How TV Is Turning Us All Into Zombies

Television re-wires your mind and alters your consciousness; Studies find that children’s brains are not developing properly.

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Oct 12, 2012

TV turns you into a zombie.

While these words are more often than not used as a tiresome metaphor to highlight how much crap we are forced to endure on television today, they do in fact serve as a deadly accurate literal statement.

Two separate studies this month alone have found that excessive amounts of television, even if it is merely on in the background, can detrimentally effect the development of children’s brains, to the point where they struggle to socially engage when they become older.

Add to this the already extensively documented impact that the television has on all of us, the power it has to literally alter our consciousness and shut down critical thinking, and it is no wonder that it was long ago dubbed the idiot box.

As reported by Reuters this month, researchers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), found that background noise emitted from television is so distracting and mesmerizing to children that it is impacting their ability to interact with other human beings and potentially slowing down cognitive thinking and language development.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that children in the US are now exposed to more than five hours a day of television. Matthew Lapierre, who led the study, explained that children who are subjected to the most TV spend less time interacting with other children and parents.

Lapierre also found that younger children are subjected to the most background television.

“This is a clear warning signal to parents that if they are not watching TV, they ought to turn it off,” said Dr. Victor Strasburger, a pediatrician from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque who has previously studied media exposure among children. “[It is also] a reminder that parents should be avoiding screen time in infants under two.” he said.

“It’s confusing for babies who are trying to get their language together to have indistinguishable voices in the background.” Strasburger also noted, telling reporters that when parents bring their children to him, he can tell which toddlers are over exposed to TV.

“The babies that are being read to are just chattering away, and the babies that sit in front of a TV are silent,” he said. “It means their language development is threatened – they may catch up, but it’s a concern.”

In a separate study, doctors at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in London found that children born today will have watched a full year of television by the time they are seven years old. The study also found that on average children now spend more time watching television than they do in school.

Dr Aric Sigman published the study in the Archives Of Disease In Childhood, a medical journey jointly own by the British Medical Journal group.

Sigman noted that such extensive exposure to television can lead to a void when it comes to social relationships, can lead to attention deficit problems, and can promote significant psychological difficulties.

Sigman also noted that over exposure to new technologies such as 3D televisions and consoles could seriously affect the development of depth perception in children.

The study recommends preventing children under three years old from watching television altogether, and says that all children should be limited to less than two hours of TV per day.

“As health risks are reported to occur beyond exposure of two hours of screen time per day, although the average child is exposed to three times this amount, a robust initiative to encourage a reduction in daily recreational screen time could lead to significant improvements in child health and development.” Sigman noted.

In a report issued one year ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics pointed out that scores of previous studies have come to the same conclusions; that there is a direct link between increased TV time and developmental delays in children.

In 2010, another study published in Pediatrics, found that during analysis of over 1,000 children between the ages of ten and eleven, those who spend at least two hours a day in front of a television screen are 60 percent more likely to have psychological problems than children who spend less or no time. The study also noted that even children taking part in physical activities but still watching TV are still fifty percent more likely to suffer problems such as hyperactivity, difficulty with peers and friends, poor conduct and antisocial kinds of behavior.

Further studies published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, found that children exposed to more TV are significantly more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior and perform poorly in school. In addition, the findings noted that children who watch more TV are more likely to eat more junk-food and suffer bullying at the hands of classmates – consequences that have their own brain re-wiring effects.

Other recent scientific studies have noted that many programs produced specifically for children may have even worse effects on their development because they are very fast moving, thus overtaxing the brain and promoting reduced attention span.

Owing to such proven effects of television and video games, children’s minds are being numbed before they have even developed. By the time they reach adulthood, they act according to decisions made to a great extent unconsciously. They are effectively zombies; humans operating with an impulsive, reactionary mind set, at the expense of logical analysis and critical thought.

And kids are not the only ones who are susceptible to television’s ability to create armies of the walking dead.

It is commonly known that television flicker rates induce alpha brain waves, lulling the brain into a more subconscious state that can be compared to sleep, literally inducing a type of hypnosis within the viewer that makes them more susceptible to suggestion.

This has been known since the 1960s, and was most notably proven in an experiment in 1969, byHerbert Krugman. The research, undertaken by Krugman as part of a larger project concerned with advertising, revealed that the brain’s left hemisphere, which processes information logically and analytically, effectively tunes out almost completely when an individual watches television.

