Philosophy discussion

Television: A Bad Teacher is a title that is certainly appealing, especially today. However, it is not a title with which I fully agree. Not because I believe that television has made good use of its enormous power, but because I do not think that television can be considered, in any sense, a teacher.

This book has a rather unusual history. It originated from a short essay by Karl Popper, dictated over the telephone to the editor of Reset, an Italian bimonthly magazine, translated into Italian, Spanish, and French, but never published in English: a curious fate for a text written by one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century.

The essay was later published as a book, accompanied by a long introduction by Giancarlo Bossetti and followed by a series of articles devoted to the representation of violence in television programmes.

Popper's contribution actually occupies only a few pages, and one almost gets the impression that it mainly serves to lend authority to a thesis that was widely shared for many years: the idea that television should have an educational function.

I must admit that reading Popper's essay and his proposal to introduce a licence to broadcast television programmes left me rather puzzled.

Human beings have always misused power and, whenever we place restrictions on the circulation of ideas and information, the result has invariably been the creation of extensive systems of censorship managed by narrow-minded people.

The idea that television should have an educational function reminded me of Plato's *Republic* and seemed to me to betray some of the ideas expressed by Popper in *The Open Society and Its Enemies*.

> "If a marvellous poet should arrive in our city, wishing to recite his poems, we would honour him as a sacred, wonderful and delightful being, but we would tell him that such a man neither exists nor is permitted to exist in our city, and we would send him elsewhere... As for ourselves, looking to our own advantage, we would keep a more serious, though less pleasing, poet and myth-maker, one who would imitate the speech of the good man and speak according to the models we have established."

If we entrust television with the task of educating, of being a teacher, we inevitably have to establish boundaries to determine what is educational and what is not. Like Plato, we would then be forced to prevent artists, commentators, and intellectuals whom we dislike from expressing themselves.

This would also be unavoidable if we entrusted this power to television professionals themselves, who might use it for less noble purposes: preventing new broadcasters from entering the market or new ideas from circulating in order to consolidate an educational monopoly.

For this reason, I consider this book to be a bad teacher, because books too can convey messages that are authoritarian or educationally harmful, even though I deeply admire Popper and his thought. I believe that this attitude reflects the obsessions and fears of that period. When the book was published, in the mid-1990s, there was widespread concern about forms of entertainment—films, video games, and television programmes—that depicted violence in society.

It was a moralistic fear, born from humanity's difficulty in confronting the deeper feelings hidden within its own shadow. Today, the same fear leads many people to point the finger at social media. The solution does not lie in hiding our most unpleasant feelings or burying them deep within our souls in the hope that they will never re-emerge. Rather, it lies in understanding them and, as far as possible, learning to accept them.

Not a lot to report otherwise Mr. Rogers OPB (youtube should help refrain) is impossible to try because of authoritative rulership within bouroguesie governments — impossible when they have guns and some don't defend that way. Although, social criticism can get you killed as well in USA confines - something Popper didn't live to see his authorship subdued in value because of lack of social rapport / criticism that Popper still demanded, so why does this social dynamic have fear of violence and its myriad of errors on television when depicting "sexual differènce" as some segregated effort? It must be admonished obscene violence from terrorists too, different than 13th century black jihadias with their customs and initiations: without public consortium USA will be accustomed to lower organism growths than usual.

Ugh. I rank Karl Popper among my least favourite thinkers, way down in the dregs along with Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, Hobbes, & Huxley.

The guy had no imagination; no vision. A mechanical engineering type. I've worked in engineering so I enjoy the leeway to criticize their kind.

I agree that Popper is more a reactive philosopher than an original thinker. That said, he is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. We’re still talking about his ideas; esp. those that deal with the open society and how such a society is connected with how we do science and how we view history.

H'mmm. May be.

But speaking for myself only, I find his hysteria towards Plato's Republic bizarre and unfounded. If he confined himself merely to the philosophy-of-science that might be OK, but he went off down a political tangent looking for dead horses to flog. No credibility there, as far as I'm concerned.

In general, the philosophy-of-science has an uphill battle these days. It's a shame, because I support those ideals.