(22) Genocide By TV, (23) Eating Ourselves To Death (Two More Essays From The Book, American Myths & Madness) Text Only
Genocide By TV (The Murder Of Minds)
Since we began this book, the Web has come into its own in the lives of many of the World’s citizens. We do not have the expertise to know whether the problems we examine in this essay are applicable to the web or video-game environments but we are reasonably sure that some of them could be similar. Nevertheless, the rapid development of information technologies presents a plethora of new problems and potential disasters for our people. On the other hand, the tide may be irresistible and we may need to resort to a simple moderation of reliance on these technologies, simultaneously attempting to provide alternate experiences for our grandchildren in order to preserve the values we cherish. One thing is for certain, barring a catastrophe to civilization, our descendants will, no doubt, find themselves fully immersed in future technologies we cannot begin to imagine. Will they have the opportunity to sit by the campfire and imagine what reflects there; to hear the heartbeat of the drum, as well as experiencing the screens of their computers and neural implants? Each family must decide—that is a power we must retain.
If there is one threat to American Indian culture, spirituality, and social life that we have the power to control in our lives, it is the overwhelmingly destructive influence of television (and perhaps, video games, and information technology). The primary strength of tribal peoples is our “gathering”, our constant interpersonal contact, and our relationships. The individual isolation promoted by these technologies may be the single greatest threat to tribal survival we face.
Forget for a moment the fact that there is almost no programming, except for nature and natural world shows, that support, directly or indirectly, Indigenous mores, values, family relationships, or spiritual responsibility.
Forget that Corporate America commercials vie for our complete attention and submission to enforce and coerce their demand for parasitic consumerism.
Forget that the glossing over of issues that threaten our survival as a species is now accomplished through the glitz and glamour of a myriad of media productions resulting in an information overload that diminishes the urgency some of these issues deserve; creating in the populace a widespread feeling of overwhelming impotence when it comes to decision-making and real solutions.
Forget also that the fields of technology are so broad and comprehensive that change appears as unstoppable as tsunami; carrying us toward what the power elite would like us to believe will be a brave new world of peace, plenty, and fun—without any real demonstrable signs to evidence that progress.
Forget all that and just look at the medium, which is the message.
Power Of The Tube
The power of television to create a commonly accepted soup of thought, culture, and lifestyle has evidenced itself in only a few decades. The dreams of television's "potential" were overwhelmed by the power of the corporate and Federal governments (big business and defense), who immediately commandeered the medium into the service of their needs and whims.
Jerry Mander, our major source for much of the information in the opinions expressed in this (and the last), essay, makes these points in his book, Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television.
He describes how TV isolates people in an artificial information environment. The process of moving edited images through a passive human brain is significantly different than the process of active information gathering. We become, in essence, non-cognitive receivers. But television is not static. It is an aggressive and parasitic mechanism that enters the mind as an external environment and is assimilated to create an internal mental environment. It is a technological drug; a mechanical methamphetamine that accelerates the nervous system. With quick changing images, sound effects, and music to enhance emotional involvement, it stimulates an impulse to react to the artificial visual stimulus presented on the small screen. Since the body and mind recognize that any actual reaction would be inappropriate, the impulse to react is suppressed. A repetition of this reaction-impulse-suppression results in stored energy. If the television is turned off, children will often exhibit frantic or disorganized behavior as their nervous systems begin to try to adapt to a slower, less stimulating environment. Anyone who watches TV regularly experiences an altered reality where time speeds up, dramatization increases emotional reaction, and a return to non-TV environment causes anxiety and/or nervousness. We become used to these aberrant feelings and find it difficult to remain calm, to read or be taught, to relate to others, or to feel comfortable with nature. On the other hand, we feel perfectly at ease with forms of advanced technology that encourage speed and provide large amounts of audio or visual stimulus.
An Issue Of Speed
To feel a part of the natural world requires calm, patience, and an acceptance of the pace at which natural events occur. It is no wonder that TV-raised children sometimes show no interest in oral tradition, in walks, gardening, doing chores, or just playing outside. Those types of activities do not offer the same immediate and continually changing sensory gratification that TV, video games, and other forms of visual media offer.
