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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
All TV does it reflect the society or country it resides in, if you banish drugs/sex/crime/greed from US TV overnight do you seriously believe those vices will instantly disappear from society? These are wider social and political problems that require creative thinking and hard choices in the real world, trying to deny the existence of problems buy censoring them, or trying to censor them, on the broadcast media doesn't solve anything, it's simply indicates a society in denial.
However, this conceit hardly surprises me, I've seen maddening amounts of puritanical religiosity in the US, they truly lead the Western world in this deptartment, but they also lead the same world when it comes to violence, infidelity, divorce and acrimonious litigiousness. Faith is simply to sooth the conscience, the very fact it's so insincere makes it worse than pure dogma, because it can be manipulated on a whim, the same goes for banning the expression of undesirable things, it doesn't make them disappear.
(Cue, -1 troll, Un-American, another cynical Brit who see's things too clearly).
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.
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.
"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.
BULLSHIT.
Proof? Me. And about a million other people who grew up through the 80's. Did I want to sell drugs and shoot people because I was in the room when my parents were watching Miami Vice (granted, I can see how the show could drive people to violence, if nothing other than self-inflicted)? Did Jason Voorhees look so cool on camera that I decided I wanted to chop people to bits with a machete? No. I can tell you with some certainty that I've never killed anybody at all, ever, much less as a result of some violent media I was exposed to. As if violent movies can "contaminate" my mind like radioactive waste.
Yes, people often learn by observation, but people can think for themselves too. Everyone treats kids as they stupid, inane clay objects that are so easily molded by all the dark, shadowy evils in society..give them more credit than that. Where do you think cultural revolutions come from? The ones that don't look at their situation and think, "this is the way it's supposed to be done."
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.
Slashdot put the right spin on it. Kinda.
The Bhutanese government is now considering whether TV has a damaging effect on the people. It's still an open question. But you have to understand that TV has a much greater immediate impact on those people than we're accustomed to.
Kids there have started emulating their favorite stars because they treat the TV stars like they treat anyone else. They don't necessarily understand that TV is a caricature of real life. We understand that now; we now have filters in place that tell us that TV isn't real.
They also haven't gotten accustomed to advertisements. They assume that when a product makes people happy in an ad, it will make them happy, too. So they want more money to purchase that product. Maybe they don't have the means to get that product yet, so they steal. After all, isn't happiness the most important value?
Some people here may assume that this is a good thing. They're becoming capitalistic, and may become productive in the global economy. But that's not the way that people have to be. Our culture just has the means to project that way of life onto others. That doesn't mean that we should.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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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.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
But blaming TV is very elitist and one should never underestimate the human desire to perceive oneself as superior to others.
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There is virtually nothing a Bhutanese person is going to be able to do to get a standard of living that resembles those in the West. It has nothing to do with how hard they work: god knows that most of the people in the middle class in the US work less hard than day labourers in India or Latin America. It has to do with the context in which they live: the value of the currency they have, the distribution channels, the infrastructure, everything.
So images of an idealized world that they can never access is not going to spur them on. It's going to breed some of the highest potency, uncut, unadulterated resentment you can imagine, at least among a lot of them.
Because what makes us feel poor isn't what we have, it's what we lack compared to someone else. Just listening to the whining of abused entitlement in the US when the jobs start moving to India, and you can see it: people complaining about making "only" $40,000 a year even as they engage the services of people around them for less, often far, far less.
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.
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
it amazes me how people can blame TV for serious socital problems, it's completely naive and borders on the abusrd
No, what is "naive and absurd" is to believe that people can watch something as graphic and emotional as television for (on average) hours a day and not be profoundly affected by it. And corporate America disagrees with your view as well, otherwise they wouldn't be spending billions on television advertising every year.
A lot of current television sets political agendas, it instills irrational fear for political purposes, it causes people to overeat and overconsume, and it glorifies violence and casual sex. And campaigns like anti-smoking commercials show that even a little bit of positive television can have a big impact. Improve television further and you will reduce many social ills.
Unless of course you think we should be learning morality from big business?
And that's exactly what's happened in the west and what you see happening in Bhutan at a speed that makes people finally take notice.
The propaganda is crafted to be as strong as possible. It's effective enough to make share holders allow corporations to spend millions on this. You cannot fight this with merely 'explaining' that there's more to life than consuming. The message is simply too strong, too ubiquitious.
Money should not be permitted free speech.
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)
I fully agree with you on this Pioneer. I stopped watching TV at the age of 17 because my father flicked the channel too much and I started experiencing a LOT more in life.
Those 20-30 hours that the average person watches TV are hours you are not exercising, reading, visiting family/friends, volunteering or participating in a community event. I understand that TV is good as an escape for a 1/2 hour after work sometimes but it should not be used as a crutch to avoid life (like alcohol, drugs, the internet or anything that you can lose yourself in)
As for the Bhutan thing, think of it this way. Speaking as a Canadian, content on TV has changed quite a bit since it was first introduced. We have had time to adjust to the fact that the word bitch is acceptable on TV among other things as grisly death scenes and casual use of drugs.
The TV we watch reflects our current state of society and we are used to seeing it. Now you shove this "advanced" TV we watch onto a nation that has not had time to adapt to our way of living and you can imagine their is going to be a culture shock of some type.
After reading a lot of posts here, I have to agree with the people who say that TV definitely has an impact on our society but only to a certain point. Personal responsibility also has to play into that but that is something people seem to have a problem with lately.
If you don't agree with this, consider this situation.
You are a teenager watching a show which has several people vying to be the last person standing at the end of a game. To win, you have to befriend people, manipulate them, lie to them and then backstab them. In the end, the winner who is able to dupe everyone else receives a large cash amount. Sounds entertaining right? I'm sure most people can figure out that I'm talking about Survivor..
Okay now if you teach young people that this is the way you win and get ahead in life, what do you think they will do in their lives or if they are presented with a situation like that?
These people are also taught what happens to the nice people. Sure they place 3rd and 4th but that's not 1st place right? And in our society, Winning is everything right? I mean that's what important in our culture.
I know people will say "We are responsible people and we know the difference... It's just entertainment.". I know that you do, but do you think your subconscious has not seen that example as well as hundreds of others that we are exposed to every year? It begins to ingrain itself into your psyche.
Children and teenagers are even more impressionable than adults are (well most of them) and this is what we are teaching them.
Guess who runs the company that made the film of Fight Club?
You are ignoring the fact that the US has a unique set of social problems, and it is exporting those problems to the rest of the world. Europe is a good example of this because western Europe is the main place the US has been exporting its culture to for several decades.
In Europe we now have: firstly the highschool killings, then there is the 'cripps vs. bloods' style gangsters and gangwars, and young kids arming themselves in general. Examples of sociocultural problems that have originated in the US, but spread to Europe under the influence of US media.
These problems are related to a cultural difference between the US and Europe. It comes down to how willing a society is to use violence and deadly force against its own members; or to be more exact, the social acceptance of violence as a way to solve (personal) problems.
Nobody can argue the fact that US media advertise this kind of violence and its underlying idiology, and the examples above should indicate the advertising actually works.
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?