The "experts" tell us that television does not influence children and young people. To those old enough to remember, Marshall Dillon was shown drawing his gun and firing at the beginning of Gunsmoke. We are not shown it but we know that the other man fell. Some people say that a gunfight without blood could desensitize young people to the reality of the harm of what guns can do. These same people, or at least people who travel in the same circles, have no problem with today's television where you can hardly run through the channels without seeing an autopsy of a mutilated body with the forensic specialist describing the murder, or view every possible scenario of physical violence.
There has been a lot written over the decades on the influence of television. I fall on the side that it does influence and we see the results in the newspaper every day. That is not the topic here though. Ingrained in the psyche of America is the demand of "personal rights;" not "civil rights" or "constitutional rights," but "personal rights, The right to do what we want as long as it does not hurt anyone else. The big problem with this is that it does not take the children into account. In order to have the television and the movies that we want, we have to ignore, or explain away, the fact that the children will partake as well. We say that we love them and want to protect them but, ultimately, we fail to consider the enormity of the weakness of human nature and the extent that we can be blinded by seeking our own desires.
There has been a lot written over the decades on the influence of television. I fall on the side that it does influence and we see the results in the newspaper every day. That is not the topic here though. Ingrained in the psyche of America is the demand of "personal rights;" not "civil rights" or "constitutional rights," but "personal rights, The right to do what we want as long as it does not hurt anyone else. The big problem with this is that it does not take the children into account. In order to have the television and the movies that we want, we have to ignore, or explain away, the fact that the children will partake as well. We say that we love them and want to protect them but, ultimately, we fail to consider the enormity of the weakness of human nature and the extent that we can be blinded by seeking our own desires.
