It was the year 2004 that I was sitting in front of a TV, with someone I used to live with. We often had this habit that she sent me to the local video rental to find good films while she prepared something delicious.
Then we had nice dinner and later watched a film or two. It was nice and we both liked it. But one particular evening a question arose within me. Why do people like to watch TV?
Anyone who’s read about the nature of TV and how it is subliminally used to manipulate people into conditioned behaviour knows that one benefits from “using with extreme caution”, and I have always followed that advise.
Since my teens I usually have never watched TV more than three times a week for a whole evening and for the last two years haven’t even owned a set. So it was just a general question to me.
Why do we like it so much? The answer seemd obvious: The light by the wall resembles glittering campfire and then there are the stories.
We as human beings have gathered around the campfire and told each other stories, poetry, news or other, for at least a hundred thousand years. TV has replaced it, but it isn’t quite like the campfire and a nice story.
TV creates pattern in the mind, which one doesn’t see cognitively; but the image on the screen flickers 50 times a second – as electricity flickers at 50hz – and there is hardly a continuous sound for more than a minute at a time, even just seconds. And the scene changes exposure and view every three seconds.
Relaxing in front of TV tires you physically, for the brain uses almost 90% of its power to process dynamic sound and vision, but your awareness doesn’t know it. The mind then moves on to form a perception out of the projected pattern.
Brilliant really.
Since that night I go out into nature about twice a month. I find a good place where there is no one around and I have my campfire. I have hundreds of photographs from these campfires, sometimes I go alone with my dogs, sometimes with good friends.
Once I went in the midsummernight and once I had lit the campfire I took off my clothes. I then enjoyed the midsummernight naked, at my campfire by the lake. Today, years later, I decided to share that moment with my friends.
I was lucky with the camera.
