an effect on me, that they don't. The possibility does exist.
...interesting if true.
It doesn't mean you solve your problems with violence, but we are nto the best judges of our own behavior. In working in treatment situations, I've often seen people be rude and bully staff, but the next day they talk about how they think they are a polite person and treat everyone with respect.
I've seen, over and over, in treatment situations, in teaching, and in real life, incidents where people find subtle ways to act out what they see on TV or watch in movies or play in games. People that watch shows like (and this is just an example here), "The Waltons," or "ST: The Next Generation," where people usually find peaceful and healthy ways to work out their problems are much more creative with their conflict resolution skills.
I remember one time, specifically (and there were others, this just stands out strongly in my mind) where I was working with someone with a group of teens in an overnight setting. The other adult had worked with them to pick out videos to watch. Everyone was quite cooperative up through watching the video, which was some type of ultimate fighting championship. Once that video was over, the teens were no longer cooperative and argued with us on every little point. This continued for the rest of the night.
I can only wonder, when watching one video can disrupt a group for the whole night, what watching violence over and over and over on TV, movies, and in games, does to a person's way of thinking.
As I said, I've noticed that people who watch shows that use other ways to resolve conflicts tend to be more creative in solving disagreements. We don't just "turn off" one style of thinking and "turn on" another because we're watching TV or playing a game. Think about an athlete who trains over and over so their reflexes are fast. They're burning the habit into their neurons so they can perform an action quickly, without thinking about it. When the situation comes up, they do it without thinking.
The same happens in behavior. If we keep seeing violent or disrespectful behavior used in interatctions with people, it becomes expected and habitual. We are the sum total of all our thoughts, words, and actions. The more our head is filled with violent thoughts, the more likely we are to act in a manner close to violence and with less respect for others.
Yeah. Really! Watching TV doen't affect your inclination to do what you see others doing while viewing. Sheesh...idtiots. That's why commercial air time is a mult-billion dollar a year industry.
Western Civilization is uninfluenced by it's media... it created them! The influence in on the media, it reflects our -actual- values. It doesn't make us more violent, we already were violent and put than in our media. It doesn't make us more shallow, we were already shallow and put that in there. They are being influenced by us and reacting much the way indigenous people did when the missionaries came over... that is, to the real culture, not the idealized "no, this is what our culture is about" culture.
Slashdot Journal on Monopoly News
The original research was later corrected -
...
the scientist also included Internet and Internet-related phenomena.
The strongest correlation they found was between
violence and reading slashdot.org.
The correlation was strongest for "Open Source"
articles.
This is a first scientific proof that Slashdot
and Open Source are the cancers that are destroying our society
Some of us are quite capable of seperating reality from televised entertainment programs.
Well, I think the main problem is Western programming with Star TV and not TV in whole. I think Star TV should restrict it's programming to Bhutan only to certain channels, etc and ban some Western channels that have high influence/crims/etc. in their lives...
;)
Or is it that the people of Bhutan CAN *NEVER* control themselves? LOL...
By the way, the same thing happened in the US when television was introduced. In fact, if you look at geographic location, you'll see that crime went up in each as soon as television became available. So like, TV would come online in New York, and crime would go up. TV would become available in California, and crime would go up, etc. Although I'm sure that what happened in Bhutan was much worse given the quality of the programming today compared to what was played in the US in the 1940s and 50s.
I know a lot of geeks like to deny the social effects of violence, TV, and video games, but really these denials fall in the same boat as those made by people who don't believe in global warming or evolution. Believing them makes you uncomfortable, so you don't believe. The fact is there's a higher correlation between aggression and TV as there is between safe sex and avoiding pregnancy. (Sorry I don't have a citation, this is stuff that I learned in psych 280 at ISU)
The Bhutanese might want to consider changing their lineup and getting rid of some of the more raucous programming, as well as producing local content themselves.
On the other hand, I would certainly be pissed off if the government decided I couldn't watch television because it might make me 'violent'. So it would be hypocritical for me to proscribe that for some other nation. And the self-proclaimed "dragon king" of this place has no more right either. Everyone hated the Taliban, who imposed a similar ban on Television, but loves the Bhutanese. Sure, the taliban were all-around evil people, and the Dragon King seems genuinely interested in national happiness, but still. People need to be free to make up their own minds about what information they want to take in.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The road to television in Western society was an evolutionary process, and people's mechanisms for dealing with the new media likewise had a chance to incrementally develop. Not only that, but here in the 21st century, we've been part of a television-saturated culture for our entire lives and have reasonably developed very personal, robust and informed means of coping (e.g. media cynicism). So our relationship with TV is quite exceptional and particular to ourselves, and is certainly not a good barometer of the medium's "innate" effect on an arbitrary civilization.
Given that, it very possible that TV's influence on the human psyche is an inherently destructive thing, and that we have simply developed defenses strong enough to glean the good from it.
Heck yeah. I mean, every time I turn around and hear about the next cookie-cutter reality show I want to punch someone. This is why I don't watch TV. The sad part is that I'm looking for a career in television. =P Hopefully in the good television like the Sci-Fi Channel.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
I'm not sure why he didn't just drink it straight from the bottle.
No olive, but one time we drank vodka and pickle juice.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
no, you're wrong, there may be no intelligent life on your planet, but don't rule out mine
... And you certainly proved your point that there's no intelligent life on your planet by not using capital letters, periods, and spelling "though" as "tho."
tho you certainly proved your point that there's no intelligent life on your planet by switching your and you're
Seriously, people, spelling/grammar/etc. do NOT matter in a comments system, as long as the post is legible. What truly matters is getting first post.
It's entertainment, nothing more, nothing less. I watch wrestling, but that doesn't mean I solve my problems with violence.
Are you implying that someone with the intelligence of a WWE should be taken seriously by anyone for any reason?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
CNN had a report today of a 5th grader who blew his head off in the bathroom at his school. Nobody else was hurt, but considering he had brought SEVEN guns and plenty of bullets to school with him, one can only imagine what he had thought about doing before chickening out and only punching his own ticket.
I was astonished that the story did not blame television, movies, or video games on this event.
Now I see why. Apparently scapegoats are migratory animals.
It's also the reason that advertisers work extremely hard to influence a tiny portion of the entire audience. They can't just put their product in front of people and say "Buy this" or show other people buying it. It doesn't work like that. It's very hard to influence people to buy things.
No, but it does mean that you're a flaming loser.
Is Cable the only thing that's happened in Bhutan in the last four years? Probably not. I would bet that the rises in crime, violence, and drug abuse have more to do with the fact that Bhutan is constantly shat upon by the west, economically at least.
Sorry to sound unworldly here but...
Tonight I was watching OZ on HBO (it's cable, so OT post here) Some white dude allowed some capo to "spoon" him at the end of the episode for protection. Can anyone enlighten me why they did this? What was the purpose of the spoon?
And if someone answers, it'll serve another purpose, I learn sicker shit on the internet than I ever did watching TV.
I have to agree with gad_zuki and Leki Dorji who says in the middle of the article:
Yes, we are seeing some different types of crime, but that just reflects the fact that our society is changing in many ways. A culture as rich and sophisticated as ours can survive trash on TV and people are quite capable of turning off the rubbish.
These people went from a kingdom without television to a democracy with it in a four year span.
Dayam.
In my culture (US (and yes we have one)) our resistance to change is so comical they make movies about it "Trouble. That starts with T which rhymes with P, that stands for Pool." Pool halls didn't ruin us, we pulled our heads out after the first Prohibition, Bingo halls didn't turn into dens of inequity when they finally got licensed for pull-tabs and other wimpy forms of gambling.
I laugh to think of what chaos would have ensued had we not had 200 years to sidle up to modern life, and I think these people will be doing extraordinarily well if they make it through the transition without having to return to some outdated, unworkable fundamentalist stupidity, that so often follows culture shock on this scale.
Who said anything about WWE? There's a lot of wrestling out there, but you seem ignorant, so it's no surprise you didn't know that.
For a change, take personal responsibility.
I'm sure the people of Bhutan will see your recommendation and act accordingly from now on.
Most people have a capability to be rational, sensible beings. It's a capability that is not often used.
It wouldn't surprise me if TV was as addictive as crack cocaine. Try and take TV away from a child sometime.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The story says:
Was this inevitable, and what does it say about the influence of TV on Western cultures?
Last time I checked, the magnetic polls hadn't flipped yet.
Bhutan is in the east, not the west.
stuff
People and cultures who can be corrupted by fictional screenplays are people and cultures who lack faith in themselves. If they didn't think the world depicted on screen was superior to theirs, they wouldn't try to emulate it.
That said, as an American who has lived on 4 continents, it is clear to me that many, many people believe that the TV we export accurately and honestly portrays ordinary life in the U.S. That's a very sad state of affairs. (It's analagous to Americans believing the UK is just like what we see on those Brit imports PBS runs.)
