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.
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.
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
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
"Mom! Can we go buy fabric softener?", Bobby Hill
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
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
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.
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.
Margaret Mead made similar observations about the introduction of TV in Micronesian Islands, back in the 1960s.
1) There is not a ban on television. Nor is the government considering one. Did you read the article? If you had, you might have noticed that it says ". . . in its haste to introduce TV, the government failed to prepare legislation. There is no film classification board or TV watershed in force here, no regulations about media ownership. Companies such as Star TV are free to broadcast whatever they want. Only three years after the introduction of cable did the government announce that a media act would be drafted."
2) Comparing Bhutan's government with the Taliban is completely and totally bogus. The Taliban took power violently and sustained their rule through violence, including public executions of "criminals" such as women who committed adultery. Bhutan was founded as a Buddhist refuge. Under the Taliban, living conditions in Afghanistan became notably worse.
Bhutan's monarchy, by contrast, was not "self-proclaimed". It was set up under British influence in 1907, as mentioned here and here. That second source contains, among other things, this information: "Bhutan's third hereditary ruler, King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk (reigned 1953â"72), modernized Bhutanese society by abolishing slavery and the caste system, emancipating women, dividing large estates into small individual plots, and starting a secular educational system. Although Bhutan no longer has a Dharma Raja, Buddhist priests retain political influence. In 1969 the absolute monarchy gave way to a 'democratic monarchy.'"
What's more, the article we're discussing mentions that "[In] 1998 . . . King Jigme Singye Wangchuck announced he would give up his role as head of government and cede power to the national assembly. The people would be consulted about the drafting of a constitution. The process would complete Bhutan's transformation from monarchist Shangri-la into a modern democracy."
Listen, sounds like in balance they've been pretty good for the country. Given a choice between living in Bhutan today or Afghanistan-under-the-Taliban, I would take Bhutan in a heartbeat. The main fault of Bhutan's government seems to be that they're embracing foreign ways a bit too enthusiastically. Comparing them to the Taliban does them a disservice.
Kindly think twice before posting.
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
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?
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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"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
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.
Advice: on VPS providers
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.
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.
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.
...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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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.
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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.
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?
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?