Tweedle to Twaddle

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Credit: google images

I finally had to turn the TV off this morning. At the same moment, the three major networks were featuring Dick Chaney, Kim Kardashian, and eating your own placenta. So much for freedom of choice through one’s remote control. The three are identical (at least for me) in producing equal levels of revulsion. I’m part of that rapidly diminishing generation that has followed television from its inception to today. It is at once the greatest blessing and the worst curse inflicted upon civilization. The difference is in the choices made by the producers, and by the public that allows itself to be lulled into mental noctambulism (sleep walking). The worst violation of public trust and intelligence is network news---the process of telling us what someone else wants us to know, think, consider important or trivial. If nothing else, television has largely killed the individual. We like to think we’re different, but we’ve been molded into clones of identical thinking in music, clothing, culture at large, the resignation of a nation of sheep that are told how to act, think, and even respond to what we know is happening around us. Even our political choices have distilled down to picking between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. After the election, regardless of the outcome, all we get is twaddle, while the one-percenters make our “leaders” dance like marionettes. And, at the risk of being called simplistic, yes, I’d say all this is from television---the tool that puts all power in the hands of society’s manipulators. The only freedom of choice we have, really, is on or off.

Whether sailing or paddling, this is one of my greatest reasons for a love of being on the water. It gives me a chance to escape all the thought control and allows me to concentrate on things that are really important and rewarding. And to think that people are even carrying TV’s into the woods and putting them on their sailboats. Incredible!