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
And you're on Slashdot on a Saturday night, too, so what does that make you?
for about four years my parents unplugged the TV. that was basically 8th grade through most of junior year of high school. and to be quite frank those are still my most productive years. i wrote more code and learned more outside of school during those years than i have learned on my own for the last 6... crazy. and i'll add one more thing, the thing that brought my incredible self learning to end was first college applications and then college when i was forced to sit down and be taught rather than exploring and teaching myself...
...
now i certainly played video games during that period so i wasn't completely immune to imitated violence completely, but i certainly kept out of trouble
TV rots the mind... specially in the crucial early years... if your typical day is get home watch 2-4 hours of TV than you are falling behind your potential...
crazy thing is now i use the internet like the TV. i have my "channels" (websites) that i check often, don't really stray that far. and i check them constantly even if nothing has changed. i waste so much time with the internet its stupid. don't get me wrong some things i do are impossible without the internet and when i do use it to research its fantastic...
so i think what's happened to TV will happen to the internet... most content in the hands of a few corporates and nothing really "on" even though we have tons of channels
You are assuming everyone has the same frame-of-mind/state-of-mind/mental capacity/etc as you. There are people smarter than you, and there are people of less intelligence compared to you.
I think this is a common incorrect assumption. Eg.
You do not represent everyone else, and you may not represent the common person in Bhutan either. Plus, society does have a responsibility, I believe, to make some attempt at protecting the impressionable ( eg. kids, mentally incompetant )from acts expressing moral standards that have been found by that society to be below what they think is appropriate.
Step out of yourself for a minute, and understand that your moral standards, and way of life is not acceptable to everyone else.
I bet you think that none of that tv you watch on television "affects" you, right? Most of us do, and I'd bet we're wrong.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
But some people around here seem to belive that Correlation cannot mean Causation. Clearly this is false.
Correlation means that two things are connected in some way, and that way may be causial.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've got the karma to burn, and somebody needs to set you straight.
You will need:
Freeze everything.
Pour some vermouth into your glass. Swirl it around and dump it out.
Fill your glass with Sapphire. Add another drop for the homies.
Sip. Reflect upon what a suave motherfucker you've just become.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I meant aside from the physical effects, obviously. You knew you would have TV back for a week, and you knew you were being punished. It would have been different if it was taken away forever.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
at least he isn't watching wrestling.
seriously, man.
oily dudes in tights grappling.
Yeah, maybe it's TV. Then again, maybe it is the borning cries of a not-very-free nation cut off from the rest of the world, being exposed to the elements of culture. Maybe we should ask the "Dragon King" for some words of wisom.
And in other news, the original researchers received a massive donation from Microsoft.
From reading the article, it seems there are several factors contributing to the problems in Bhutan.
1. The citizen's have let the programming they view influence them far too greatly:
Yes, I realize that what we view in the world affects who we are, but to solely blame television is ignorant. I was instilled with morals/values at a very early age (as I'm sure most people are), which gave me a very clear sense of right and wrong. I watch plenty of television that contains violence, sex and coarse language, but I'm not out raping and pillaging.
2. The goverment dropped the ball as far as legislating what content was allowed to be broadcast:
Some people are just naturally aggressive or have mental disorders that cause them to lash out against society. Yes, television is probably partly responsible, but not fully. Another interesting section of the article:
It would seem that maybe it's not the amount of crime that's increased (though I'm sure it has somewhat), but instead that the types of crimes being commited have changed. One section says that marijuana (which grows like weeds there) is now being smoked. This is probably because before television, they never knew it could be smoked. Ignorance is bliss!
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
Sounds like you have some issues to work out.
And then again, many of us are not. Look at today's population. Do you spend any amount of time conversing with the "average" person? As a helpdesk tech I spend most of my day explaining assinine things such as "no the computer won't work in a power outage". I even found myself explaining what a power cord was and what it is used for. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who says we should change the amount of sex/violence/whatever on TV. Quite the opposite actually. The way I see it we have two problems: 1) Violent/sexual content on TV 2) People dumb enough to model their lives on said TV content Instead of altering the TV content to suit the idiots of the world, we should be working on reducing the amount of idiots present in todays society. PS: If this post made no sense whatsoever, please disregard it. In typical geek fashion I'm currently running on 2 hours sleep in the last 2 days.
I say let them make their mistakes, let them figure it out themselves, and let them enjoy the same measure of freedom every other nation in the world enjoys. (And hopefully a lot more than that enjoyed by North Korea, Cuba, Syria, etc.) Freedom has a price, but it's a price worth paying.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I have no doubt that tv as well as other media can have effects on the viewer, both good and bad. Just watch TV, and try to think about why you react the way you do.
In this case, i doubt it is the intoduction of TV is the only reason crime has increased. I think its due to the broader americanization of the culture. Which does include TV.
Who benfits from this americanization? it certainly doesnt seem like the people of bhutan do. What was wrong with thier life as it was? Yes we can have diffrent standards of living. The american one is not the only way. I think the qatsi trilogy sums that up nicly.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
In my mind, visual and audio communication is no worse than written communication. They have their differences, but the main issue is: it's communication. As long as you believe that anything beyond you exists, communication is pretty cool, no matter what form it takes. (If you're like me, however, you'll find yourself a skeptic...)
Anyway, when's the SAT going to start scoring visual-audio communications? Hello and welcome to 2003.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Thanx everywun for prooving meye poynt :-)
Sentient Meat
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That little swirl coats the glass in a fine film of vermouth. Almost not enough to notice. But it's there, and damn does it change things. A glass of gin is harsh and uncivilized, but a glass of gin with a hint of vermouth, ah, paradise.
That swirl of vermouth is also the difference between a sophisticated gentleman enjoying a drink and a lousy bastard getting tanked on gin.
Subtle distinction, I know.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
"There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?"
-- Dick Cavett
But you benefit from more than five decades of cultural adaptation to this technology, plus centuries of cultural adaptation to other modern factors that these people haven't faced.
That's why we can be much more cynical regarding stimuli like television. We had more exposure, and more experience, and learn to filter it with much more skepticism, both personally and collectively.
A culture exposed to new influences with no period of adaptation can be much more vulnerable, just like people (recent immigrants are a prime target for scams, for example). When information is precious, and you have so little, you tend to take it at face-value more easily.
TV can be a powerful new influence, because it "trains" people on how to react to the rest of the new stuff.
Humans are creatures of imitation. Our behavior is defined by models we build on our minds from observation and education. When we don't have a given model, and we don't have enough experiences to observe, we can rely a lot on fictional narratives as models. Books, television, etc.
Your model, your expectations, how you react for the first time on a court of law, on a hospital, on a date, are heavily influenced by what you have heard from hearsay, what you have read, what you have seen on TV.
Consider that these people have no parents, friends, or general culture sharing experiences from modern societies. TV is their main source of knowledge such as "this is how you react when you are robbed" and "this is how you react when you rob someone".
It won't be as bad in a few years, I'm sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if TV is making it worse for a while.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Sometimes, for sake of blissfulness, it would be nice if I didn't ever realize half of the shit that I have. A prime example is the realization that for over 99% of the people on the planet, they will never achive the same success as the top 1% no matter what they do. Why do you think company executives don't like to discuss their salaries with the people who actually do the work but get little of the reward? Because if most of the workers knew what such a low percent of the profits they earned, they would all walk out. Ignorance is bliss, no doubt about it. An ignorant slave is a happy slave but one who knows that better life is out-there is not going to be content for long. The problem with information is that once it is out of the bag, there is no way to put it back in. We should welcome Bhutan to the information age. They may try to outlaw cable-TV there, limit programming or whatever else but it won't make any difference now. It's much too late for that. On a side note, I do believe that children that are exposed to porn early in life are more likely to think that it's the normal way to be when they grow-up. Which will, in fact, be a problem in society caused by information received through the media. Just something to think about.
Before people start asking about causality, maybe some sort of real correlation should be established. There was not a single bit of real evidence in the article that the crime rate actually did go up in Bhutan. The article only says that these things were "unheard of before", then lists some particularly heinous things that happened in the country in the last four years. Give me a break. No one ever beat their wife in Bhutan before? Perhaps television is the source for this hysteria. Word of corruption and what not travels much faster with TV. Or perhaps people opposed to the changes are highlighting these events more in their own minds. Or maybe TV is causing it, but come up with some real proof first.
"Mom! Can we go buy fabric softener?", Bobby Hill
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
(Without reading the article)
As we (all) grew up watching TV, we learned to filter out what was true and what was not...we learned to filter out what was relevant and what was not...we learned to distinguish between what was entertainment and fact and make-believe.
Now imagine introducing TV to a society that does not have those "filters".
(Hmm, same applies to internet&computer games? yeah..i think so)
And of course there are people around the world who have not been able to correctly 'filter' or 'distinguish' between TV and real-life...the results have been disastrous (Can I cite Columbine as an example?)
Watching TV does not make people violent.
Playing violent computer games does not make people killers.
BUT
There will always be exceptions!
