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PANDORA'S BOX

The typical TV viewer is continuously bombed with:

• The typical TV viewer is continuously bombed with: violence (with a frequency of 3 murders per day!), which is promoted as the only solution in dealing with evil;
• a lot of sex; what's worse, 94% of sex scenes are on extramarital relations;
• extraterrestrials, who are thought to exist only thanks to their publicity by TV programs;
• terror caused by various imaginary creatures (werewolves, vampires, etc.) and "real" enemies (robbers, killers, lunatics and others);
• power, corruption and luxury (Dallas, Dynasty and other Greek and foreign soap operas);
• of course, an excess of stupidity and mockery in TV games, match-making shows etc.

In addition, the TV viewer is continuously hammered with promotional messages, which try to achieve brain washing in every possible way: by using women as utensils of pleasure, by exploiting human relations and weaknesses, by murdering the Greek language and by using forbidden subconscious messages (this happened in some election promotional spots too).

EVERYTHING FOR MONEY!

TV channels are commercial enterprises, and their revenues come mainly from promotional messages. Clients must be persuaded that the public sees their messages; that's why TV watching polls are used. In order to achieve an increase in TV ratings, - which will also boost the profit from advertisements - programs not only use a promotion of naughty subjects, but they also exploit human suffering and distress. For example, murdered District Attorney wife's reactions (the DA had been murdered by the "November 17th" terrorist group) appeared for many days at the publicity shows called "news".

Mass Media covered the illnesses of former prime-minister A. Papandreou and of the popular actress A. Vougiouklaki in such an outrageous way, that M. Ploritis, a known intellectual, was forced to accuse them for "cesspool writing, eating raw meat, dime talking", while Persa Zeri, professor of communication at the Panteios University, made the following statements about "Kentri" (the program that caused one of the suicides): "Those in charge of the program are responsible for this man's death. Publicity caused by the program proved to be fatal. The reporter has intentionally misinterpreted her investigation mission. First should the police and the District Attorney act, then should the official investigation take place, and only last should the reporter come to inform the public opinion, provided that the charges have been proved; yet, even in that case there is a limit. The police intervenes into a family, yet it does not publicize anything before investigation. It is not in the job of the reporter to act as a regulator of social relations, this is a responsibility of the state and its statutes. While nothing had been proved yet, she intervened unacceptably into family life and the private sphere. Why? There is no police, no Justice? Do we live in a jungle? TV has caused suicide again and again... They are responsible for this man's death, whoever they are".

The director of ERA (state radio station) G. Jannetakos said about the same subject: "From the moment the TV programs of the private channels substitute public institutional functions and are transformed into Public Prosecutors and people's judges with finality of judgment, it means that we have entered into a social jungle". Mr. Kopsidis, a member of the ESR (National Council of Radio and Television), and a member of the parliament with the communist party, said that "The owners of private channels feel and are uncontrolled... they don't pay attention to ESR, they refuse to pay the fines, though their cost equals one or two promotional messages". [1]

THE LONG ARM OF OCCULTISM

Despite the general outcry against Natassa Rayou's program, the reporter said she acted properly (!), and the channel not only didn't pay the fine, but asked for the politicians' and the... citizens' backing (!). In contrary, Victoria Dagounaki's program was stopped, because Takis Alexiou (probably a secret agent), who claims to be a Moslem sheikh, [6] resorted to ESR defending the "human right" of Scientology (formerly KEFE) to deceive, robber and spy Greek citizens into their own country, without being unveiled by reporters! About the same program, an "expert" psychiatrist said that the ex Satan-worshipper who spoke about her deeds at V.Dagounaki's program, was not a genuine Satanist but a psychopath - as if there exist Satanists who are not psychopaths... Apparently, offending the interests of cults and neo-satanism is more serious than causing the death of ordinary people.

Natassa Rayou, as well as Vassilis Raphailidis, was positive to Scientology; the latter published under his name an article against Rev. Antonios Alevizopoulos as it was send to him by fax from Scientology headquarters (!). Quite by chance, shortly before Makis Triandafyllopoulos started making programs about "scandals in the Orthodox Church", he was awarded a prize by Scientology in the USA for his fight for human rights! [2]

In parallel to the standard propagandists of occultism who act through TV (Julie Pitsuli and others) there are also the chameleons: At the program named "Matter of love", we once saw former martial arts trainees explaining how they were proselytized and revealing that martial arts promote Asian religions and the New Age movement; another time we saw parents whose children fell victims to Scientology, in all other episodes we see a parade of hypnotizers, mediums, astrologers, homeopathists and the like (Vouloukos, Kypriotakis, Papadomichelaki and others), who are advertised for free and entrap victims through TV, with the speaker's blessings. Some New Age "Messiahs" talk personally about their theories on TV: Panagiotis Toulatos not only presented himself at the pornographic programs of Costas Mylonas and Vicky Michalonakou, but had his own program for a long time... There is also promotion of UFO theories, which are much related to occultism - and not to science, as the UFO "experts" claim.

