Four Arguments for The Elimination of Television

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THE WALLING OF AWARENESS

During a six-month period in 1973, The New York Times reported the following scientific findings:

A major research institute spent more than $50,000 to discover that the best bait for mice is cheese.

Another study found that mother's milk was better balanced nutritionally for infants than commercial formulas. That study also proved that mother's milk was better for human infants than cow's milk or goat's milk.

A third study established that a walk is considerably healthier for the human respiratory and circulatory systems, in fact for overall health and vitality, than a ride in a car. Bicycling was also found to be beneficial.

A fourth project demonstrated that the juice of fresh oranges has more nutritional value than either canned or frozen orange juice.

A fifth study proved conclusively that infants who are touched a lot frequently grow into adults with greater self-confidence and have a more integrated relationship with the world than those who are not touched. This study found that touching, not merely sexual touching, but any touching of one person by another, seemed to aid general health and even mental development among adults as well as children.

The remarkable thing about these five studies, of course, is that anyone should have found it necessary to undertake them. That some people did find them necessary can only mean that they felt there was some uncertainty about how the answers would turn out.

And yet, anyone who has seen a mouse eating cheese or who has been touched by the hand of another person already knows a great deal about these things, assuming he or she gives credence to personal observation.

Similarly, anyone who has ever considered the question of artificial milk versus human milk is unlikely to assume that Nestle's or Similac will improve on a feeding arrangement that accounted for the growth of every human infant before modern times.

That any people retain doubts on these questions is symptomatic of two unfortunate conditions of modern existence: Human beings no longer trust personal observation, even of the self-evident, until it is confirmed by scientific or technological institutions; human beings have lost insight into natural processes—how the world works, the human role as one of many interlocking parts of the worldwide ecosystem—because natural processes are now exceedingly difficult to observe.

These two conditions combine to limit our knowledge and understanding to what we are told. They also leave us unable to judge the reliability or unreliability of the information we go by.

The problem begins with the physical environment in which we live.

Mediated Environments

When he was about five years old, my son Kai asked me, "Daddy, who built Mt. Tamalpais?"

Kai's question shocked me. I said, "Nobody built Mt. Tamalpais; it grew up out of the Earth thousands of years ago. No person could build a mountain."

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