(I've noticed that a lot of parents treat TV as some sort of baby-sitter for their children - I find that unacceptable)
A solution? No idea, TV killed my imagination (:o
First rule of rational statistical analysis:
Correlation != Causation
So a rise in television use happens at the same time as a rise in crime. It doesn't necessarily follow that the first caused the second. There are alternate explanations that deserve at least a second or two of consideration before we blindly accept this one.
Maybe the rise in crime is causing the rise in television use? Escapism isn't all that unusual.
Or, it could be that a third event is the cause of both. Recently, political power in Bhutan has been shifting away from the monarchy into the hands of the elected parliment, especially since the democratic reforms of 1998. People are feeling more freedom. Only with self-delusion could one assume that the people limit their tests of this new "freedom" thing to legal ways. And who's to say that the Parliment is as efficient as the Monarchy was at running criminal justice?
I tend to lean towards this last theory, myself. The "television's fault" view implies an innocent human turned into a monster by evil technology, or evil western civilization. Point the finger anywhere but the actual person doing the murdering.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Here is a link to the Frontline site with a lot more info about setting the system up in the first place.
n /t hestory.html
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bhuta
It's entertainment, nothing more, nothing less.
Sometimes.
Methinks it can apply a lot of subliminal pressure as to what is to be considered "normal".
I have no problem with wresling. It's done in the ring. Methinks everybody would be horrified if the exact same things done in the ring were being done by the spectators outside the ring. Despite any games with "realism", there is a clear distinction between fantasy and reality.
The problem is when a sleazy way of life is portrayed as normal and desirable.
There have been the hundreds of studies (laboratory experiments, field experiments, correlation surveys, longitudinal panel studies) all showing a link with viewed violence and violent tendencies.
Bhutan's experience has already been documented in studies in Canada and South Africa, showing that before TV and post exposure to one channel or multiple channels of TV the children in schools became more violent and the increase was in response to the dose (number of channels). (for notes see the book quoted below).
Whenever I hear "there is no proven link" I am always shocked by the extreme ignorance. Who said "the Truth is not as important as repetition"? Was it Goebbels or Stalin? Either way here are some quotes from the book, "Children & Television" 2nd edition, Barrie Gunter & Jill McAleer; Routledge. Chapter 7 pages 92,93...
the tv show about this is just plan depressing to me. but on the upside some good samples should come out of it well ... 'why is that big man hitting the other man, i dont undersand'
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
That was not his point. The point was that most people are not as self aware as they think they are. Children especially are often unaware of their motivations or reasons for their actions, but most people who don't spend much time in introspection are subject to not understanding or recognizing their own behaviour.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
Bullet In The Head
This time the bullet cold rocked ya
A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika
Nothin' proper about ya propaganda
Fools follow the rules when the set commands ya
They said it was blue
When the boold was red
That's is how you got a bullet blasted through your head
Blasted through your head
Blasted through your head
I give a shout out to the living dead
Who stood and watched at the feds cold centralized
So serene on the screen
You was mesmerized
Cellular phones soundin' a death tone
Corporations cold
Turn ya to stone before you realize
They load the clip in omnicolor
They pack the 9, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
They load the clip in omnicolor
They pack the 9, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds
No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
Play it again and again and again
Until ya mind is locked in
Believin' all the lies that they are tellin' ya
Buying all the products that they are selling ya
They say jump
Ya say how high
Ya brain dead
Ya gotta fuckin' bullet in your head
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Ya standin' in line
Believin' the lies
Ya bowin' down to the flag
Ya got a fuckin' bullet in ya head
Just because two things happen in sequence does not mean that a direct causal relationship exists. The article mentioned a modernization program. I would think that that program entails many changes. Any or all of those changes could be a contributing factor.
Yeah! I watch Playboy TV all the time, but that doesn't mean I actually have sex.
--It's Pimptastic!--
Well for you, what you watch doesn't have an impact that you are aware of. However, it is a stone cold fact that the media (movies, TV, books, music, whatever) influences people - period. To what extent a piece of media has an influence, and to what extent people act upon it is all variable. But it cannot be denied that TV has an influence.
likewise, the leading cause of premature death is accidents, mainly automobile accidents among young people. Thus clearly diving is not worth it.
Indeed we should all be on some prozium (see Equilibrium) and Drug Evasion should be a cime (see THX 1138) and our minds should be filled with Trivia (see Farenheight 451), because its a well established fact that humans are dangerous if not pacified. Clearly exploration, curiosity, dissatisfaction, and acting on ones ideas are not worth it.
SO maybe you want to complain that, well, heck, this is "dukes of hazzard" and "freinds" not master piece theater. Having these is not worth an increase in crime, etc... Really? so its okay for you to watch this but well it corrupts "other" people's minds. Right.
People like this stuff.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
American culture is a virus.
Its self desctructive, selfish and evil.
TV is like herion for the masses. It passifies us, and it is programming is tightly controlled and contents deliberatly chose for the producers' selfish ends.
The more "Americanized" any county becomes, the more, in my opinion, its problems will too.
Every part of our culture brings its evils with it. Wait till McDonalds is in Ethopia. There will be an entirely new set of nutritional problems (assuming its economy were able to sustain said businesses [ie. it becomes economically viable for the citizens]).
Marinate on that.
As the older (non-monetized) economy is disappearing there are many changes in people's roles and in the social hierarchy. Older political hierarchies are also changing as the King is moving the country (with much skill) toward democracy.
It's not just TV.
I wish them the best of luck; they are going to need it to keep their bearings in a more globalized world.
It's not like they have a lot of choice though. At the end of WWII there were three Buddhist kingdoms: Tibet, Sikkim, and Bhutan. Tibet has been absorbed by China; Sikkim was absorbed by India. Bhutan is the last one. If they are going to stay independent they need friends; and to have friends means that they need to trade with the outside world. It's a very special place - I hope that they can keep most of their culture while remaining independent.
It was a bit of a rant, but it makes sense. The average level of education in this country as well as throughout the world is pathetic. Why do we have crappy TV shows? Because people freaking like it!
People live and operate on the same level as these shows. It even seems to be prevalent in those who have attended/are attending universities/grad school. I know quite a few people who are more curious about whats happening on the next sitcom than the rest of the world that surrounds them.
I'll admit that I'm a sucker for star trek and miscellaneous other sci-fi shows, but they don't run my life, and they aren't a primary focus of mine.
Protect the kids! Protect the kids! Gimme a break. If you choose to let your children watch any TV they want to, then you can expect them to see violence, sex (oh no!), and even commercial products for sale. That's your choice.
Teach your children to actually think for themselves (ahem), and you may have kids who can cope with what they see on TV. Your kids might even be able to deal with things found in real life.
they just had no television stations to speak of (at least according to the CIA analysis.) If it were illegal years ago, I suppose that a tv is treated much like pot here in the US - don't ask don't tell. Course the whole Guardian article smells like rotting puritanical bile- IMHO
Might want to have a talk with Johnny about violence not with your cable company.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
As long as we are on the subject of corrupting influences. Did any one else notice the movie Equilibrium was really Farenheight 451 (they even chased the thought crime folks with fire trucks and burned the illicit goods. the cleric/fireman was seduced by a book he held back) with a tiny shade of THX 451 (TV pacification replace by mandatory drug pacification).
"won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!!!"
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
The major idea that differs between the US and that country, is how we were eased into the TV culture. We had the 2 channels, then 5, and so on and so on. We know the WWF(or whatever they call themselves) is fake. They do not. Sad story.
Karma: Bad. Mostly because the only moderators that notice me are conservatives.
There's no neat category to put my politics in, but I consider myself a long-term libertarian. News like the topic of this story compounds my belief: that the days of being able to save people from themselves are over. Information is free, as are the power and corruption it brings. The only way forward for any society is to empower its individuals to the point where they take will care of themselves.
Believe with me, my saplings.
*squints eyes and looks around*
I bet that evil TiVo is somehow behind this...
Sure you do. If not with a physical violence then with a mental one. For example, in databases you ignore ACID and that leads you to choose violently unstable MySQL instead of PostgreSQL. In application programming you ignore the elegance of Functional Programming (like pure Haskell) and you have a daily based violence when debugging your imperative Java or C(++) code.
On a serious note, if you have an opportunity to "help" your boss being fired, won't you use it to improve your career chances?
The fact that you think that the word "violence" can be applied only to "physical" actions just proves that your mind is already very deeply corrupted by watching too much of physical violence scenes on TV.
Less is more !
Whenever you utter the phrase [Group A] [negative-verb] [Group B], reverse Group A and Group B, and attempt to imagine some context in which the statement could be true. Or, subsitute the opposite of [negative-verb] with the original group ordering, and attempt to imagine some context in which the statement could be true. If it works, you have the property of FALSIFIABILITY, the mark of good science and hence good logic.
Group B never understands this, until it becomes Group A, at which time it exhibits the exact same behavior as A (and in fairness vice versa).
Be more interesting!
Well, I certainly didn't expect you to post here!
