i suppose y'all feel you have a pretty good reason for despising television, but what is it you are really so disgusted with? is it the content itself or is it the fact that so many are willing to shut down their minds and absorb those flickering images as reality? are you all so incapable of realizing the medium for what it really is, just another way to amuse ourselves in the off hours of an exhausting day? the real problem seems to be that we are no longer capable of experiencing the world around us with a critical eye. all of our entertainments are crammed full of little cues to lead us toward a socially acceptable frame of mind and no one seems to care because the manipulation is so wide spread.

everywhere we look "green" is the new buzz word and "government" has become synonymous with "caretaker", we are told that interdependence is the highest form of enlightenment and self-interest has been redefined as avarice. all of the things that lead to individuality are slowly being stripped away from us and replaced by the reinforcement of the herd mentality. i'm sure orwell would be dismayed by how little we have heeded his warnings. in our search for something greater than ourselves, we are stopping short of any real answer and settling for the supremacy of the hive. as we quash that glimmer of superiority within us all, our better selves understand this dilemma and seek some reason for this stunting of our social and ethical evolution.

just as the herd mentality is inevitable in such a physically weak species, i suppose it is equally inevitable that a creature with so much potential should seek a whipping boy for its failings. we see in ourselves the possibility of greatness and are unwilling to blame ourselves individually for the failure to live up to that possibility. at the pinnacle of the food chain, we can see no other animal holding us back. only we ourselves can be held guilty for our deficiencies, but that is not to our liking. so we contrive invisible cabals and illusory clockworks, we denounce other factions and even our own inventions and hold them out as the scapegoats for our own lack of progress. it is never us that bears the onus of our failings, it is always them or it that is to blame. unless we are willing to embrace the fact that we are accountable for our own failings, the cycle will go on and on and we will degenerate into the mindless herd animals we evolved from.