The radiant light and flicker rate of television screens cause brain activity to drop toward more of a theta state. Critical thinking reduces, leaving the parts of the brain that hold memories, sensations and emotions the most active. Whatever is coming from the TV therefore somewhat bypasses the logical mind and is embedded directly into the subconscious. In other words, TV appeals more to emotions than logic.

Numerous studies have also found that flicker rates in video games cause altered consciousness. Some have been shown to reduce brain activity to below Delta frequency.

Other studies have also flagged up a link between watching too much television and Alzheimer’s disease. The semi conscious state induced by television is thought to directly contribute to the symptoms of memory, speech and perception problems.

Krugman also discovered that reading and listening to audio increases cognition and builds neuron paths because you have to think critically and envision the “theater of the mind”.

In addition, the crossover from the left to the right brain induced by watching television, causes a release of the body’s natural opiates, similar to a release of endorphins when exercising. This has the effect of making the viewer feel good. Consequently, withdrawal symptoms can kick in if viewers turn off the turn. As with any form of opiate-withdrawal, symptoms include increased anxiety, frustration, and depression.

Experiments conducted in the 1970s found that people who turn off their TVs for long periods after prolonged viewing suffer from depression, with some noting that they felt as though they had “lost a friend.”

A combination of four studies, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, concluded that television shows can instill a sense of belonging in viewers with low self-esteem and a lack of social relationships. Referring to the notion as social surrogacy hypothesis, psychologists at the University at Buffalo and Miami University, Ohio, found that in order to fill the emotional void of social deprivation, some people forge relationships with fictional characters in TV shows.

TV really is the opiate of the masses.

Of course, what I describe here is only a snapshot. We are today bombarded from all angles with distractions, substances, and conditions created to transform the way we interpret our reality. We are being conditioned from birth to act increasingly without consciousness; the one thing that sets us apart from every other living thing in the known universe.

We are literally being programmed into a waking sleep, a zombie-like existence. We must act vigilantly and educate others if we are to break this programming and preserve our humanity.

Breaking The Zombie Programming: We Can Become Conscious!

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Oct 14, 2012

During the mid 1990s two fascinating papers were presented in a publication called The Journal of Consciousness Studies.

The first was titled Conversations with Zombies, by Todd C. Moody, a Philosophy professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. The second was a direct response written by Charles T. Tart of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, entitled Yes, We Are Zombies, But We Can Become Conscious!

Both papers embrace the notion that consciousness, or our awareness of our own awareness, could be a phenomenon independent from or non-essential to the processes of the brain and the nervous system and associated behavior that stems from it.

In other words, we as humans are capable of living most of the time in a reduced state of consciousness akin to that of a zombie; a waking sleep. Both papers argue that there is a higher form of “superconsciousness” as Moody calls it, or an “expanded consciousness state” in Tart’s words.

Moody states:

The `zombie problem’ is the problem of consciousness, stated in a particularly provocative way. Given any functional description of cognition, as detailed and complete as one can imagine, it will still make sense to suppose that there could be insentient beings that exemplify that description. That is, it is possible that there could be a behaviourally indiscernible but insentient simulacrum of a human cognizer: a zombie.

[...]

“Indeed, if conscious inessentialism is true, it is quite possible for an entire world of zombies to evolve… It is behaviours, after all, and not subjective states, that are subjected to evolutionary selection pressures. If those behaviours do not require consciousness, then evolution is indifferent to it.”

Tart notes:

“Ordinary, ‘normal’ consciousness is indeed a zombie-like state of greatly constricted and distorted, if not absent, ‘consciousness’. I have given such ordinary consciousness the technical name of ‘consensus consciousness’ in the purely descriptive sense and ‘consensus trance’ when focusing on it as a restricted state.”

While Moody concludes that we could all be zombies living only “to the power of Z”, and never fully experiencing a kind of “mystic” interaction with higher powers or God, Tart believes that it is possible to experience an “awakening”:

“I know from personal experience that there is a transient and perhaps permanent ‘awakening’ from consensus trance/consciousness, a clarification or lucidity, that is rewarding and adaptive in itself, as well as vividly illustrating the zombie-like qualities of ordinary consciousness.

[...]