Let me share a true anecdote: In my first year of college, I took a âoewestern traditionsâ class in which we were one day having a lively debate about the affects of TV/movie violence on society. There were the typical extreme liberals speaking out about how it had absolutely no affects, etc. And there were the typical extreme conservatives with the opposite view.
After a considerable amount of discussion, a young lady (19 or 20 year old) stood up and shared her personal experience on this topic. It turns out she grew up in the middle of no-where New Mexico (or somewhere - I forget exactly where) and there has no broad-cast television in the area, and her parents didnâ(TM)t get a satellite dish. So here whole life growing up, she had no exposure to TV or movies except 2 or 3 times when she was visiting her grandma or something like that. So she goes off to âoethe big cityâ for college, and gets a dorm-mate who watches TV a lot. The first evening in the room, she became entranced with what was happening in the show (some prime-time Cop show if I remember right) and sat and watched. She said that after only 10 minutes of viewing she felt âoeemotionally sickâ, and after about 30 minutes (after watching a few people get shot) she actually threw up! She then said that after living with her roommate for a few months, she only got slightly bothered by such scenes, and after a full year it didnâ(TM)t bother her at all.
I think this (along with all of the studies, etc.) is direct proof that exposure to scenes of violence is âoedesensitizingâ. Does it mean that watching TV will eventually turn her into a killer? Of course not. But it does mean that her âoepsycheâ no longer panics at the sight of violence, and I donâ(TM)t think that it would be too big of a stretch to say that somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind there is a conditioning that thinks assigns less of a âoebadness levelâ than it once did to acts of insult others, curse at others, slapping others, etc..
In the end, this same conditioning is happening to all of us. Luckily, most of us have a lot of counter-conditioning to keep our âoemoralsâ system on the side of still thinking treating someone badly is in fact bad. But letâ(TM)s face it, if we never saw someone strike out in anger, never heard anyone curse at someone else, wouldnâ(TM)t we really be less likely to do those things ourselves? Just like so many studies show that someone exposed to domestic violence as a kid is more likely to inflict it as an adult - our brains simply learn patterns of behaviors. Thatâ(TM)s why weâ(TM)re so good at becoming addicted to things.
Just a link to a speech about Hollywood and the media by Michael Medved. I don't agree with all of it, but it's an interesting perspective that of course the movies/media/tv will have an effect on someone. The world isn't full of crime because most of us aren't effected; however, some are.
in soviet russia, bhutan ruins you!
"The meek shall inherit the earth, the rest of us shall go to the stars." Isaac Asimov
Margaret Mead made similar observations about the introduction of TV in Micronesian Islands, back in the 1960s.
The people of Bhutan didn't know a lot of things were possible before they started watching TV. Now that they do, some will try them. Also, seeing other humans doing them reinforces that someone thinks it's a good idea. That makes the possibility of a repeat all the more likely.
Look, humans aren't very inventive. Hollywood remakes the same damn movies over and over again because of it. Kids immitate the WWF (or whatever the hell it's called now) because of it. The people of Bhutan are no different (now).
I think of the previous state of Bhutanians as something you'd see on a Star Trek episode. The Enterprise visits a world where does not occur because they've never had the thought. Then, once they know about it, someone does it... and Kirk is held responsible.
Does watching wrestling make you a better person? Just asking...
I think someone needs a hug.
What you watch doesn't determine who you are.
Freedom is inherently unsafe. If you let your neighbor have a gun, he might decide to kill you with it. If you allow people to speak freely, you run the risk of being offended. If you live in a society that allows you to have television, little Timmy might just decide to imitate it.
Some serious thought has to go into removing freedoms that have been killed and died for to gain a little bit of safety. If you want to live in the safest country possible, avoid the ones that advocate freedom. Coward.
Oh Fuck! There's a picture of a Jap girl squirting shit all over herself!
you for being ignorant. For example, under the current President Bush, there has been a $12,000,000,000 funding increase for education.
Why oh why didn't they take the blue pill.
You think television and video games don't effect behavior? Try playing Gran Turismo for a while and then go out driving. I'm not the only person I know who has problems with this.
I can keep my kids form watching TV that is bad; but many other parents don't, and my kids have to go to the same schools and live in the same world as these damaged individuals.
Bizarre thought: what if it's not the programming,
/can/ still hear it find it
but the recent introduction of TV sets themselves?
The flyback transformers in cheap TV sets tend to
make a very high-pitched whine (around 15.75 khz).
Most adults cannot hear this frequency, especially
if they have become deaf to it from a lifetime of
TV exposure. Those who
extremely irritating [1].
So, if you take an entire country of adults who've
retained the ability to hear above 15 khz, and now
expose them to constant loud subliminal noise from
cheap imported TV sets, it might very well stress
people out and cause violence and bad behavior
even if they only showed innocuous programming.
[1] Just search Google Groups for "flyback transformer"
+ words like irritating, annoying, etc.
>;k
Negative impact from cable TV? Violence, crime, and drugs? That's nuts! We've had cable TV in the USA since it was invented, and we're... ...Oh, nevermind, I see.
You know, the reports of new crime and moral decay in the article sound fairly tame for most places that I can think of. Consider how many people find themselves wasting days per week watching televison.
Who's to say that we're really any more immune to this sort of influence, and that we haven't just written off the losses?
Dorje, a 37-year-old truck driver, bludgeoned his wife to death after she discovered he was addicted to heroin.
Yes, TV brought heroin into Bhutan.
I just love how so many people become defensive when the subject of TV or video game violence is brought up. "It has no effect" "It doesn't change me" Blah blah blah.
The fact is sex and violence on TV does affect people. That's why Madison Avenue spends billions on advertising. But the other fact is that every individual has to be held personally responsible for their behavior. To not hold people responsible for their behavior and blame it on something else is to dehumanize a person. People choose. If I watch a violent movie and cannot resist the impulse to then go kill someone, then I should still be held responsible for my actions. I should have known my limitations that violent movies affect me in a bad way, and should have chosen to abstain from watching violent movies.
Whether or not violence on TV affects a person is to miss the point. Maybe you shouldn't play FPS's, but that is your choice. If you play Quake and then choose to attack me or my family, you better believe I'm holding you responsible, not id software.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Oh, and by the way, I do play some FPS games, but I am not going to claim that because I don't want those games to have an effect on me, that they don't. The possibility does exist.
I see... so, have you been feeling inexplicable urges to have a shooting spree at your school/church/ place of work?
I know this because Tyler knows this.
Four years ago, Violence, Crime, and Drug Use were legalized in Bhutan.
This conjures up images from that episode of "Friends" where the guys couldn't stop staring at the screen during BayWatch.
"They're running again..."
I'm on a chair.
At my previous job, there was this strange lady who ALWAYS spoke
about sex. Everything she said, was in one way or another related
to sex. I was new there and was shocked at how nobody restrained
her for her perversion at the work place. I told some coworkers
about it, and they didn't seem to mind, but they weren't interested
in joining/developing her conversations either.
Later on, I became friends with her (not wanting to sex her, since she
was not my type, and quite frankly I wasn't her type either.) I got to
know her and found out that she is subscribed to 2 porn sattelite
channels which she gets for cheap, and she spends most of her evenings
in AOL channels exchanging video-chat-thinggie with others.
This woman turned out to be NOT interested in any of her coworkers (us)
and was able to shut down all the advances with her skilled rhetoric
and not so subtle put-downs. She had NO reason at all to use sexual
metaphors in such frequency. She didn't want to project a perverted
image to a bunch of computer geeks (she knew better.) but the problem
was that her private world rotated around her sex life, she had no
friends, no hobbies, etc. only a well charged dildo and virtual reality.
So her verbal skills and mental capabilities were reduced to that subset
of english that never makes past my procmail filters.
Sad, but true.
"Terrorists have above average educations. (it's well documented, so let's not argue)."
Terrorist LEADERS are usually above average in education while thier foot soldiers are typically not.
Tim McVeigh "was very bright, not top of his class, but a solid student. He left school in 1986 and dropped out of college soon after."
Mullah Mohammed Omar "has no formal schooling. His education consists of training sessions at a madrassah, an Islamic school devoted to the study of the principles of Islam and the reading of the Koran."
Yasser Arafat tudied civil engineering at the University of Cairo in Egypt.
Osama bin Laden studied management and economics at King Abdul Aziz University in Jedda.
Khieu Samphan of the Khmer Rouge worked on his doctoral degree in Paris.
Pol Pot flunked out of his electronics scholarship in Paris.
Carlos the Jackal had a talent for languages and had terrorist training at an early age, possibly in Cuba and/or under the supervision of the KGB.
Khalid Mohammed went to college in North Carolina for a while.
Ramzi Yousef studied electrical engineering.
Terry Nichols was a drop-out, loser who couldn't keep a job or a wife.
Zacarias Moussaoui is said to have a masters degree...
