Television
From Kook Science
Quotes
"Television is a gift of God, and God will hold those who utilize his divine instrument accountable to him."
"Television is produced by nature, as witness the so-called mirages which are at times so true and lifelike as to lead experienced desert travelers astray. In the production of this phenomenon nature employs no synchronously-moving scanning devices, no photo-electric cells controlling light-emitting elements or anything of the kind and yet reproduces scenes over distances of hundreds and thousands of miles. It follows, therefore, that the problem of television is not insuperable but one that will be solved by proper attack without introducing the enormous complexities that man is wont to do in his first attempts to simulate natural phenomena. The solution is usually so simple as to be securely hidden."
"Capable of implanting images which are in the form of rays, capable of implanting alien realities outside of one's own experiences, capable of changing one's feelings, this machine 'causes' the patient to fall into utter confusion about what is real and what is not, what is internal and what is external. Doubtless you have noticed that this 'influencing machine' sounds an awful lot like television. The mystery is how the phenomena could have existed in 1919 before the apparatus was invented. Dare I suggest that television was invented by people similarly preoccupied, as an outward manifestation of their minds? In any event, there is no question that television does what the schizophrenic fantasy says it does. It places in our minds images of reality which are outside our experience. The pictures come in the form of rays from a box. They cause changes in feeling and, as we will see, utter confusion as to what is real and what is not. All reality becomes ethereal, existing only in our minds."
Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978)