by Michael Walsh

It is difficult not to notice the corrosive effect of television programming on people across frontiers. Posterity may likely record that the onset of the television age plunged mankind into an abyss of mediocrity. Far from improving peoples lives, television and on-stream entertainment didn’t fill a gap in peoples lives; they replaced the rich course of blood that nourished human inspiration.

Before television people read books of which they had a choice of hundreds of interesting topics, thousands of authors and tens of thousands of titles. All replaced by clever marketing that actually boasted 100 TV channels to choose from. Have you tried it? Do so and see if you can identify what TV or radio channel you are listening too or watching by its vapid mind-numbing content.

Before television, people made their own Christmas presents and how superior they were in quality and usefulness to the gaudy throwaway plastic toys of today. Many a pleasing hour was spent crafting cards for those we loved. Our homemade cards cost nothing and life without them is nothing.

Before World War I, sweethearts carefully wrapped handmade Christmas and birthday cards in ribbons and these cards were passed down from family to family. How depressing to look along the rows of cheap expensive cards in shops often costing more than a good book. Are we insane?

Women created tapestries, made clothes, weaved, painted whilst men (and women) penned novels, poetry, music, and wrote long letters to loved ones by hand. Men and women were agrarians, they ate what they themselves grew, reared or otherwise trapped and killed. Today’s generation thinks potatoes grow on trees in fields behind the supermarkets.

We attended or appeared in local theatre productions, we enjoyed music not just by listening to violins and piano, guitar and horn but by playing these magical instruments.

We visited friends and attended functions, we saw our families often and never was an opportunity missed to attend a party, a Church thanksgiving, to help out in the community, be charitable. We were members of various groups, organisations, libraries, social clubs; we all helped out in our communities. We learnt languages from books at home. Television destroyed human creativity and what a mental mess it has left in its slime trail.

How well I empathise with the sentiments expressed by Otar Iosseliani, the Georgian filmmaker, screenwriter, and famous actor born in 1934:

‘I’m upset that we’ve lost the ability to live peacefully: writing watercolours, playing the piano, hosting guests, keeping diaries, having picnics. Why are we missing all this time? Why can’t I come to a person without calling before and make sure they’re happy about me? What’s everyone so busy with?

‘Pushkin, Mussorgsky, Mayakovski also worked like crazy, but they had time left to communicate with people, entertainment, secular life, even to get drunk.

‘And then this impudent and scoundrel Edison ruined everything: a gramophone, the light bulb, the phone, these are terrible inventions. They ate our time. I remember the times when I wrote letters, worked hard, had leisure, and then I went to the technically equipped West, and the hours, days, years began to flow through my fingers.’ ~ Otar Ioseliani, filmmaker, screenwriter, actor.