People in this expanded consciousness state or process seem indeed to understand each other fairly well, even though what they communicate may sometimes seem ineffable to those in ordinary, zombie-like consciousness”

Tart argues that by focusing the mind on “the space between thoughts”, in the tradition of many Eastern enlightenment philosophies such as Sufism or Zen, one can “awaken” from this consensus trance and realise there is a greater consciousness potential:

“I have now experienced the space between thoughts many times, that I can often produce and prolong that expanded consciousness state, to various degrees, at will, and that from within that kind of `spaciousness’, it is clear that my ordinary consciousness, where I live 99+% of my life, is indeed zombie-like. Yet in this state of zombie consciousness, which is `normal’ for our civilization, I am generally considered an intelligent, articulate and successful person.

[...]

my ordinary state of consciousness is zombie-like in the general pejorative sense of the term. These zombie qualities include: (a) a greatly reduced sense of aliveness and vitality; (b) a great narrowing of perspective and perception; (c) a consuming psychological identification with some small subset of my full potential; (d) reduced intelligence stemming from this narrow perspective and identification; and (e) a selfishness, a self-centredness as compared to a more open and compassionate attention to the rest of reality.”

Tart posits that, much like when we awaken from a dream and realise that “the dream state was a quite inferior state of consciousness,” when we return from experiencing “that ‘space between thoughts’ or expanded consciousness” to our everyday state, we are able to realise that we are living a limited existence, and that we are “often suffering over ‘problems’ that [a]re not real,” problems that only exist by virtue of our constricted mental condition.

In his conclusion, Tart urges the reader to “experiment with ‘awakening’” and warns that if we do not, we are doomed to a zombie existence:

“I believe everyone has had at least fleeting moments of expanded consciousness, even if largely forgotten in the hectic rush of zombie lifeZ, and this commentary is to remind you of them and their importance. If we do not develop this wider perspective, we shall, in Moody’s terms, just have our zombie science of consciousnessZ, thoughtZ, feelingZ, hopeZ, fearZ, lifeZ and deathZ. Speaking from my occasional experiences of expanded consciousness, that would be sad indeed.”

While Moody and Tart’s theorizing on the zombie existence is fascinating and enlightening, they do not delve into great detail regarding the origins of zombie consciousness. Specifically what is it that is restricting our mind potential? Without knowing this it difficult to understand exactly how we break our zombie programming.

Here are a few suggestions:

Food, Water, and Air - We are being bombarded with chemicals that are literally altering our brains and the way we interpret reality. Fluoride in drinking water has been proven to lower IQ. Many additives and pesticides in food are toxins that shut down brain stimulation, leading to a general lack of concentration and apathy. Unlabeled GMO food has been proven to cause all manner of ailments in lab animals. No one quite knows why chemtrails are being sprayed in our skies, but the resulting heavy metals that we are breathing and that are entering the soil are directly affecting our brains.

Solutions: Eat organic, cut out fast foods, reject GMOs, educate others on the existence of chemtrail programs.

Drugs, Vaccines – Big pharmaceutical companies make money from getting us hooked on substances and medications that do not cure us from anything, but literally alter our brains. More than one quarter of U.S. children are on some form of mind-altering medication. Vaccines containing mercury based preservatives are being given to children and babies. Mercury is a deadly poison that accumulates in the brain.

Solution: Avoid anti-depressants, research natural remedies, educate others on the dangers of vaccines.

Television – TV induces a state of semi consciousness. It literally alters the state of the brain. In young children it inhibits development of social skills. See our piece on how TV is zombifying humanity.

Solutions: Turn it off! Reading and radio increase cognition and build neuron paths.

Education - Public schools promote systems of control and encourage subservience to those systems.

Solutions: Charlotte Iserbyt’s book The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, lays bare the role of Globalist foundations in shaping a future intended to produce servile drones lorded over by a fully educated, aware elite class.

Media agendas, Propaganda placement – Perception of reality is shaped by a large extent by what you read and watch. The mainstream media is wholly owned by large corporations who have their own agendas, which do not incorporate your freedom of expression and critical thinking. The same big corporations own the large movie studios and TV companies. Propaganda placement and predictive programming is now an accepted part of programming and films.

Solution: Seek alternative media sources, expose media lies. Research predictive programming techniques and learn to recognise propaganda. Author Alan Watt has written extensively on the subject.

Bread and Circus – Everyone loves to watch the occasional football game. However, modern professional sports have become nothing more than big businesses promoting tribalism and division. They are riddled with corruption and serve only to distract from reality. When more people protest and riot over sports matters than they do over real issues, it indicates serious social zombification.

Solution: Engage in and support local sports. Switch off. Refuse to pay huge amounts of money to watch major sports events.

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.