Adolf Eichmann flunked out of college, worked as a traveling salesman
Joseph Goebbels studied history and literature at the University of Heidelberg
Hermann Goering was a badass pilot in WW1
Reinhard Heydrich was a military cadet
Heinrich Himmler got a farming diploma from a Munich vo-tech school and later was a chicken farmer
Adolf Hitler flunked out of art school
its funny how many people here seem to not want to recognise peer pressure, TV And Video games are very much a fourm ao peer pressure and they do influnce are choices and decisions,(even if you refuse to admit it) just as peer pressure does.
But I suppose people don't want to see reality when it comes to there entertainment, don't you dare say anyting bad about my entertaiment..
How pathetic
Of course this influences people to do things they otherwise may or may not have commited.
Take movies for instance. No, not the "Fast and Furiously stupid!
101 Dalmations. The live version. There was an upsurge of people going out and buying Dalmations.
Unfortunatly some people found out that Dalmations are very hyper dogs and so a lot of people brought thier dogs to the pounds to get rid of them. I can only imagine how many of them were destroyed.
Lets take "Finding Nemo". I bet there are pet stores begging thier suppliers for all the clown fish they can get. I wish the Clown fish would have sub machine guns to shoot the hands off the fisherman who try to scope them from the ocean.
Now I am not a tree hugger by any means. But Movies and T.V do infulence people.
Kinley Dorji, editor of Kuensel (motto: That The Nation Shall Be Informed), warns that Bhutan's ruling elite is out of touch. "We pride ourselves in being academic and sophisticated, but we are also a very naive kingdom that does not yet fully understand the outside world. The government underestimated how aggressively channels like Star market themselves, how little they seem to care about programming, how virulent the message of the advertisers is."
Kinda sums everything up quite nicely.
The way I see it we have two problems: 1) Violent/sexual content on TV 2) People dumb enough to model their lives on said TV content
And myself, I see the two problems as: 1)I think there should be MORE SEX and a touch more violence on TV because I'm a guy and I like things like that and 2) No one really seems to care what I think in problem 1).
I could be wrong. After all, I'll let my kids listen to Nine In Nails or Sisters Of Mercy long before I'll let them play Britney or the Back Street Boys in the house.
I'm also weird that I insist that there is an equal ammount of Discovery/TLC/Science viewed as there is cartoons or shows. This gives them a little bit of knowldge and some entertainment. Also, when it's time to pick out a family movie, I'm not too worried about "protecting" them because I know that they are good natured and smart enough not to base their decisions in life on a movie/song/tv show.
But like I said, that's just me.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Hello, I'm Kent Brockman, and welcome to another edition of `Smartline'.
...
Are cartoons too violent for children? Most people would say, ``No, of
course not, what kind of stupid question is that?''
-- The value of objectivity in reporting, ``Itchy and Scratchy and Marge''
% His guests are Marge, Roger Meyers (CEO of I&S, Intl), and
% Krusty (``Hi, kids!''), and
Joining us live, via satellite from Vienna, home of Sigmund Freud, the
world's greatest psychiatrist, to give us an insight into the human mind,
Dr. Marvin Monroe.
-- `Smartline', ``Itchy and Scratchy and Marge''
[Does that make Freud or Monroe the world's greatest psychologist?]
% After a brief clip of I&S, the debate begins...
Meyers: I did a little research and I discovered a startling thing...
There was violence in the past, long before cartoons were invented.
Kent: I see. Fascinating.
Meyers: Yeah, and know something, Karl? The Crusades, for instance.
Tremendous violence, many people killed, the darned thing went
on for thirty years.
Kent: And this was before cartoons were invented?
Meyers: That's right, Kent.
-- `Smartline', ``Itchy and Scratchy and Marge''
% Dr. Marvin Monroe adds his two cents...
Well, Kent, to me, the hijinks of a few comic characters absolutely pales
in comparison to the crippling emotional problems a psychiatrist runs into
every day. I'm referring to women who love too much, fear of winning,
sexaholism, stuff like that.
-- Dr. Marvin Monroe on `Smartline', ``Itchy and Scratchy and Marge''
% Krusty is next...
Kent: For another opinion...
Krusty: [laughs] Hi, kids! [laughs]
Kent: Krusty, please. We're giving you the opportunity to participate in
a serious discussion, here.
Krusty: Oh, I'm sorry Kent. Just that when the camera gets on me, I just...
Hey! [throws a custard pie in his own face] [honks horn]
Kent: Krusty!
Krusty: [honks horn] [cowers]
-- `Smartline', ``Itchy and Scratchy and Marge''
% Marge get to make her concluding statement, in which she asks all concerned
% parents to write to I&S and express their feelings. In his office, Mr.
% Meyers goes through the tons of angry mail he's received... ``The
% screwballs have spoken...''
%
% [End of Act Two. Time: 13:00]
Just thought I'd quote that.
Don't like violence? Let's start with the worst offender of all time: The Bible. I've never seen a TV show where a baby gets cut in half yet, nor one where live animals are sacrificed.
Maybe in Bhutan they have some different TV shows. Beats me.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I'm tired of everyone bitching that american culture and McDonald's and other stuff is ruining every other country. The standard of living here is nothing short of amazing compared to most places. a *lot* of the *poor* people here still eat every night, have cable tv, houses, etc. I'm sure the people in ethiopia would much rather worry about high cholesteral from McDonalds than trying to find some wheat to feed their babies for the next month!
You're saying that's okay by you for people to do that - so long as it only happens to foreigners?
And does that mean you advocate legalising crack cocaine and heroine - because you think it's silly to tell people what to do occasionally?
In conclusion: I think you have one or two good points (3, 1, your conclusion), but the rest are largely stupid. And because this is Slashdot... uh... you're a doodie-head.
insightful and informative.
apparently education and cable TV breed dissatisfaction.
Yeah! Just like the Americans kicking ass in Vietnam... oh wait!
The British lost the American revolutionary war largely because of stupid political mistakes that should never allowed it to start (raising taxes) - in the same way that the US shouldn't have gone into 'nam.
The British army was not prepared for the gurrella strategies employed by the Americans - certainly no conventional army in the world could have defeated them. Just as the Americans were not prepared for the unorthodox and desperate strategies employed by the Vietnamese.
The point was that most people are not as self aware as they think they are.
And, to be honest, one of the most vulnerable segments of the population is the intelligent end. I've seen it over and over -- someone who has learned to rely on their high IQ and has become totally unaware of their emotional self. Or, as I've often seen, people often think, "I'm smart enough to not be influenced by such things," and once they've made that assumption, boom! they've been taken in by a scam, or end up behaving in ways they know are wrong, but aren't self-aware of their behavior to realize what they're doing.
In other words, making the assumption, "I'm too intelligent to fall for this, so I'm safe," and, in that sense of safety, falling right into the same trap everyone else falls into.
It's like a motd I used to get sometimes when I logged into a shell on my old Amiga: "Too clever is dumb."
My point: We are ALL pulled in by these things -- even those of us who think we know better.
My point from the original post that was missed: An athlete trains their reflexes by performing the same actions over and over. People prepare for speeches by rehearsing the lines over and over. We learn by repetition. The more we have perform the same actions, the more at ease we become with them. The more we see violence over and over and follow violent patterns in solving problems, the more used to it we get.
It's entertainment, true. But look at the boxer (forgot who it was) who was arrested for biting off someone's ear, or (was it the same boxer) was jailed for raping a woman. Do you REALLY think you can train someone to have a "killer instinct" in the ring only? Do you think you can tell a person to be aggressive at certain times and to just turn it off at others? But boxing is just a game.
While the rest of us aren't in training for boxing, we watch and root for people to kill and maim on TV. We develop patterns as we do this, just like an athlete or musician as they practice day after day. And, as those patterns are developed, they don't just get turned off when we're not watching TV or movies.
The's been a saying for years: "You are what you eat." If we eat only potato chips, that's all our body has to build new biomatter. Our body can only use what we give it for building materials. Let's go one step more: "You are what you think." The more you fill your mind with violent thoughts and events, the less creative ways to deal with conflict are available to it.
The situation in Bhutan went back to norm after ... This step alone
blocking Disney channel
led to 4-fold reduction in scenes of violance.
Similar drop in the crime rate has been observed.
I see... so, have you been feeling inexplicable urges to have a shooting spree at your school/church/ place of work?
I can't speak for the grandparent poster but I certainly do dream about shooting up some terrorists with my Desert Eagle. Of course I know killing is wrong and I can't really afford a gun either way so I'm not about to do that.
However, I do see hot studs on TV macking them sexy ladies and I do seek to emulate them whenever I get the chance. I certainly do think it's from television that I learn such techniques because I rarely see any real mack daddies in action, and those of my buds that have such hot shit have certainly only got it from television. I'm not saying pimps wouldn't exist without the mass media, but rather their lifestyle wouldn't be so influential without it.
If you extend that to violence, drug abuse, and other such things the article mentions, it's quite easy to see how television can atleast influence, if not directly cause, how we act.
