The Subtle Landscape

  I’d been wondering why my MD brother had no TV in his place (none!) till I began paging through another of his JAMAs (Journal of the American Medical Association).  I figured it out when the following heart pounding sounding title caught my eye: “Television Viewing and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease, and All-Cause Mortality”.

  Made me think of the phrase above from the first line of Juvenal’s Satire X which reads in full: “It is to be prayed that the mind be sound in a sound body”.  It will come as no surprise that I’m in agreement and don’t think that either will be enhanced in front of a tube.  (cf “couch potato category tab below right.)  Still, it is fun to see actual peer reviewed evidence (for which I need a dictionary to understand!) in support.

  The study “revealed a linear increase in risk with the number of hours per day of TV viewing for both type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease; the association with all cause mortality appeared stronger with TV viewing time of greater than three hours per day”.

  Interestingly, the authors also relate that for a group of nine year olds, reduced time in front of the television slowed increases in body mass index even without change in physical activity.  No thoughts of “free” Happy Meals and “Livin’ It”.

  Or like Mason Williams* wrote in 1969, “Network television wants to keep you stupid so you’ll watch it”.  And: “Television is not a salesman with his foot in your door, it’s a salesman with his foot in your head”.  

*Mason Williams is an incredible creative force.  He recorded his “Classical Gas” on twelve string guitar in 1968 and won two Grammys.  He was a writer for the groundbreaking Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour the cancelation of which was in part the motivation for the book the cover of which you see above.  He was briefly head writer for Saturday Night Live and could be said to have conceived of music videos and recorded the first one.

  A recent experiment* suggested that certain sorts of simple movements can improve creative thinking.  Researchers had students squeeze a rubber ball with their right and left hands before taking a test – success on which required “the formation of associative links between otherwise unrelated concepts in order to solve problems in novel ways”.

  Those squeezing the ball with their left hand outperformed both those using their right and those with their hands clutching nothing at all.  Researchers assume that the activity undertaken on the left stimulated the brain’s right hemisphere in which at least part of one’s creative potential is thought to reside.

  I’ve exposited in this space many times in different ways about movement and its importance to cerebral dynamics and physical fitness.  If a few forearm contractions can measurably enhance one’s imagination, think about the benefits of a holistic regimen for a while and then consider the ramifications of a lack thereof.

  OK.  Let’s start at the very beginning – a very good place to start.  In an article in the New Yorker** Rebecca Mead tells us “How tot lots became places to build children’s brains”.  She tells us that an understanding the expenditure of valuable energy in ‘play’ activities begins with the observation that the most intelligent animals all engage in them.

  Ms Mead cites anthropologist Melvin Konner who defines play as “inefficient, partly repetitive movements in varied sequences with no apparent purpose”.  He goes on: “The idea is that natural selection designed play to shape brain development … [it is] directing [one’s own] brain assembly”.

  And ya gotta keep doin’ it.  Most will agree that physical activity is essential for physical health.  It’s essential for your headbone too.  No one will convince me that hours spent moving a mouse or flippin’ IPad pages will supplant squeezing that ball.

  If the only vigorous exercise you get is struggling with footwear at either end of the day you’ll end up like Vladimir in Beckett’s Godot: “We have time to grow old.  The air is full of our cries.  But habit is a great deadener.  At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on”.

* Psychonomic Bulleton & Review 2010, 17 (6), 895-899 Goldstein et al

**State of Play, The New Yorker, July 5, 2010

***cf post 1/24/2008 – “Let’s Dance”

     Whether or not you buy the notion that magic mushrooms played an important role in the evolution of human consciousness, you must agree that the density of interconnections in our neural circuitry underpins the richness of our thinking.

  OK.  What could cause a reversal, a diminution, a loss of ‘stars’ in our cerebral constellation, a trend backwards toward the synesthetic threshold?   Television.  And it won’t take generations for evidentiary manifestation.  Just as DDT decimated avian populations within a generation, so is the boob tube laying waste to a wide swath of our individual and collective brainpower.

   US students were “mediocre”, faired poorly in a just released assessment of fifteen year olds across the planet.  Another recent report showed that Americans’ scores on a commonly used creativity test fell steadily from 1990 to 2008, particularly among our youth.  Time spent in front of screens was given as a primary cause.

  Not only do couch potatoes’ muscles wither and minds lose dimension while bellies grow, the attendant self isolation wreaks wider havoc.  Society’s collective consciousness attenuates along with the density of its interactions. 

  An article in the May 22 WSJ posited that: “Where population falls or is fragmented, cultural evolution may actually regress”.  For example, 10,000 years ago the 4,000 residents of Tasmania became isolated by rising sea levels.  They then “constituted too small a collective brain to sustain let alone improve the existing technology” and apparently lost the ability to fashion tools, clothing and fishing equipment.

  Reflect upon this the next time driving through a neighborhood and you notice that nearly every large window is illuminated by that familiar glare.  Or the next time in a big box store the walls of which are filled with incredibly expensive and huge television sets.  With $500.00 alters upon which to rest them available nearby.

  Most TV programs are either inane or pandering.  Not great art. Reminds me of what Iris Murdoch wrote about bad art: It’s “the soft, messy self-indulgent work of an enslaved fantasy.” 

  The other evening there was a prime time network program about losing weight.  How can there be viewership sufficient to satisfy advertisers?  We should feel insulted.  Newsflash – there is one and only one way: EAT FEWER CALORIES THAN YOU BURN!

  Jeesh. Who is going to fix stuff here in the States some years hence, let alone invent it? 

  D’oh!