Too Many Distractions

I was watching something the other day, in one of my moments of 'downtime', and somebody used the expression 'falsehoods and distractions'. It got me to thinking - our media is awash with this very stuff, falsehoods and distractions.

I have previously written quite a bit about falsehoods. In this piece I discuss fake news and the propaganda of governments, politicians and mainstream media. I touch on religious dogma and how it shapes us in another piece. And here I comment on the evils of deception, from the international/national level to the personal. One of my favourite writers recently published an incredibly insightful piece, encapsulating how falsehood is put upon on us from birth right up until death, and I strongly urge you to read it here. So, in this piece I will focus on the second part of that expression I heard - distractions..

Distractions can be good, right? Everyone needs them sometimes, to help us forget for a moment whatever harsh realities we are dealing with in our personal or working lives. Sometimes we need frivolous television programs to just forget about the awfulness in the world, don't we? Well, I agree, to an extent. I'm not immune from the pull of the occasional mindless show. How often though have you considered the actual level and amount of this valueless, superficial and basically pointless material there is on our screens? And have you noticed how this type of material soaks up the vast majority of prime-time TV scheduling, and just how popular it actually is?

Before I continue, a disclaimer - your choice of entertainment is a very subjective thing, personal to you and a part of the action of exercising your choice. I'm not here to extol the virtues of one type of entertainment over another, or condemn anyone for what they choose to watch. In identifying certain things here I will undoubtedly raise eyebrows, but that is just an extension of my particular set of choices when it comes to entertainment. Indeed, I will explain something of the personal nature of what we call entertainment as you read on.

The culture we live in used to baffle me. If you use television as a barometer, you could conclude that we are obsessed with celebrity and fame, especially of the instant, throwaway kind offered up as if it were virtue by reality TV and 'talent' shows. An ever increasing variety and number of game shows offer short term financial gain for answering trivia and questions of a decreasingly intellectual value. Sport is littered with examples of people who make millions on the back of a couple of years in the limelight before retiring in their thirties and disappearing back into obscurity. Mass sporting events are just one big distraction. This culture baffles me no longer however. All this 'entertainment' is part of a plan - distraction of the masses.

'News' and current affairs on TV is all but replaced by an orchestrated series of choice snippets of biased hearsay and the opinions of established pseudo-journalists, politicians and pundits. The chosen stories are given precedence according to an agenda set by the elite and those with power, to spread their narrative and distract from more inconvenient truths. Documentaries, particularly those dealing with history, are an exercise in reinforcement of whatever fairytale can most easily be made to fit. There is no real intelligent debate, no room for radical thinking and no balancing of falsehoods with truth.

So what are we being kept from watching, or doing with our time, by the these 'weapons of mass distraction'? We are being prevented from learning all sides of things, from seeking truth, from changing our minds about challenging issues, from growing as people and as a species. The reason all this entertainment of dubious value is so popular is that it prays on the innate human flaw of entropy - that inbuilt laziness in us all that prevents us from seeking enlightenment, knowledge, expansion of our hearts and minds and a broadening of our horizons. A little distraction here and there is healthy. Swamping us with mass distraction all the time is just destructive.

Call me old school but I remember when people used to read books for fun. I remember conversation and expanding the mind through personal interaction. I remember not having to fit the really beneficial things in life, the quality time, into a damn TV schedule or someone's Netflix binge-watching. And I'm only forty-one for heaven's sake. What media one chooses to consume is one's own affair. I guess what I am trying to say is that surely, we can make better choices?

If entertainment is for escape, why can't we escape in a different way? Watch a little less sport, less reality TV, less celebrity tittle-tattle. Do a bit of research online and find meaningful, positive, beneficial, nurturing, wholesome entertainment that might just teach you something whilst relaxing you. Share the best of the good stuff you find with as many others as you can - talk about it, laugh about it, spread it like it's going out of fashion - because it certainly seems to be.

"Sadly, many in our world today encourage idleness, especially in the form of mindless, inane entertainment that is on the Internet, on television, and in computer games." - Joseph B. Wirthlin

Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.