To think, or not to think...that is the question.

When I do watch TV, other than watching my beloved Dallas Cowboys, all I seem to watch is the History Channel, the Food Network or the National Geographic Channel, or as they like to call it “Nat-Geo”. And I got to thinking as to why I only seem to gravitate to these channels. Am I getting older? Are my tastes changing? Am I now becoming too lazy to do some serious channel surfing?

Well, one thing that I do know is that I can not sit down and watch the mindless dribble that is on network TV. When I say “mindless dribble” I am speaking specifically to the area of Sitcoms. I’m sorry, I’m a writer. I’ve seen the material that is being passed along to the masses as “entertainment” and based on what I’ve seen; the entertainment industry is really scraping the bottom of the barrel in their efforts to put out what they are calling “quality” entertainment. Granted there are some very interesting drama shows out there, but for the most part, I can’t, for the life of me, sit down and watch network TV anymore.

Now, why do most people watch TV? The answer is that they want to be amused. Well, when you breakdown the word “amused” it goes something like this: “A” means, at least in the root of the word, “to not”. “Muse” means “to think.” So, when you are “Amused” you are “Not Thinking.” And isn’t that why we watch TV in the first place? We watch it so we don’t have to think. So that we don’t have to exert ourselves in order to become better people. We take the time to shut down our mental facilities and let somebody else do the thinking for us. Because, in case you haven’t noticed, it seems that the entertainment industry is setting trends that the rest of society blindly follows. TV has become our thinking process and our society has blindly buying into the media’s agenda instead of us thinking and acting upon our own. In fact, there are those that take what is said on TV as truth, i.e. the news, sitcom situations, even events on channels such as the History Channel, Nat-Geo and so forth.

The fact is that sometimes we spend so much time in front of our TV’s that we forget that we have an obligation to find out if what they are telling us is indeed truth. TV has a way of using what I call “assumptive language” in a way to get there point across. For example, Nat-Geo, when talking about how old the earth is, always says its 4.3 billion years old. And the way they say it, is as if it was a fact. Problem is, they are assuming, by faith, it is a fact because they espouse the evolutionary theory. There is no scientific fact for the theory of evolution. But if a creationist would to come up to them and say that the earth is about 7,000 years old, he’d be laughed at because they’d claim his statement was based on religious belief and not on scientific fact.

So, what am I saying? Simple; Do not believe everything you see on TV. Yes, there are some good shows on TV, but when you do watch TV, don’t check your brain at the door. Think before you believe. Find out to see if what they are saying is true. Do your homework. Who knows, you maybe spending more of your time “musing” vs. being “amused.”