HAHAHAHAHA! A Simpsons quote! I get it! Oh HAHAHAHA! That was a good one! How do you come up with those Simpson quotes? Hahahaha, nice! Swish, three points! Sunk that one! Hahahaha! Beautiful! That was awesome! A Simpsons quote! HAhahaha! I get it!
lay off the ludes. Try some lithium or something.
Have you ever heard of imagination?
What TV does is stimulate the imagination (sometimes not very much, considering the pap like "Friends", but still...depends on your interests - I suppose Friends could stimulate sombody's imagination - certainly Courtney Cox can stimulate mine...). The end result is shaped by the basic nature of the persons whose imagination is being stimulated.
Blaming TV for this is like blaming the sun or the moon for poets who laud them...
What is the alternative? Brain-dead people with no imagination...which is pretty much how I'd imagine Bhutan to be before TV...Okay, that might be harsh, I'm sure the people there are like anyone else and have been occupying their imagination in other ways for thousands of years.
The point is, now they can imagine the Western way of doing things - money, sex, violence, rock and roll and drugs...which they probably consider much more interesting than their way in the same manner that Western Oriental enthusiasts adopt Asian religion and martial arts and customs...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Bhutan has a life expectancy of 53 years
Looks like Bhutan was "ruined" long before television arrived.
Ever since they put that test pattern on the screen after hours, people have been mugging and looting in order to afford a T-shirt with that same pattern on it.
Table-ized A.I.
I add olives, but a twist is acceptable as well. Use fresh (well, fresh from the jar, or fresh from the fresh-olive-bar at frou-frou supermarkets) olives. If the jar's been in the fridge 6 months since your last party, trash it, buy more, it's worth the $3.95.
All this has fuck-all to do with TV in Bhutan, except that if I were in Bhutan watching TV, you would be damn sure I would want a fucking Martini. So I'll kick your ass if you mod me Offtopic.
sulli
RTFJ.
Jerry Spinger will do that to a culture. There is no hope now.
I'm sure all of the bad boys will be rounded up by the COPS! (psst..they're the ones without shirts)
But blaming TV is very elitist and one should never underestimate the human desire to perceive oneself as superior to others.
Advice: on VPS providers
TV: "Teacher, mother, secret lover."
What could be wrong with that?
Suppose TV (programs and shows,etc) is causing this problem, then the government and the TV producers must take some actions to resolve the problem. I am saying if TV causes violence and crime in society, then the government and producers are repsonsible to solve that problem. It could be by changing their programmings and educating them to NOT TRY IT AT HOME.
TV can control your emotion and feelings, but YOU the VIEWER can say NO to it. But the ideas, whether a style of killing people or violence are instilled in the viewer's mind especially if it has an emotion attached to it--we remembered those ideas well. How many of you seen a sex scene and not try it on your wife or fantasize yourself in it?
That's my two cents.
ACLU quote: "Japanese TV and movies are famous for their extreme, graphic violence, but Japan has a very low crime rate -- much lower than many societies in which television watching is relatively rare."
The case of Bhutan almost certainly involves much deeper and more important social issues than cable TV.
I visited Bhutan two years ago. It is a simple Buddhist monastic society with very little contact with the outside world. Tourism is very limited, with only a few thousand visitors allowed into the country each year. Druk Air, the only airline into the country, had only one small airplane. The other had been in England for over a year in repair.
The people are wonderful. Education is a top priority. It is a very peaceful society, but changing rapidly.
The temples do not allow photography inside for fear of providing outsiders of pictorial inventories of the priceless artifacts inside. In the previous year a group of Bhutanese bandits from the east looted a temple, killing the monks who did not escape. This would have been an unimaginable event only a few years ago. Desire for wealth obtainable by selling religious artifacts is overtaking the traditional values of the culture.
Opening a simple, stable, but closed society to western culture through the window of western media and commercial television is an unavoidable disaster. This simple Buddhist culture, with its sane attitude toward the human problem of desire, stands little chance of surviving the desire machine being unleashed there. Western media is the engine of materialism. I fear that western corporate monoculture will win over the minds of youth in a generation. An alternate form of human social existence will be lost.
TV is their downfall. Riiiiight. And I suppose since they've had access to Slashdot for a while, they've all become hate-Microsoft-at-any-cost religious zealots as well.
Isn't it at least possible that what this girl became desensitized to is not violence per se, but violence on TV???
Most people I know see blood and violence in TV and video games and it doesn't bother them, but if they see it in real life, they have real problems with it.
i gave up tv about a year ago.
to say the least it has been the best decision i every made. as the article stated, all you are doing is blinking your life away - i just thought that enough was enough and so i gave it to a collegue for free.
tv sucks, the programs on them suck and thats really that. i have been known to bittorrent an occassional star trek episode but thats so rare it doesnt really count (besides, if it doesnt have jean luc picard in it or 7 or 9, who cares, right?)
funny thing is i have seen all the good movies at the movie rental store here, and so i don't watch dvd's any more. i don't download games or movies any more because, really, most of them suck too. you spend a few hours downloading this shit, you burn it, play it once and go why the fuck did i download this again?
however, the most fascinating experience was sitting down at a restaurant a few months ago, ordering a meal and watching the news. it was such a bizarre experience to watch this pompous assed prentious dumbed down show that i really couldn't stand it (it was cnn or one of the other majour networks with theoretic credibility). i'm the first to plead that i am no one in particular in regards to my education world knowledge or sophistication (never mind the spelling and grammar to boot), but watching a "serious" show and feeling insulted by it was quite a shock.
frankly i don't miss it and i don't get how others can watch tv either.
as a consequence i read the newspaper once a week if at that anymore, but realistically there is nothing usefull in there either. i did luck into a fascinating article on iranian societ and the current state of afairs there in todays paper, but i only read that because i was at a restaurant.
the net and irc are my next goals of disconnection. i spend far too much time online and i will be chopping that out of my life. don't really need it, don't really want it.
when i get my linux box up and setup some news feeds just to keep an eye on world affairs at a glance, thats all i really wish as exposure to this stuff.
as an ex tvholic, this really is an unexpected stae of events - hopefully it continues for others.
TV is not just the FOX, NBC or MTV network, it has a lot to offer these days and some of the programming is actually quite good. I have learned a great deal about other cultures, mechanical things, and animals due to some fine programming on channels like Discovery, TLC, and Animal Planet.
Now don't get me wrong, TV DOES have FOX, NBC, and MTV and they have some of the most inane, lowest common denominator type programming there is but as another posted pointed out everyone has free will. Nobody is forceing you to watch that dreck and so to say things like "TV rots the mind" when you can choose to watch something that might actually do just the opposite seems pretty silly.
As for the Internet and it's "channels" thats another story entirely. One of the big things about TV is that it is a one way medium. You basicly watch what is on and have no way to respond, other than turning it off, to what you are seeing. However many times on the internet you are given the option to respond and say what you think about an issue. (Kind of like what I'm doing right now.) I could go on with this point but it's a little off topic and I think that I've made myself clear enough.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Bhutan says it was TV that destroyed their country.
I ask, was it? Or was it that now problems have surfaced? Seriously when a society opens problems are publicized. This means maybe, just maybe these problems existed already. But nobody knew because there was no media.
So I ask is this better or worse? I personally think better.
Now about society and Americanization != progress. Ask yourself, which society would you rather live in if you had the choice. I am almost willing bet you would say America instead of Bhutan.
America and American's have flaws. BUT and this what people have to realize. Many of those flaws are hyped media stuff. Just like maybe what is going on in Bhutan.
There are 260 million people in the US and 375 million in Europe. When bad things happen in the US, people say, oh look how bad America is. But those bad things happen in Europe as well. Does anybody say oh look how the Europeans are? Not usually. Why because those bad things are spread out over Europe and simply does not make for interesting media which is spread too thinly...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
The most morally destructive tool on the planet is the laugh track. Without the laugh track most people would be disgusted at what they are presented on TV...
Try this experiment some day: turn the volume off and watch somesitcom with subtitles... and then see how funny it is... all "hilarity" goes out the door and you are left with a very sad, degraded picture of the scriot and its plot.
TV *is* a trap, designed to prevent you from doing anything else. They'll use any trick, including masked sadism, to keep you entranced.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
This article reminded me of things I've seen some foreign students go through in the US. The idea that businesses are happy to screw their customers comes slowly to some. While many (but clearly not all) Americans develop a resistance to twinkies and pop tarts, some foreigners are completely defenseless.
I have grown up in a culture that, to some degree, "understands" television. I know that both the WWF and the Presidential Debates are complete bullshit. I know I shouldn't trust or believe anyone on television (and many in "real" life). I am beginning to conclude that these traits are cultural and have little to do with intelligence.
Which means that Bhutan is screwed. I'd far rather see them explore the internet, because it is easier to realize that you are responsible for what you view.
-Paul Komarek
A similar situation exists on Inuit reserves in northern Canada.