Non-TV kids are forced into creating activity. They usually go through a cycle of boredom that demands a creative response, to which they find an acceptable outlet. TV is a mood-altering drug that provides early training in the acceptance of other kinds of escape-oriented drugs. We believe it is as much of a building block for drug dependency as it is for consumerism.
Media Homogenization
TV homogenizes those who watch it. Viewers begin to exhibit the same types of thought processes, imagine the same imagery, and experience the same contextual reality. It represents a type of cultural cloning mechanism that reorganizes family and community life around its own mono-cultural messages and advertising strategies.
Market researchers conduct surveys on children in shopping malls—organizing focus groups for children 2-3 years old. These studies are translated into television advertising. Artwork is analyzed. Children and cultural anthropologists are hired and sent into homes, schools, restaurants, and stores to observe and talk to children. They study children's dreams and fantasy lives. Children's clubs are heavily utilized in information gathering and research to better facilitate more effective media advertising. The internet has become a huge source of information to help companies design media strategies to encourage children to become active consumers. In 1978, the FCC attempted to ban children's advertising directed at children ages 7 and under. When the lobbies for the Association of Broadcasters, Toy Manufacturers, and National Advertisers objected, Reagan's administration killed the ban.
Hype & Hypnosis
In Indigenous communities, television's effects are devastating. The glamorization of values and behaviors poisonous to Indian morals and ethics is inevitable, as is the constant rhetoric and hype of consumerism. Cooperation, sharing, and non-materialism are foreign to the corporations that run the networks. Here are some of the more visible effects (as outlined by Mander) that occurred in Northern Indigenous communities only a few months after their first exposure to television.
People lost interest in hearing and telling the stories of oral tradition that teach the People how to live.
They were less inclined to speak their own languages, replacing them with English slang.
Elders lost their position and status due to youth oriented programming and advertising.
Self-esteem was diminished due to formulas that define beauty in appearance, shape, and form.
Habits like drinking and smoking were reinforced as romantic and acceptable.
People visited each other less, and were less communicative.
Kids didn't play as much, either alone or together.
Young people began to resent having to do menial and time-consuming chores.
Children were not as creative and tended to think in TV-like images or relate to TV characters.
Children became used to sit-and-absorb learning and were not as interested in Native forms of teaching that required repetition to acquire proficiency and retention.
People began to use the programs they watched as discussion items, especially as it became a central force in their lives.
People begin imagining that they had the same problems and desires portrayed by the characters they saw on TV. Eventually that became true.
A Difficult Solution
Today, with many people allowing TV, computers and video games to become the new babysitters for their children, one of the most important things we can do for our youth is to eliminate, or severely curtail, their access to thes types of media. Indoors—reading, music, artwork, or crafts are the most creative and stimulating physically semi-passive activities we can participate in. However, any activity that causes youths to stimulate their imagination, or create their own outlets for expression, is superior to passive receptive stimulation. Activity is the most desirable state we would hope for our children, be it inside or out. My children point out how difficult this is with technology blasting ahead at supersonic speed and I agree with their criticism of our suggestion. However, to maintain traditional values, a balance must be struck
The Original TV Program
Oral tradition is incredibly powerful. The environment and context of oral tradition, of gathering around the flickering flames of our original TV—the fire—stimulates all the senses. If the fire was our TV, our old people were the programming, reflecting and presenting the past, present, and future—in an entertaining and disciplined way. Through oral tradition, we attained intimacy, affection, and respect. Children developed their imaginations, their self-identity, and a sense of worth listening to their Ancient Ones relate stories that conveyed the People's Way in a natural teaching environment.
In the absence of television, we could see significant improvement in the culture in only a few years. For those of us who cry about solutions being too complex, here is a relatively simple idea. It is one that is easy to envision, but difficult to achieve. Aldous Huxley observed generations ago, "A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot—not here and now and in the calculable future but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sports and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy—will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who manipulate and control it."
Can we live without TV—without video games—without computers? It’s probably too late to answer yes. This begs the question—how can we survive these new technologies and remain tribal peoples? The answer lies at the heart of one of our strongest traditions. Gathering. Outside.
Computers and New Technology
Since this essay was originally written, the revolution in personal computing, cell phone technology, and other electronic media has made the former discussion moot--there is no going back. Despite all the valid criticisms and changes in community and individual lifestyles, it has become apparent that these changes will be permanent, however malleable.
