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December 16, 2008
by Frank Martin DiMeglio
Television is only possible because this disintegration, reconfiguration, contraction (i.e., compression), and extension of visual sensory experience occurs during dreams. Accordingly, both television viewing and dreams may be said to include (or involve) reduced ability to think, anxiety, and increased distractibility. Television thus compels attention, as it is compelled in the dream; but it is an unnatural and hallucinatory experience. Hence, television is addictive. Similar to the visual experience while dreaming, television compels attention to the relative exclusion of other experience. Television reduces consciousness and results in a flattening of the visual experience as a result of combining waking visual experience with relatively unconscious visual experience. Television involves the experience of what is less animate, for it involves a significant reduction in (or loss of) visual experience. This disintegration of the visual experience (as in the dream) also results in an emotional disintegration (i.e., anxiety). That television may be so described (and even possible) is hard to imagine; but this is consistent with the fact that it took so very many different minds (and thoughts) of genius in order to make the relatively unconscious visual experience of the dream conscious. Since the thinking that is involved in making the experience of television possible is so enormously difficult, it becomes difficult to think while partaking of that experience. Television may be seen as an accelerated form or experience of art, thereby making someone less wary (or less anxious) initially, but less creative and more anxious (as time passes) as the advance of the self becomes unsustainable. The experience (or effects) of television demonstrates the interactive nature of being and experience; for, in the dream, there is also a reduction in the totality (or extensiveness) of experience. Thought involves a relative reduction in the range and extensiveness of feeling. In keeping with this, dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general. Accordingly, both thought and also the range and extensiveness of feeling are proportionately reduced in the dream. (This reduction in the range and extensiveness of feeling during dreams is consistent with the fact that the experience of smell very rarely occurs therein.) Since there is a proportionate reduction of both thought and feeling during dreams, the experience of the body is generally (or significantly) lacking; for thought is fundamentally rendered more like sensory experience in general. Thoughts and emotions are differentiated feelings. By involving the mid-range of feeling between thought and sense, dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general. The reduction in the range and extensiveness of feeling during dreams is why there is less memory and thought therein. Dream vision is generally closer (or flattened), thereby resulting in a loss/reduction of peripheral vision as well. Comparatively, television further flattens vision; and it also involves a reduction in peripheral vision. In the dream, vision and thought are semi-detached from touch (and feeling). One may or may not be able to touch what is seen in the dream. In the visual experience that is television, the visual images may not be (and are not) touched at all. In the case of waking vision, one can [generally] touch what one sees. It is not only in the dream that the vision of each individual person is necessarily different. That is obvious. Importantly, the experience of television is uniquely that of the individual. Television may be understood as a creation of generalized thought. The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sense is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sense. Television makes thought even more like vision than in the dream, thereby reducing thought and vision. Thoughts are relatively shifting and variable. Likewise, dream vision is relatively shifting and variable. In the case (and form) of television, the visual images become more shifting and variable than that of the dream; and this is in keeping with attention being compelled and sustained in conjunction with these images being even more like (or consistent with) thought. People tend to believe what they see (and hear) during television. Ordinary (and natural) vision is removed and replaced in the case of television. Unlike art, which can be the interactive creation of any one person, television is impossible for any one person to possibly create or otherwise experience. Television is an hallucination. Hallucinations are already known to be connected with/associated with/"caused by" all sorts of very serious mental/physical/emotional conditions or disorders. It is undeniable that this is a very important and serious matter.
Frank Martin DiMeglio was born in Newport, Rhode Island. He has had considerable success in managing, understanding, and overcoming both depression and anxiety, and he has been very actively engaged in studying philosophy and psychology for the past 8 years. Mr. DiMeglio has a Bachelor of Science degree (cum laude) in Geography and Environmental Planning from Towson University (1987). He currently lives in Middle River, Maryland, and he is working on his second book.
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Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book... Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Magazine...
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Human
Being: Self, Desire, &
Consciousness
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