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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.
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.
Expert Quotations on TVs Cultural Impact
I'm not Seth.
"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
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.
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.
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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
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.
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
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.
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...
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
This was recently reran on my local station, and to be honest, I found it nearly painful to watch. As an individual who finds little redeeming qualities in TV beyond PBS, it was quite sad to see such a community that was doing quite well without the negative influences suddenly have to face a new reality. Although I feel TV has its potential, particularly in the realm of education (hence my favor for PBS) or as an avenue to facilitate political or social change, exporting WWE (or whatever its called now) to the world is hardly the most beneficial aspect of our increasingly interconnected world.
Also, here is the link, well, linked: Frontline: World Also, it has the actual video on the site, as most recent Frontline episodes are, and is worth watching.
Also, for those who have never seen Frontline, or Frontline: World for that matter, I highly recommend it as one of the last bastions of extremely high quality programming, particularly in the realm of journalism which has been so much under assault by the need to have a story make money rather than inform.
forma3
Reminds me of in the book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how suicides increased in Micronesia after reports of suicides started appearing in the papers. He argues that the idea of offing yourself just started spreading after more people "discovered" it and soon more and more started doing it.
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.
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
Interesting.. but..if TV provides stupid comedy (and boy, they do), will people act stupid? I think so- Witness the jackass copycats, those who can recite sitcom skits, but not a word of Emerson, and, of course, Beavis and Butthead. These 'funnys" are based on the glorification of the stupid.
TV stops self exploration and encourages imitation, whether we are aware of it or not.
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!
I used to go to high school with a girl from Bhutan. Another thing the article left out was that (from what she's told me) Bhutan's got other problems. For one thing, the country is dirt poor. She explained that many people actually have to immigrate to Nepal for work. Okay let's put this in perspective: Many Indians have to immigrate out of India to work in slave-like conditions in Saudi Arabia. They have almost no legal rights, make sweatshop salaries and are disrespected, overworked and sometimes abused by their 'masters' (calling them employers doesn't accurately describe the relationship). You haven't seen poor until you've seen these individuals. However, poverty knows no depths. Back home in India, many Nepalese immigrate from Nepal to find work in India. God help the poor soul who is relegated to the position of slave's slave. Now, re-examine what I've been told. "Yeah, the country's not doing so well, many people have to immigrate to Nepal for work." I don't deny that TV has a detrimental effect on their society, but let's not paint Bhutan to be the Eden that was destroyed by TV (or the gateway to hell as dilbert describes it).
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.
here's just no way for us to know that Bhutan was really the idyllic, crime-free paradise the reporters claim it was before the advent of The One Eyed Idiot God. The reporters could be mistaken, could be lied to by people with their own agenda (be they politicians, police officers, religious officials, etc.)
i spent much time researching bhutan, beginning in 1997. it really was an idyllic place - a world apart. they appear to be, from this side, a charmingly naive society (a view which was encouraged by the country's intelligentsia in a disturbingly zoo like 'don't feed the animals' manner). kuensel, the paper mentioned in the article, is almost painful to read for its earnestness. there are numerous old travel journals available on the net, and there is also a book by a canadian aid worker (or rather, peace corps equivalent) jaime zeppa.
there have been a few things going on - you have to look at the ethnic makeup of the country. you begin to understand that the ruling class (lamas & politicians) is not the majority; i seem to recall that there isn't an ethnic majority. there have been problems with an ethnic group inhabiting the south of the country. to be honest, last time i checked, the UN was operating several camps in nepal to house displaced refugees from bhutan.
i spent some time on a bhutanese listserve - primarily populated by bhutanese students abroad. they were aware of the problems, but extremely touchy about them. they couldn't discuss them.
so, i think the charming naiveity was at a cost. they are probably starting to pay the price now. i'm not arguing against the poster's thesis; i'm supporting his view that there is more going on in this country than tv. however, i feel compelled to point out that for most residents of bhutan, daily life really was an uncomplicated, religious affair, insulated from the modern world.
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.
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.
In the poorer parts of mexico, everyone shares. It's not like here, where we all need our own TV. If your neighbor has one and you don't, you just walk in and watch too. And if you're a kid, you don't really have school and your parents can't be bothered to take care of you--they just run free through the neighborhood (which is quite safe). It seems quite possible to me that they might watch that much TV, and easily. Last summer I had the opportunity to hike up to a remote thai village near Chaing Rai; every now and then they would fire up a generator and power the lights at the meeting house / church or watch TV at night when everyone came back from the fields. Everyone came and watched. Nursing children, adults, elderly, everyone. Really stupid dramas and commercials; and though I'm not sure what it means, I'd like to point out that there was an intensity to it that was a little disturbing. I mean, people reacted to every little thing; lots shocked reactions, maybe it was a little more real to them than it would have been to me. I dunno, I didn't speak the language.
There is a great bit of difference between those two groups of people. The first group is desperate, uneducated, and behaving just like a wounded animal. And the other group is educated, altruistic, and behaving just like a cunning predator. In the case of the latter group, I believe it takes quite a bit of intellectual maturity to make a connection between political action and personal sacrifice.
And in the case of the first group, you can call them ignorant if you will (it shows your bias), but I don't think ignorance is the root of their problem. Considering most of those suicide bombers were refugees and most had previously lost everything just before their act; their homes, their families, and their self-respect -- I can certainly understand why they would want to blow themselves and everyone up.
...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.
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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
You are wrong. It's not the programming that is at fault, it is the medium. The pattern of sitting for 6 hours in front of the screen (TV or PC) and passively consuming content.
:(
Watching Animal Planet is only marginally better than watching MTV. It's the pattern that matters. If you use a particular TV channel once to watch one program about a specific subject you are interested in, that is a good thing, be it Discovery, Fox or BBC. If you watch the same programs for hours every day, you are not learning anything, you are just a TV (Internet) junkie, admit it.
And the little interactivity that is present on the Internet doesn't matter that much. You could call to TV studio for ages and tell your opinion, or vote on some poll, or ask a question... Whatever. If you wrote an essay after reading some site (or watching TV), discussed it with your professor (teacher, parents, etc.), went to the library and got some books on this topic, that would mean your are actively learning. If not, then you are still just an information junkie using your TV and PC in absolutely the same way.
The good thing about TV is that you can abandon it altogether and escape its "evils". That's what I did, I don't have it, I don't watch it => good thing. The problem is that I can't do the same thing with computer, but having Internet access it's too easy to fall prey to TV-like content.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
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?
Yeah and tell me how television will help that life expectancy.
You have no authority to criticise Micro$oft and promote Linux if you don't believe that Gross National Happiness is superior to Gross National Product. Linux doesn't increase GDP, Micro$oft does because it creates employment via profits and customisation. How many linux programmers got rich off selling linux? Linux is Gross National Happiness.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?