Essay Twenty-Three
Eating Ourselves To Death
I once weighed three and sixty pounds. After I learned how to eat again, I began to observe the huge portions provided on eat and every restaurant plate served. I realized that as price have risen throughout my life, so have the amounts of food served grown in proportion. An average plate in America could actually provide a significant meal for three adults. This, in itself, is one of the crucial factor in the epidemic of obesity we face in the U.S. But the other most significant issue is what we eat.
"If we eat MacDonald's hamburgers and potatoes for a 1000 years, we will become taller, our skin will become white, and our hair will be blonde." Dan Fuyita (who brought McD's to Japan)
"We have found out...that we cannot trust some people who are non-conformists... The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization. This (business) is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I'll kill 'em and I'm gonna kill 'em before they kill me. You're talking about the American Way of the survival of the fittest. Ray Kroc, Founder--MacDonalds
"...It's the law of the Universe that the strong shall survive and the weak must fall by the way, and I don't give a damn what idealistic plan is cooked up—nothing can change that." Walt Disney
A survey of American children found that 96 % could recognize Ronald MacDonald—only Santa Claus scored higher. Eric Schlosser
Addictive Foods
The largest chain restaurants in the U.S. have given a handful of corporations’ unprecedented power over the Nation's prepared food supply. All of these outfits have one requirement—uniformity. The need for uniformity has destroyed the once highly skilled, highly paid meatpacking industry. Large corporations now employ armies of poor transient immigrants to do their meat packing in one of the most dangerous jobs in America.
Most of the founders of these large food supply and preparation corporations have a long history of opposing regulation and government interference. They tout the free enterprise system and vigorously oppose anything they consider socialistic, yet they are not above relying on federal funds to keep their businesses afloat. But the nature of their enterprises are as colonially minded as other major corporations. They want nothing less than to control the food of the world. To do that they must create an unnatural addiction to those foods. To that purpose, they have relied on decades of scientific research and technological advances. Today, they stand at the threshold of success.
Manufacturing Taste And Smell
Many of the prepared foods that a majority of Americans use consistently are essentially tasteless. The tastes we have come to love are manufactured, described as natural and artificial flavors in chemical plants, and added to basic flavorless stock. One single plant in the mid-west supplies virtually the entire industry with colors, tastes and smells. Essentially every flavor has been artificially produced and "improved" to satisfy and gratify the palate. Wholly natural foods may seem bland and tasteless by comparison, even less satisfying, particularly after one gets used to these Frankensteins of the food world. This is the result of the scientific quantification of decades of research and development in creating foods and tastes that the people cannot, and will not, do without.
Flavors are created through enzyme reactions, fungal cultures, and tissue cultures. To demonstrate, one company chars sawdust and captures the airborne aroma with water, bottling it as a "natural smoke flavor" and marketing it to at least two of the country's main burger chains. The color in a leading pink grapefruit juice and strawberry yogurt is made from the desiccated bodies of insects and larvae dried and ground into a pigment.
On the shelves of the flavor super warehouses, you can find bottles containing the taste of fresh cherries, black olives, sautéed onions, shrimp, and grilled hamburgers. A narrow strip of white paper can carry the smell of butter, meat flavor, French fries, popcorn, marshmallows, bananas, strawberries, fresh cut grass, or human perspiration.
An artificially flavored strawberry milkshake may contain as many as 350 chemicals to achieve the smell and as many as 48 chemicals to create that great strawberry taste!
Creating a smell requires much smaller chemical amounts. The smell of bell pepper can be artificially created at only .02 parts per billion. One drop of the liquid could give the odor to five average swimming pools.
Color also can be added in very small chemical amounts. The major fast food chains color soft drinks, salads, dressings, cookies, condiments, sandwich buns, and chicken dishes.
Research has even been conducted on the way foods feel in the mouth. It has been established that this influences the perception of flavor. This "feel" can be adjusted in three ways with various fats, gums, starches, emulsifiers, and stabilizers.
So the next time you eat at a restaurant, you may wonder if the flavors, colors, and smells of the food you're eating comes from the food itself, or a collection of bottles from a flavor manufacturing plant.
