Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander Read Free Book Online

infants than commercial formulas. That study also proved that mother’s milk was better for human infants than cow’s milk or goat’s milk.
    A third study established that a walk is considerably healthier for the human respiratory and circulatory systems, in fact for overall health and vitality, than a ride in a car. Bicycling was also found to be beneficial.
    A fourth project demonstrated that the juice of fresh oranges has more nutritional value than either canned or frozen orange juice.
    A fifth study proved conclusively that infants who are touched a lot frequently grow into adults with greater self-confidence and have a more integrated relationship with the world than those who are not touched. This study found that touching, not merely sexual touching, but any touching of one person by another, seemed to aid general health and even mental development among adults as well as children.
    The remarkable thing about these five studies, of course, is that anyone should have found it necessary to undertake them. That some people did find them necessary can only mean that they felt there was some uncertainty about how the answers would turn out.
    And yet, anyone who has seen a mouse eating cheese or who has been touched by the hand of another person already knows a great deal about these things, assuming he or she gives credence to personal observation.
    Similarly, anyone who has ever considered the question of artificial milk versus human milk is unlikely to assume that Nestle’s or Similac will improve on a feeding arrangement that accounted for the growth of every human infant before modern times.
    That any people retain doubts on these questions is symptomatic of two unfortunate conditions of modern existence: Human beings no longer trust pessonal observation, even of the self-evident, until it is confirmed by scientific or techno-logical institutions; human beings have lost insight into natural processes—how the world works, the human role as one of many interlocking parts of the worldwide ecosystem—because natural processes are now exceedingly difficult to observe.
    These two conditions combine to limit our knowledge and understanding to what we are told. They also leave us unable to judge the reliability or unreliability of the information we go by.
    The problem begins with the physical environment in which we live.
    Mediated Environments
    When he was about five years old, my son Kai asked me, “Daddy, who built Mt. Tamalpais?”
    Kai’s question shocked me. I said, “Nobody built Mt. Tamalpais; it grew up out of the Earth thousands of years ago. No person could build a mountain.”
    I don’t think this satisfied him, but it did start me on a new train of thought.
    I think that was the first moment that I really looked around at the urban world in which he and I and the rest of our family and the majority of the people in this country live. I wanted to know how he could have gotten the notion that human beings are responsible for the construction of mountains. I soon realized that his mistaken impression was easy to understand; it was one that we all share on a deeper level.
     
    Most Americans spend their lives within environments created by human beings. This is less the case if you live in Montana than if you live in Manhattan, but it is true to some extent all over the country. Natural environments have largely given way to human-created environments.
    What we see, hear, touch, taste, smell, feel and understand about the world has been processed for us. Our experiences of the world can no longer be called direct, or primary. They are secondary, mediated experiences.
    When we are walking in a forest, we can see and feel what the planet produces directly. Forests grow on their own without human intervention. When we see a forest, or experience it in other ways, we can count on the experience being directly between us and the planet. It is not mediated, interpreted or altered.
    On the other hand, when we live