Who's Watching Big Brother?

Once upon a time, kids, way back in the Dark Ages, when Mom and Dad were young, there were no television sets. It's hard to believe, but all that people did back then for distraction was talk to each other and play card games. Occasionally they went for walks and looked at things. Their world was primitive and savage

Then came Television and modern life began. The first TV my family owned was a huge box filled with wires and tubes. It had a tiny 10-inch picture screen and I remember, as a callow youth, watching Dad carry it into the house. It was a thing of mystery and wonder.

Dad made an aerial from wire coat hangers and hung it from the curtain rod, then plugged the TV in. It slowly began to glow, as fuzzy black and white images danced across the screen and tiny voices crackled from the speaker. The experience was more captivating than the time Revan the Magician hypnotized the school principal and made him bark like a dog.

By the time the local station went off the air at 11 PM, the family had arranged all the chairs in the living room in a semicircle, facing the screen. Over the next few days, like flowers swiveling to catch the morning sun, everything in our lives turned to face the tube.

We sat for hours in the dark-oblivious to each other. We had each become masters of our own entertainment time-self sufficient and free. The true age of the individual had finally arrived.

Over the years other products came along to enhance the viewing experience-a Lazy Boy recliner for Dad to snooze in, a tiny Christmas tree for the top of the set, little individual TV tables for our little individual TV diners.

TV popularized fast food-something quick and easy to whip up during the commercials. The tube not only lowered our entertainment threshold; it subverted our food awareness as well.

Years slipped by in the company of my friends Howdy Doody, Mickey Mouse, Ed Sullivan and the Friendly Giant. Screens grew big and glowed with colour. Remotes and satellite dishes arrived on the scene. Men landed on the moon and fought wars right in our living room. I grew up, got a job, a place of my own, and bought my own TV. Life was good-I was getting my entertainment needs filled.

Then one day something happened.

In the book Nineteen Eighty-Four the protagonist John Smith and his lover, violate the law by engaging in intimate behavior. A camera in the TV set monitors the lovenest where their clandestine rendezvous take place. We imagine sex obsessed officials slathering over images of the couple's illegal afternoon frolicking.

Alas, as we've so sadly learned in the most recent 'made for TV war', it's not so much Big Brother watching us that is a concern-but that we're watching Him too much. And buying into the version of the truth that Big Business and Big Government want us to believe.

About 10 years ago I went through one of those lonely times, that only heart ache and despair can evoke. I was lying on the couch alone one night, watching TV and feeling sorry for myself. I knew I had to change my life.

In an act of desperate bravado I cursed the monster that enslaved me and in a truly Canadian gesture, threw a bottle of beer through it's taunting eye. Fragments of glass imploded into the vacuum. The next morning I put the wounded beast out for the garbage man and I haven't owned a TV since.

Not many people cry during the evening news anymore. Well OK, maybe when our favorite team loses again. But generally we're unmoved by the pain and suffering of others we see on the tube.

These days, I find any brief glimpse of television, at a friend's home, affects me much more than it does other people. I'm shocked by images of bodies and blood on the news. The sight of a 50 car pile-up on the freeway, or restaurant bombing in Tel Aviv, makes my heart stop.

Even small portions of media carnage overwhelm me. I've lost my desensitization. Call me a whoosee if you want, but you know what, I'm OK with that. At least I can still feel something!