Some are poor, some not so poor, but the one thing they have in common is super isolation and TV. Kids growing up there watch a lot of television and are envious of the materialism and wealth they see. Gradually their life doesn't seem so grand and they get bored. Alcohol is banned on many reserves and expensive on the rest, and drugs are pretty expensive too (even marijuana - hundreds of dollars for a few grams). But sniffing solvents is free and very widespread in a lot of communities. So is child abuse, unemployment and suicide.
Like the parent poster, many people wonder why the hell the parents involved don't do something, or how neighbors could ignore children behind their shed inhaling from plastic bags. But the Inuit culture has traditionally placed a great importance on a child discovering themself and their place in the world. They are guided when asked but never ordered, and the adult they grow into is supposed to be the wiser and stronger individual for it. The elders who actually remember life before the strategic importance of the North Pole brought them the world are dismayed to see fewer and fewer kids go to them to learn the past and the land. But they feel they can do nothing about it.
I'm not Inuit or even know any, but that's the story was taught. I know less about Bhutan or its people to draw any kind of cultural parallel, but they really have my sympathy.
In a related story, it was reported that the productivity of Bhutan's IT professionals has dropped significantly since access to Slashdot was obtained.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
It's not simply the violence (et al.), but violence without consequences or with "wrong" consequences. Like the cartoons where the characters fight like crazy but nobody ever gets hurt. Or show wrestling, where the most lethal and dirty stuff -- punches below the belt, hitting the other guy with a metal chair after he's down already, etc. -- is not just shown as harmless, but is actively rewarded by the commentators and the audience.
But show violence with the real consequences (blood) and without glorifying the use of violence (sorry Chuck Norris), and it can help prevent violence. I've remember seeing a TV programs with realistic violence and afterwards I felt really bad about violence, and apprehensive about even accidentally hurting someone (because now I understood how much damage can be inflicted).
A lot of the violence issue is in the way it's shown. It can be done right, too.
It says absolutely nothing.
The "TV breeds violence" myth is a religious cause. The faithful will repeat the mantra despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary.
>Whenever I hear "there is no proven link" I am always shocked by the extreme ignorance.
Correlation vs. causation. Which is which here?
Look at the society we're talking about, a deeply religious isolated culture suddenly turned on to western concepts like the freedom from religion and the free expression of ideas. If this culminates into the Jerry Springer show then so be it. Better than than the vice police arresting Springer et al for disrupting the minds of the masses, like they do in places like Saudi Arabia. Or banning movies like the Matrix in Egypt.
So now they've encountered a glut of information and some of it is violent fiction. I hate to break this to you but human nature IS VERY violent. These people are expressing their human nature in a way that was most likely repressed by the eight-fold path of Buddhism.
Now they're going to have to develop a new moral and legal system to control their new found appreciation for hedonistic activities and criminal actions. Instead of a feudal lord dictating what is right from a dusty text they have embraced the western idea of democratic consensus.
Instead of endless hours in meditation in prayer there will be arguments on what the role of government should be e.g. shoud we make pot legal? What about gay sex? Women's rights?
Like someone already said exposing a kid to the ARTS channel will not make them a lover of classical music. TV just doesn't work that well. But when you expose people to something that frees them from their religion repression, then you've got a pretty hot situation on your hands.
Hopefully, it will take care of itself theough liberalizing democratic actions and not through reactionary religion crackdowns like in the Muslim world.
Arguably, something VERY GOOD is happening here. The ideals of the enlightenment are powerful and help make the individual more autonomous than in tradition monarchal or feudal societies. Sorry but no people deserve to be kept in a jar just because their culture is changing and westerners just don't like it. Get over western guilt and realize that stuff like porn and Jackass: The Movie are very much examples of free individuals acting out their lives without too much top-down control.
Why doesn't anyone do a study on the positive effects of TV on a society where it has been absent for so long. Has this not brought creative thought and innovative influence to the people?
If you look at the typical television line-up, you will notice that there's more comedy programming shown than violent programming. I have yet to hear people complain that there is too much "comedy in the streets."
Since I was a kid, I have heard all sorts of claims about television: It can hurt your eyes (even make you go bline!). It will lower your grades in school. It will make you a cop killing dope addict. It will turn you into a serial rapist.
Quite a lot of power for a little box that just sits there showing shadows.
Personally, I despise about 90% of everything that is on television today, from endless infomercials to rehashed mindless 60's and 70's era sitcoms, to movies that have been edited and reformatted to be vastly different from their theatrical releases, to "excercise shows" that do nothing but show the female form in tight fitting spandex. But I don't sit in a crystal palace and claim that watching television will do anything other than waste your time.
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
How can Bhutan(e) be poowr, baaws? Selling all dem cheep lighters worldvoid?
a lame "joke", I know.. =)
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
As long as they don't get slashdotted in their brains I have no fear for them! Compare /. to TV and you will see what makes you more aggressive: Some troll paid by *@!#! or David Hasselhoff in his fancy car ;-)
Don't get me wrong: Through out my TV to have more quality time but now it seems I am only spending it here...
I've been turning this over in my mind since last night when I first read this, and my only though is, seriously "Who f'ing cares?"
Oh, don't say that;
Stefan Axelsson
...as well as a lot of easy to make, but equally uninformed points aside, this could have been a perfect case study, if only it had been set up as such.
Any behavioural psychologist worth his or her salt should have read the the news that Bhutan was introducing cable tv to their society, gotten a grant and flown the fsck over there.
Point being, society is getting more violent on a day to day basis. Sure, society has always been violent (and one could make the case that we're only more informed about it due to mass media), but I think (or at least pretend to see) that it is getting slightly more so.
Now is that due to tv, as Micheal Moore would have it (and he does make a pretty compelling case), or is that total bollocks?
Well, we can all philosophise, but we've missed a perfect chance to get some real, valid answers. Which, it strikes me, is kind of stupid of us, to miss this oppertunity.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
We in American and Europe have had decades to become inoculated to television, as the crude technology and sanitized programming of TV's early days developed into the high technology and low art seen today. I can imagine, however, that for someone living in an insular society like Bhutan's, flipping on a set and seeing what's broadcast now would be like getting hit on the head with a brick.
No doubt there are many factors in Bhutan's social change, but I'm sure that television is an important one.
[this
Much advertising is not about getting you to buy something. The Advertisers know that eventually you will buy. What they are trying to do is make sure that when you make that purchase its their product that is bought.
Just a thought
May be those things still happened, but those things were not talked about and not reported before television.
This is an interesting discussion, but it's difficult to draw any conclusions without knowing what programming is shown. Some people seem to assume that what they get is typical American shows, but I doubt very much that this is the case (mostly for the language and culture barrier, and also because buying foreign shows is expensive).
Furthermore, their advertisements (which some in this discussion have speculated about), if they even have any, may also look very different from what we have in the west and may not necessarily equate happyness with owning things like typical western consumerism. Perhaps they sell their products with a somewhat different strategy, more appropriate for the local culture.
Why wouldn't cable TV ruin Bhutan...it ruined the US!
I think the Segway needs more gyros to be G.W.B. compatible?
Maybe he should stick to horses?
They are making the change uninformed about the consequences. When they see something on the TV and it's all glammed up by Hollywood production teams, it's natural to want to imitate that. What they don't understand are the ramifications behind the actions. It's like here in South Korea. Kids eat Mcdonald's and all that crap. Sure it tastes good or whatever, but they don't really know how bad that shit is for them. So now they're seeing childhood obesity here for the first time. What the Bhutanese have been exposed to is the fake surface, under which is a barrel of nasty worms.
And your post got modded up as informative! I think that you've proven that the attention span of the average /. reader is
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I should perhaps clarify that a bit. For most products there is already an established need. People
already go out and buy products from said category. So instead of trying to persuade people to buy a product, by perhaps trying to prove they need it (think informercials), they just need to ensure that when you make a purchase the advertisers product is the first thing into your head. This is especially relevent in the "media hardend" west where punters are more aware of consious manipulation but are still less able to override memory recall (not a concious process).
Just thinking about this has made me realise how much crap I can remember. All those bad (and good) series and films. The plots, action scenes, characters, actors, themes, and in the case of advertising...jingles. It seems improbable that I can remember so much about the TV and films I've watched (and music heard) that it has not had a profound effect on the way I live and make decisions.
Ho hum
matfud
...does it have to be said? Correlation does not equal causation. It is a simple imutable fact lost on so many. Is it possible that Bhutan had some larger social issues beginnign to surface in its younger generation? Perhaps TV merely sped the process up instead of causing a complete shift in their social values. Perhaps more focus had been placed on Bhutan because of the unique circumstances, TV being introudced into its culture.
just a few excertps:
support for attacks against Israeli targets is higher among those with more than a secondary-school education than among those with only an elementary-school education, and the support is considerably lower among those who are illiterate.
The study showed also that support for attacks against Israeli targets is particularly strong among students, merchants, and professionals. Notably, the unemployed are somewhat less likely to support such attacks. If poverty were indeed the wellspring of support for terrorism or politically motivated violence, one would have expected the unemployed to be more supportive of attacks than were merchants and professionals, but the evidence points the other way.