WHY AND HOW TV BECOMES DANGEROUS

From the moment we turn TV on, it's easier to devote to TV watching than to turn it off because:

1. When we look around, our range of vision is limited to our front, while in the TV monitor we can see the entire content of every image, and this makes us feel we control space.
2. While the object outlines are in reality static, the electronic mechanism that generates the image on the monitor produces outlines that are uninterruptedly moving, though the TV viewer hardly realizes the fact. "The eye is concentrated much more to moving objects than to immobile ones... so this mobility... attracts our attention more easily".
3. The TV viewer doesn't need to do anything; he needs neither to give something nor to think, not even to imagine. He remains passive, pushing away the responsibilities of real life. Thus, TV becomes a drug that causes addiction. [4]

"THE TEACHER YOU'VE GOT, THE THINGS YOU LEARN"

Parents are often responsible for the addiction of their children to TV, since they let them watch TV to "stay obedient"! But this is a disaster: Dorothy Cohen, a professor of Pedagogics at an American Univer-sity, points out that TV "robs children's natural opportunities to play, to act. It significantly reduces their opportunities for proper growth. Children must be protected during the period they are at risk of suffering irreparable damage... Children of ages less than 5 should not watch TV at all".

Sarantos Kargakos, a well-known expert in teaching (literature), has given a lecture on the subject where he underlined the following:

1. By watching TV, the child is not capable of discovering its real "ego", because it loses the sense of "you", since TV dissociates it from other people.
2. TV is responsible for muteness and gibbering among children. Image is more charming and comfortable than speech, so it abolishes speech, which is restricted in annotating the image. American statistics have shown that 30 seconds of moving image counterbalance 250 words. TV speaking, with its galloping rhythm, doesn't let the child contemplate, think by using logical cohesion and metaphors.
3. The child gets the habit of listening, but it cannot ask questions and answer to exercise itself in dialogue. TV encourages monologue. TV doesn't teach, it submits the child to lecturing. It makes the child to be silent, to give commands or to beat others. When ancient Greeks used the word homily (conversation, from the word homilos which means group), they meant "association", "communication". TV breaks this social tissue of speech... It produces speech that functions at the petition level, not at the discussion level nor, all the more so, at the contemplation level. It offers speech of things, but not of feelings or ideas. The child forgets to use words and to build phrases... the next step after the wrong homily will be the wrong function in homilos, i.e. in social life.
4. The child does not learn the Greek language correctly, because of the inaccurate translations and the errors in dubbings and subtitles and because of the artificial words used in children's programs. Beautiful Greek words are lost or substituted by foreign ones in sport programs... Greek language is "out", while every element of foreign languages is "in"... A compound language is created... ironically called by French "Franglais"... A mosaic-language... intermediary, multinational, nationally colourless. The Greek child... starts to feel as an immigrant in the language of the adults, and the adults start to feel the same in the language of the young, when they ignore the TV communication code.
5. The visualization of teaching cuts off schoolchildren from books and writing. The images pass into subconscious while words are elusive in a way, like shadows. The child accepts the information, but it does not have the time to estimate its credibility. Education through TV - as well as any kind of education that does not encourage self-activity and does not sharpen the critical spirit - is questionable, and perhaps dangerous. The child does not learn only by listening and watching, but also by talking, acting and mainly by thinking. Education is the result of exchanges, human relations and contacts, the result of an endless dialogue among instructors and those instructed, which cannot be replaced by the refrigerated knowledge offered by TV. The development of a healthy personality is based on a smooth and gradual discovery of the world with the help of the senses, not on the unobjectionable passive acceptance of the image offered by TV. [3]

The energy of the paranoid killer  offsets the TV viewer's inertness.

EDUCATION EXPERTS AND PSYCHOLOGISTS WARN

Infant-school teachers, teachers and professors who bridged the two generations with and without TV in America, where television is in use since 1950s, described the children of the "TV generation" as follows: "They don't have much imagination, neither in their way of expression nor in the way they play or invent various activities." "They have the desire that someone pay attention to them and guide them. They are not willing to go ahead, to act on their own, to enjoy the adventure of discovery." "Quite often they are not so mature as to bear trivial disappointments or to understand that things take time to fulfill and do not happen in one moment." " They tend to leave on me every initiative. If I suggest something, they work eagerly, but they don't suggest anything by themselves". "Heavy passiveness is observed in their games... They easily lose interest and this mainly happens when they have to make a personal effort". "When I tell the children a story, they often interrupt me, saying 'I can't see'. Their attention is easily disrupted and they start talking. I must try hard to make their imagination work. I tell them: 'I have nothing to show you; the story just comes out of my mouth and you can see the images with the eyes of your mind'. They wouldn't need such an education... before the domination of TV". [4]

