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December 03, 2003

Feedback Loops

I often hear that Television is evil. It has always been my position that the Television is an inanimate object that can neither be evil, nor good by itself, it is all what we make of it. My statement is simplistic however, as even I see that the content of television appears to be getting worse and worse. My claim that it is getting worse assumes some baseline of course. I'll say that less and less TV seems to be contributing to society in a positive way while more and more TV seems to be echoing the worst of our society. Many claim that it is the TV (and those that produce its content) that is contributing to the decay of our society. This too is overly simplistic. In reality, the TV is more like a feedback loop that reflects our society as it is, even as it encourages the direction it reflects. This feedback between action, reflection and expectation can be seen in our personal lives as well. We often have an image we desire for ourselves. Which is to say, we have an image we'd like others to see. We do specific, calculated things that we think others would see as representative of that image. In this way we hope they see us in the way we want to be seen. In doing those things and getting our desired response, we encourage ourselves towards like behavior. Eventually, this can change who we really are to be closer to our desired image. In this way our actions can influence our nature just as our nature often dictates our action. If we can identify these loops, we can use them to our advantage or discontinue those that might be detrimental. There is a dilemma that arises as we talk about predicating who we want to be by what we do. We seem to be more socially successful when we are being ourselves. If we are 'acting' a certain way to change who we are, we are not being real until our nature catches up with our actions. We may decide to excuse this temporary lapse in consistency, but like plastic surgery, may continue acting as some desired self even after we reach our previous goal-self. When is it o.k. to project your desired better self by acting out of character and when is it disingenuous and/or wrong?

Posted by wonko at December 3, 2003 04:49 PM

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