The Idiot Box

“Do you know what the greatest and worst invention that humans ever made was? Television. It pollutes the mind of those who watch, those who lose themselves in a dream world, afraid of reality.”

I don’t quite remember where I got these lines, whether it is from an animated film or from a book that I’ve read a year ago, is now completely beyond the memory that I trust. There is something on these words that always hit me every time I touch the remote control. Whatever it was, I came to contemplate on it every time, such that I became accustomed to the very idea that it suggests.

Indeed, television is one of the greatest inventions that men ever created. It is the favorite son of technology, making its space on millions of household all-around the world. It doesn’t only seek to entertain, but it also seeks to inform. Through it, the world became a global village – much like viewing the world through a window, watching it as it moves. People in this modern world regard it as an indispensable object that makes life easier and more convenient. Yes, it has become a necessity – People can’t really imagine themselves living the same life without television. It did not occur to them, however, that the invention of it, is maybe, as worse as its greatness.

Television, in a way, has become an escape from reality. Humans will always seek to escape reality – this gloomy, dark and corrupted world. So, they immerse themselves in a great, big image formed by little dots of insignificant light. In its own self, television has become a new religion. People watch it to be happy, to get through by the day, to relieve them from things that they don’t want to see. It bombards us with numerous information, such that we lose ourselves. Commercials and Ads have turned us into willing consumers, controlled by the psychology that reality exists on that box-like frame. It controls as and forces us to oblige on a standard; that being beautiful is to look like models, and to try their product to become one, that we have to eat “this” or to do “that” in order to be “in” – it fed us with a rotten culture of vanity. We become too anxious and confused on what we should do that we become depressed – and the only antidote is the one which caused it: Television.

Sometimes, I wonder who is crazier. The only intention of that dirty homeless man on the streets we call insane is to satisfy his stomach. We, on the other hand, are preoccupied with a lot of things such that we don’t know what we need and what we want. Is it possible that we have truly lost ourselves? Is it true that the television maybe the culprit of it? Are we consumed by its effects that we can’t decide on our own?  These questions have dwelled in my in my mind since I started my contemplation about it. The only answer that I have is not to answer anything at all, for it leads me into a wider web of unending questions. The only sensible thing that I realized is to turn off the “idiot box” for once and think about how I am living this life. So that, whenever I touch the remote control, I ask myself; am I controlled? Am I in an escape? Am I…lost?