Despite the limitations of both data sets, several findings are of interest. The poverty rate is 28 percent among the Hezbollah militants and 33 percent for the population. In terms of education the Hezbollah fighters are more likely to have attended secondary school than are people in the general population (47 versus 38 percent). The results suggest that poverty is inversely related, and education positively related, to the likelihood that someone becomes a Hezbollah fighter.
Similarly,... suicide bombers are less than half as likely to come from impoverished families than is the population as a whole. In addition, more than half of the suicide bombers had attended school after high school, while less than 15 percent of the population in the same age group had any post-high-school education.
Looking at the backgrounds of the perpetrators of those violent attacks, it is clear that the Israeli extremists were overwhelmingly well educated and in high-paying occupations.
It sounds like you are dealing with people who have issues already. Hence the self-defence advice: Grabbing someone by the nuts and yanking hard puts them on the ground NOW. Of course,this only works if they are male and not on something like PCP. This works much better than you would think, as the average asshole would never expect you to try it. It beats breaking your hand on some moron's chin, but YMMV.
Right, because there are so many television programs trying to teach my kids to punch each other. ....
oh wait...no.
Now if you said trying to teach my kids to be anorexic pop whores, I would have to agree.
OHHHH, so that's why after I watched Friday the 13th I cut up my mom with an axe.
Your rambling and examples make no sense. A fighting championship movie makes kids argue with adults? Did you ever think that maybe it was because in this "overnight setting" the kids started getting tired and cranky? No, i'm sure it was the movie, even though the same thing happens in overnight settings where children are at the science museum learning about dinosaurs.
They chose TV, they wanted it, they got it. I think if a culture is changing rapidly, decides to go get TV's, etc, that you can't really say it is the effect of whatever they are choosing that is causing the culture to change. If they have already decided to get some western programming I think it is apparent that their culture was already changing. You might just as well say it was the millenium that caused this change instead of TV. The case for either is just correlation and totally ignoring the obvious evidence that changes in their culture was already taking place.
Also, whenever I hear someone talk about how terrible it is for a people to "lose their culture" I always wonder why they can't accept that someone's culture will always change. I think it would be much more terrible for a culture just to stay stagnant. This kind of thing makes me think of when the eco's are all running around about how other countries are cutting down their rainforests. We cut down our forests and did so willingly for our civilization, way of life, industry, etc. We certainly don't have much of a leg to stand on when we see another country following our same path.
Television to a large extent reflects a culture, more than changes it independantly. We have all kinds of TV in America that I wouldn't watch because it represents people with viewpoints and ways of life totally different than my own that I find either offensive or just boring. I doubt those in other countries would be viewing programs that they take offense to. If these people are watching the shows at all, doesn't it show that the situations portrayed are something that the people there find acceptable and familiar?
Its really simple, you see violent content beamed at you 24/7 via the media, you get de-sensitized to it and unconsciously begin to accept and then emulate it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Actually the heroin trade has been a problem in Bhutan for a while (along with other SE Asian countries as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka). Although not a source of the drug, it is one of the many pathways out and Bhutani courier recruitment has always been high. With the drug trade comes competition and that brings in guns and violence...
And increased usage and addiction in the country. Even in Afganistan after the Taliban instituted a ban on poppy growning (and was quite successful BTW) there was still a significant unreported underclass of addicts. Even UN drug documents find no comprehensive numbers on addicts in countries like Bhutan and the Maldives.
The difference now: instant media coverage (i.e. television), perhaps?
It is quite possible that they turned on the light for the first time and didn't like what they saw. So instead of considering that things might have been this bad for a while, they blame the one who suggested turning on the lights in the first place.
And then it comes down to who to blame: those who produce it, those who make it available, those who consume it, or those who make it a crime. Everyone has their hands dirty, but not enough to take the heat.
What is music when you despise all sound?
We didn't have a TV in our house until I was eight. Acording to my Dad, when I went to playgroup I picked up a toy gun and used it like a drill. Every other kid was using it like a gun, but I had never seen a gun in action before. I used it like an electric drill because I saw my Dad use a similar looking object as a drill.
I was aware of TV and had watched it at friends' houses and really wanted TV, my parents gave in to me. I don't think I acted differently, but I knew that what was on TV wasn't neccessarily real. I didn't see that many ads as in the UK all the best kids programs are shown on the BBC. I only had access to four heavily regulated channels with watersheds. Two of which didn't have ads.
If I didn't know about TV, and then was thrust into a world of 40-something channels with ads every 5 minutes then I'm sure it would have a detrimental affect on me. I'd believe the TV, and obey it.
Not having a TV whilst I was growing up is actually having its biggest effect on me now, at the age of 20. I'm at university and everyone around me reminisces about old cartoons that they used to watch. I can't join in and it really bugs me!
So I take it home, wait a day or two, and then find that it's on the Sci-Fi channel tonight. Nuts. Turns out it was a made-for-TV movie, which isn't a good sign. Oh well, I did get it for free, so ...
I watch it. Most of the story happens in Bhutan, which I'd never ever heard of. I ask my wife if she'd heard of it, no she hasn't. It's near China, which I've heard of. I decided that they'd probably just made up some little country to serve as the location of the movie ... and now I know differently!
See? Slashdot is educational!
(In case anybody asks, the movie was bad. Not the worst movie ever, but in the bottom 1/3rd.)
(And I'm very impressed with the CIA world factbook ... interesting reading. I'll have to see how many other countries are out there that I've never heard of. Especially countries with big honking mountain-like things growing out of them overnight that attempt to terraform the entire planet!)
So it's wonderful to bash the 21st. century but then you have to be willing to forgoe the automobile, cat scanners, industrial farming and the information age.
I swear sci fi writers are the most conservative people on earth: "The future, it always sucks."
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2002/nepal.maoists /
A quick survey of crime rates and moral aptitude in America would indicate that a machine which essentially shuts down the right side (rational) part of the brain within 30 seconds of viewing it and forces the viewer to engage the medium through 'beta' waves is hard to defend against. You may recall Marshall Mcluhan's diagnosis of television as a tactile medium. This is based on the fact that television engages the emotions (left side of the brain), i.e. feelings.
see Joyce Nelson's The Perfect Machine for an interesting discussion of this effect of television, discovered in the 1960s, which is the basis for modern television advertising.
-- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau
on Western culture?
The same thing: violence, crime, and drugs use!
The same old, the same old.
ARE they forced to have a cable TV and to watch it? I dont own a TV myself.
Pastoral idyll ruined by cultural contamination! Noble savages corrupted into howling hordes of thugs, druggies and sluts! Contented unworldly serfs now obsessed with money and material goods!
What a patronizing load of yak-dung. Truly it has been said "scratch a liberal, find a racist". We, being cynical and jaded westerners, can suffer the idea-bombardment of TV without taking harm, but they, mere innocent and unprepared rustics, are led around like puppets.
Bleh.
Why not stop to consider that, to someone who owns a yak and a hut, material goods may actually look rather intriguing? Or that someone who was born into an "unworldly, spiritual" culture might find it stifling, and see american-style pragmatic individualism as a breath of fresh air?
The problem with the "oh no, we corrupted them!" hypothesis is that it rests on magic, specifically that ideas somehow impose themselves into people's heads. It utterly ignores the concept of individual choice - because, if you pay attention to that, you may have to conclude that these people may have had reasons for their choices.
Certainly freer, better informed people can be less "picturesque". But they aren't your people, they belong to themselves, and if being picturesque isn't their individual priority, it's certainly no business of yours to impose it upon them.
I haven't killed a single person since I had my cable disconnected. I didn't kill anyone before then either, but I wanted to a few times. I wonder if they get "South Park" over there?
Surely one problem here is that the TV they are being exposed is bottom of the barrel stuff - wrestling, cop dramas, soft porn, commercials for makeup etc etc. You could go as far as to say that the real problem is free market economics which pushes revenue-generating programs up the agenda above artistically valuable or informative programming. The people of Bhutan need programming that reflects their own culture, not Bollywood or mindless U.S. trash.
If state control over the society is relaxing in general, then of course, people are going to act out.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Your parent poster was right.
Lets hear it for TV - the greatest crime reducer ever invented!
My Sig is on the couch, watching TV, so couldn't be bothered to appear here.
"Marge: Well, at least we didn't turn into mindless zombies.
Bart: Shhhh. TV.
Homer: Man fall down. Funny."
If Windows is running and there's no one there to use it, does it still crash?
cmkrcs1 was here.
EYEBALLS FUCK YOU UP
Many TV shows validate a way of life that is clearly perjudicial to society.
It does not matter if the criminals lose at the end, the point is that the word painted is one in which it is valid for you to have a go at being a criminal, using violence, etc. The morals and consequences are rarely questioned, all is normally portrayed almost as as spectator sport in which you sit back an watch "goodies" vs "baddies", in many shows it is quite difficult to even tell the difference between both sides.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.