In the USA a drop of the performance at school, proportional to the TV set market increase, was noticed. Furthermore, according to specialist psychiatrists, TV makes the child "waver between real and unreal and causes its emotional level to drop very low", [4] whether it watches good or bad programs. Children not only easily reproduce the violence promoted on TV, but they also come to treat real people as if they were on the TV screen." [4] We know of premeditated crimes made by children abroad by copying out a movie. In the same way, in Greece, a child at the age of 15 killed his parents, and a child at the age of 10 was shot dead by another child of the same age as they watched a western movie!

Children do not behave violently just because they copy out movies. Riveting in front of the TV causes excessive moving and aggressiveness, that lead to violent outbursts. Additionally, as TV viewing takes the time that a child would use to play with other children, aggressiveness is not eased off normally, but it is accumulated.

IT DOESN'T HARM ONLY CHILDREN...

Larry Gross and John Gerbner, professors at the University of Pennsylvania, carried out a research among TV viewers which proved that by watching TV adults incorrectly perceive reality as well, even if they are well educated. To the question "how possible is it for a normal person to face violence during one week", heavy TV viewers answered that the percentage should be between 10 and 50%, while the real percentage is only 1%! This is due not only to incorrect supply of information by the news programs, but also to "continuous watching of fiction and TV programs which are produced in a realistic and imposing way" and "cause confusion between real and unreal. The TV viewer ... incorporates violence into his reality"; even if he "knows very well that it actually is a myth, his activities are influenced. Real world takes an 'unreal' or even a dull colour..."

We demonstrate this confusion between the two worlds with the examples below, taken from American newspapers:

• Those who watched the parade found it monotonous and said: 'It would have been better if we had stayed at home and watched it from the TV; it would have been much more exciting.'
• A woman who was passing in front of a burning building said to her friend: 'Don't worry, they must be making some film'.
• The members of a family in California live according to the 'patterns' promoted by TV serials, where scenes of violence, adultery, homosexuality, divorces and the like are a daily routine.
• 37 people watched a young woman being murdered in the yard, and no one went to help her, as if they were watching the event on the TV. (Similarly, in Greece, the cries of a woman who was raped and killed by K. Papachronis, were considered to be... TV sounds).
• During a destructive cyclone, a 17 year old teenager was shouting with all his might 'Ooaoo, boy, it's exactly like TV'! [4]

TV AND "NEW AGE"

When the first "TV generation" came of age in America, it adopted ways of thinking and behaviour that were widely advertised exactly in that period by "New Age" groups and by intellectuals and artists who were related to "New Age" and its hidden roots. According to Theodore Roszak, these ways of thinking include "the irrational thinking, the absence of ambition and willingness for competition, the indifference towards the search for values, the turn towards ego and the escape from reasoning, reality and mental activity"; they were proved by the dependence of this generation on music - which remarkably exceeded the usual inclination of teenagers towards music - and by the turn to the irrational: astrology, sorcery, numerology, chiromancy" and the like. All these changes "are directed from the irrational thinking of the right hemisphere of the brain," which is stimulated by TV watching.[4]

A demonstration of self-concentration and magic skill in a "recreational" show.

TV AND DRUGS

Since 1964-1968, when the TV generation reached adolescence, the percentage of young people who were arrested for use of dangerous drugs has doubled. Of course... other factors, like the easy distribution of drugs, must also be considered. But the strange linking in time of these two phenomena allows us to link them" as "young people often themselves do". In a research carried out by N.E. Zinberg and J.A. Robertson there were numerous characteristic references to TV by the drug addicts themselves: "I take drugs", says a 19 year old teenager, "it's so wonderful! Time slows down and I have time to listen to myself better. The world is moving slowly and indefinitely, like in a slow motion film or in a TV program where the screen may be small, but what you see goes directly into your head, in a way that you can deeply feel what is shown by the images". "I used to take drugs since I was 14", says a 17 year old boy. "All the inner images made me see the surroundings and myself as you see the scenes on the TV." A young author says: "Under the influence of marihuana, without any talking, you estimate your inner condition and the first thing you learn is that you can't distinguish real from unreal. Exactly as it happens with TV". [4]

