Post by sandstone on Nov 11, 2008 16:55:57 GMT -11
It is just TV Michael! Are there really that many people who believe everything that they see on TV?
I do agree that such shows undermine and insult serious paranormal investigators. But then there are lots of shows that do the same thing to, for example, women. (Most of us are not like Barbie dolls, some of us are even good at math and science, and don't like shopping.) And just look at the typical TV scientist! (We are not all socially challenged nerds, I might be one, but I've met some very popular and good-looking scientists over the years).
Maybe we need a petition demanding better overall TV programming?
No s***. :-)
And to answer your second question. Yes, America is a nation of sheep. Look at television generally in the United States. It's all about "reality" TV which is not reality at all but had to be created because people had already lost their sense of reality. So now they suffer from a double delusion. I don't know about you Canadians, but surely the average American television viewer is a model of gullibility and no model of minimal conceptual clarity.
Our kids lose their minds in video games and can't read a damn sentence in a book.
It's all part of what I call the growing culture of no-think. No-thinkers are particularly
vulnerable to shows like Ghost Hunters because they retain a curiosity about the paranormal but they absorb it in an impulsive way and this curiosity never rises to a reflective mode. It is transformed into a pseudo-reflective mode which is indistinguishable from ideology.
Hell, at least when Nancy Murphy and I were experimenting with Orange Sunshine back at UCLA, we ended up writing papers of some academic merit. We slammed our heads into EMF chambers and blasted our brains with upwards of 200 mG, direct hits. We floated out the laboratory windows but our minds were free and still entirely clear. (By the way, those experiments were never officially recorded and the experimental drug use was not funded by UCLA. I just want to be clear about that!)
So, where the hell was I?
Ghost Hunters has extremely high ratings. Most people who watch it take the show seriously. They don't watch simply to get a glimpse of Kris's butt or to create websites debunking the evidence. The show presents itself as serious. Most regard it as such.
This is true about many paranormal television shows. I'd say the same thing about
them.
I need a vodka.
Hey! I zone out playing video games all the time!
I still don't believe everything I see on TV!
Michael, I think someone has been spending way too much time dealing with freshmen that shouldn't leave home without thier Mommies! The only good thing about freshmen is that they are too young to get into the campus pub where all the TAs like to hide from them. ;D
Cheers!!!