Secret Corruption

Secret Corruption

Fitted schedules, soccer practice, classes, on the go, never have time to sit down and relax, etc, this is how our society is today. We are constantly in the fast lane because our lives our so hectic that we do not have the time to sit back and relax, or be informed with the world around us. No wonder we have medication for everything; it is because we are too lazy to take care our ourselves and we are not as educated as we once used to be as a nation. We take the things we have for granted because we don’t know any other way it could be. The cars we drive, the food we eat, the clothes we buy are all examples of things taken for granted. But we never take the time to think of how someone else from a different country lives each day. We may think we have it bad, but there are millions of other people that have it way worse but we don’t seem to care. All we care about is if our soap opera is going to air on time or if someone left them a comment on myspace. Why is there a gap between undeveloping nations and us? Why does it feel that Americans are not educated when it comes to other societies? It has something to do with the media and their way of drawing us in.

Being college students, the last thing we want to watch on television when we get home from a hard day of classes is to watch the news. All day long we are focusing our attention to lectures and new material, most of the time is useless and will be forgotten in a week. So we are lured into shows that require little thinking and more for pleasure because it is simple for the mind to accept. The problem about this is that most people enjoy not thinking so much because it is easier so they tend to just watch those kind of shows. All it requires is a half hour of your time to figure out who wins another date with a celebrity or who loses the most weight after four months. Reality television has become so popular with our society that the evening news is being out beaten by these fake, unrealistic dramas. Any business expert would agree that in order to make money you must give your customer what he or she wants and if that is reality television well that is what they are going to receive. They have made it so convenient for the average person to get a hold of any show that they want they have made tivo just so that they wouldn’t miss it for anything. Anytime you want, you get the show you want. It’s that simple! But what happens to what really matters in life? I don’t think that Jen and Brad’s breakup is going to affect millions of lives. So why is America so wrapped up in drama that doesn’t seem to get us anywhere? It is because television media sucks us in and doesn’t let us go. Of course they put news on several times a day, but no one cares. We have become so accustomed to drama that we put ourselves in that situation and think that that’s the most important thing going on in the world today, wrong!

Media today is the main contributor to our dumbfounded society. We can care less if millions of people are dying overseas, but we know all about what Britney Spears is doing with her life. We are getting so careless that we sometimes don’t seem to notice our behaviors and how we spend our free time. We spend millions upon millions of dollars each year on useless things because the media tells us that we need it to look better or feel good when in reality we could be putting it to good use to save someone’s live or contribute to a research. Neil Postman, a high school teacher states in the book Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Mass Media that “ Television does not extend or amplify literate culture. It attacks it. If television is a continuation of anything, it is of a tradition begun by the telegraph and photograph in the mid-nineteenth century, not by the printing press in the fifteenth.” (Postman, 5). This clearly paints a picture in our minds that television is not helping at all; it is destroying the human mind. There are minimal skills to comprehend, and it is largely aimed at a person’s emotional gratification.

A perfect example of our laziness is the commercials that are aired daily. They are very pleasing to the eye by the radiant colors they use, the way they are crafted and the music they play, it all comes together. But what is really the purpose of most commercials? It’s solemnly for entertainment. This subject matter is being presented as entertaining which is an issue