Honoring Our Food Supply
Our next concern relates to the horrific treatment and disrespect of animals being slaughtered for your plate. Imagine the image of a deer or buffalo, fattened on natural grazing and clean water, being brought down by a respectful hunter (who honors the spirit) and carefully butchered on the spot for immediate use, utilizing every part—as our ancestors did. Now switch to a large beef corporation plant where, until 1997, almost everything the animals consumed was the ground unconsumed parts of their own kind. It was beef cannibalizing beef. After 1997, the government decided that was wrong and now the beef typically eat the leftovers of horses, pigs, poultry, cattle blood, gelatin, tallow and restaurant plate waste. There are no restrictions on what can be fed to poultry or pigs.
To this date only 1/4 of the feed is labeled, 1/5 had no method of preventing cross feed contamination to occur, and 1/10 did not know of the ban at all. Mad Cow Disease, anyone?
This says nothing of the easing of guidelines and restrictions on how animals are slaughtered. Anyone who has personally witnessed the corporate execution of beef becomes, at least temporarily, a vegetarian.
Exporting Our Addictions
In foreign countries, American flavors and advertising are showing their addictive qualities. 1/2 of Australia's 9 to 10 year olds answered yes to the statement that Ronald MacDonald knew what kids should eat. In Beijing, primary school children recognized Ronald's image and said they "liked "Uncle" MacDonald because he was funny, gentle, and understood children's hearts." MacDonalds had their favorite foods, and Coca Cola was their favorite drink. MacDonalds now has stores in 120 countries around the world. There is even one at the site of the Nazi death camp, Dachau, in Germany.
Food And Health
We know that our original diets gave us exactly what we needed. But for many generations that has not been the case. Early foodstuffs from reservation agencies were chosen specifically to reduce our strength and adversely affect our health. Even today, we are familiar with the unhealthy government commodities many of our people rely on. With diabetes cutting a wide swath through Native Peoples: sugar, white flour, chemically-augmented tobacco, fast food, soda pop, and bad fats have taken a terrible toll. Eating healthy takes a lot of effort if one wants to eat naturally. Many of our lifestyles do not allow us the time to manage a garden or the space to grow one.
This is a problem not unlike TV. With the grocery stores full of processed and prepared foods, we must expend extra monies to feed our children healthy foods. We are so habitually tied to chemical smells, flavors, and textures that only extensive education, naturally produced alternatives—and a strong will—can free us from these manufactured and addictive diets.
Obesity And Illness
The epidemic of obesity that exists in the First World should be a warning to those who disagree with all of our other perceptions. Any civilization that demonstrates so little concern for its basic health and ability to survive in natural circumstances deserves whatever it gets. Obesity is not just a physical problem but reflects a mental, spiritual, and psychological imbalance. Over and above the chemically induced addictions our food suppliers are responsible for, people are using food as a distraction, as a cure for boredom, as a reward, as a substitute for love and companionship, as a cure for nervousness and discontent—all evidence of serious imbalances in our physical and mental lives. For Indigenous Peoples all around the globe, the risks are even greater. Canadian diabetes expert Professor Stewart Harris said diabetes posed a serious threat. "The rapid cultural transition over one to two generations of many indigenous communities to a Western diet and sedentary lifestyle has led to diabetes replacing infectious diseases as the number one threat to their survival," he said.
Professor Paul Zimmet director of the International Diabetes Institute, said: "We are dealing with the biggest epidemic in world history. Without urgent action there certainly is a real risk of a major wipe-out of indigenous communities, if not total extinction, within this century.”
A Good Sign
There is some light at the end of the tunnel. In our area, small organic ranchers of beef and buffalo are springing up all over. Good meat is becoming available. Canada has some huge natural grazing bison ranches. Some have suggested a national Great Plains Park to be located in the huge areas of the plains that have been abandoned or become unfit for agriculture, where buffalo can run free again.
In many areas, some of our traditional foods still flourish—perhaps not in an abundance to feed everyone but enough to feed those who make the effort to gather and prepare them. Farmers markets have become popular and typically offer organic vegetables and fruits in many communities.
But it ain't McD's! We'll have to get used to natural tastes again, and allow time spent in preparing food. Our children could be recovering their health again in a generation, but witnessing the mountainous piles of soda cans we're just starting to recycle on nearly every Rez—we've got a long way to go.
Much of the info for this chapter came from Eric Schlosser's book. See Book List