"The condition of the TV viewer's consciousness does not differ from what drug addicts call "a state of pure consciousness" where someone is completely and clearly conscious of his experience, but his mind does no intellectual processing. Senses exclusively attract all the attention of the person, who remains passive and heavily absorbed by the event. "Pure consciousness is experience without complete participation in the event," and is similar to the desired result in some methods of meditation, which is also spread in the "after TV generations". "The longing for experience, which appeared in the mid-sixties, reflects a childhood deserted from every experience of real life, since the usual experiences of the senses were then significantly reduced, because of the frequent, time-consuming TV watching. The 'world, deprived of colour and life' describes almost perfectly the world of television. How can a child deprived of conversation with its parents or of playing with children of the same age may not reach - when adult - intense loneliness? Isn't it natural for a child grown up next to the TV set... to suffer more from stress and disappointment?" [4]

Joyce Maynard, a representative of the TV generation, says: "I know everything said about us, about our music, clothes, freedom, vigour and manifestations. And it is true that physically we are strong, full of energy, and that we dance, do sports, run with our motorcycles, stay up all night..." but "We are tired from boredom, not from effort. We are old, but not wise, we live in the world without getting to know it, we have only seen it through the TV screen".[4]

The prevalence of the non-verbal way of thinking, caused by the stimulation of the right hemisphere of the brain during growth, contributed to the famous "generation gap", which in the sixties appeared deeper than ever before - since until that time generations differed temperamentally because of their age, but shared the same verbal way of perception.

SHORT CONCLUSION

Television is a useful invention (it transmits events that happened far away etc.). But the mistaken use of TV subversively affects the personal, family and social life of the TV viewer, since:

• It is often used to "forget problems", which are left to be irreparably inflated.
• The TV viewer, devoted in the content of programs and influenced by the patterns conveyed (through movies, serials, promotional messages etc.) which he is called to identify with, reduces self-observation and, consequently, self-knowledge.
• Systematic presentation of the actors' private life leads to indiscretion.
• The passive nature of TV viewing, which does not require personal participation, contributes to the development of antisocial characters who have difficulties in contracting relations.
• Violent programs form antisocial characters and are conducive to crime increase.
• TV viewing pushes aside other, more useful activities (reading etc.).

• Members only hastily talk to each other between programs.
• There are more than one TV sets, so that the members can watch different programs at the same time.
• Discussion subjects are determined from what is shown on TV, and spare time is determined by programs.
• TV routine not only kills love between husbands and wives, but makes the upbringing of children difficult, as it nurtures them with ideas that parents possibly don't approve.

MANY PEOPLE think that the bad quality of TV programs and the general dominion of images in our time are not accidental, since in the "Protocols of the wise men of Zion" we read that "the system for the 'stifling of thinking' is already applied by the method called 'teaching through images' which will turn Christians into obedient animals which will not think, but will wait for the representation of things by images to understand them." [5] Furthermore, the central message of mass media is that "there is no God" or "God leaves us unprotected in a horrible, dangerous world". So the TV viewer is pushed to look for ways which will supposedly restore order to society (heavy police use, Shengen Information System, one world-leader etc.).

MANY PEOPLE talk about the bad quality of programs. Undoubtedly, good programs are useful, yet constant TVwatching won't transform us to saints, even if programs are religious. Life into the Orthodox Church is an experience; if it is reduced to the sphere of spectacle, it will be destroyed. Man was created to act energetically, not to watch passively. TV viewing makes spiritual life difficult, not only because it constantly presents temptations, but because it brings out a distraction of attention and an inability to concentrate, while images stored in the subconscious rise annoyingly during prayer.

MANY PEOPLE worry about the 3D TV, about virtual reality, where someone cannot make a distinction between reality and imagination, or about the much-discussed bi-directional television, through which the TV viewer is being watched.

In Greece there is an Association for the Protection of TV Viewers which is concerned with the quality of programs. It has already done various formal representations to ESR, as well as successful boycotts of products that were improperly advertised. As to TV watching, we may say that for the time we devote to it and the place we offer to it in our life (because these are the factors that turn TV from a useful invention to a dangerous invader) things are so simple, as were described by monks from Mount Athos: "The TV set has a switch; as it switches on, likewise it switches off".

References

1. Articles from the Greek newspapers "To Vima" (19.5.96), "Eleftherotypia" and "Adesmeftos Tipos" (19.6.97).
2. Report by District Attorney I. Angelis about Scientology (formerly K.E.F.E.).
3. Lecture by Sarantos Kargakos during a daily conference about TV, at the conference room of ESIEA (Union of Editors of Daily Newspapers Published in Athens)..
4.."The plug in drug", Marie Winn (extracts translated from the Greek edition by "Acritas Publications").
5. "The protocols of the wise men of Zion" (from the Greek edition by "Nectarios Panagopoulos Publications")
6. "Dialogos" magazine, No. 6, p.24.

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