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Rousseau insisted in his Letter to M. To Rousseau, a republic is a political community in which each person is equal and sovereign—as it should be to us, today, living in the American republic. The citizen is not sovereign alone, but sovereign through his activity in a community of peers. The drama, when it was given too much power, crowded out the true entertainments of any republican political community— entertainments whose delights must be rooted in that self-regard and free judgment in daily activity which strengthens the bonds of citizen to citizen.
But the philosopher loved a republic more. Republican entertainments might often take the form of the contest or the demonstration. Plant a stake crowned with flowers in the middle of a square; gather the people together there, and you will have a festival. Do better yet; let the spectators become an entertainment to themselves; let them become actors themselves; do it so each sees and loves himself in the others so that all will be better united.
It has meant, at different times, local programming, Huntley and Brinkley, the national news at 6 and local news at 11, talk shows and talent shows, This is Your Life and the regional tours of Wheel of Fortune. Reality television may furnish its dark apotheosis—a form for an era in which local TV has been consolidated out of existence, regional differences are said to be diminishing or anyway are less frequently represented , and news, increasingly at the service of sales departments, has forfeited its authority to represent the polity.
We need myths, not only of our ideal, and our average, but of our fallen extreme. Since the establishment of informed-consent rules in the s, the golden age of social psychology is gone. Watching reality television is like walking one long hallway of an unscrupulous and peculiarly indefatigable psychology department.
The first ideal-type of reality TV is the show of the pure event. You discern patterns in each—the effect on the watchful viewer is of a patterned repetition of wholly singular encounters. Between cop and civilian, everything is determined by personality; each word is a step in a negotiation; the tools each side possesses seem arbitrary and confused, in the wheedling or vagueness of the suspect, the mock-authoritativeness and lack of information of the cop.
So you make notes to your criminal self: And on Blind Date and Xtreme Dating and Fifth Wheel , with wary daters eyeing each other over pasta dinners, leglessly drunk in a hundred indistinguishable neon dives and, afterwards, on the best dates, mumbling vulgar blandishments in hot tubs, you see that romance is not angelic recognition nor simple animal lust but a negotiation—the same as in the Cops arrest. The blind date and the traffic stop become on late-night TV the two paradigmatic experiences of American encounters between strangers.
Homogenous America is instantly disproved by bizarre America. It is reassuring to watch this openness and fumbling. Finally you see without intermediary dramatization the landscape of tanning salons and restaurants and aikido studios in every corner of the country, the still-distinct accents but universalized, television-influenced behaviors, the dilemma of what to say and which personality to project, as if the social relation were being rebuilt, in a cutaway scale model of our society—a great televised Ark of a changing civilization—two by two.
Everyone tries to play someone else on TV, but still feels so many tethering strings from the prosaic, deficient, and plain polite that conformity becomes chaotic and imitation idiosyncratic.
You feel some identification with the participants, and even more sympathy with the situation. Classy critics hate these shows too, or claim to. If only Cops would break down their door and throw them against the wall! Monica, you ignorant Skeletor, eat a sandwich! Ross, you vainglorious paleontologist, read a book! Truly, the judge shows have a vengeful appeal: This is one way to come to terms with your fellow citizens. Much reality TV, by contrast, communicates a relative openness of judgment, though judgment is its one constant—and does so also by its wider identity of situation between the viewer and those before the cameras.
Nearly everybody has dated, and, from rich to poor, nearly everybody fears the police when driving and will call on them when threatened. Nowadays, at every level of our society, there is a hunger for judgment. Often this becomes summary judgment—not so much the wish to know the truth, but the brutal decisionism that would rather be wrong than stay in suspension.
We enter this world completely dependent on someone else, physically and emotionally, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. How do I know if I have an emotional charge or just a random feeling? Archived from the original on 18 February In the wake of these successful, low-budget independent ARGs, an active "grassroots" development community began to evolve within the genre. Millions of players in countries participated both online and taking part in live events, and it reached hundreds of millions through Internet buzz and exposure.
This is the will not to deliberate but to sentence. In the political realm, it has influenced the shape of the current disaster.
Its soft manifestations own the therapeutic talk shows, in the sniffling and nose wiping of a Dr. Phil , where the expert is never at a loss. He will not say: It is cheap, it is amoral, it has no veneer of virtue, it is widely censured and a guilty pleasure, and it can be more educational and truthful and American than most anything else, very suitable for our great republic.
Until, that is, one began to see what the capital-rich networks would make of it. For they got into the act, like dinosaurs in an inland sea, and they made the waters heave. They developed the grandiose second ideal-type of filmed reality, courtesy of bigger budgets and serial episodes: The other shows had been cheaply made and served up to UHF and low-budget cable stations by syndication, or, like Cops , run in the early barebones years of FOX and retained. Big Brother turned the house show, too, into a competition. An even more triumphant microcosm was Survivor —followed, in time, by The Amazing Race.
The newer shows that defined the microcosmic reality and blended it with competition adopted the same basic forms of social discovery that had animated the birth of the English novel: Yet Survivor never took up the society-from-nothing isolation of the desert island, which had motivated the original Robinson Crusoe. The modern mystery story contains elements of the serious novel: Nonfiction Novel A work in which real events and people are written [about] in novel form, but are not camouflaged, as they are in the roman a clef.
In the nonfiction novel, reality is presented imaginatively; the writer imposes a novelistic structure on the actual events, keying sections of narrative around moments that are seen in retrospect as symbolic. In this way, he creates a coherence that the actual story might not have had. Popular Fiction Generally, a synonym for category or genre fiction; i. Psychological Novel A narrative that emphasizes the mental and emotional aspects of its characters, focusing on motivations and mental activities rather than on exterior events. The psychological novelist is less concerned about relating what happened than about exploring why it happened.
Romance Novel Also known as the category romance, the romance novel is a type of category fiction in which the love relationship between a man and a woman pervades the plot. The story [is often] told from the viewpoint of the heroine, who meets a man the hero , falls in love with him, encounters a conflict that hinders their relationship, then resolves the conflict.
Although she may not be a virgin, she has never before been so emotionally aroused. Despite all this emotion, however, characters and plot both must be well-developed and realistic: Contrived situations and flat characters are unacceptable. Throughout a romance novel, the reader senses the sexual and emotional attraction between the heroine and hero. Lovemaking scenes, though sometimes detailed, are not generally too graphic, because more emphasis is placed on the sensual element than on physical action. Romantic Suspense Novel The romantic suspense novel is a modern emergence of early gothic writing.
This genre evolved in the s with writers such as Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt. It is not a detective mystery story because the law police rarely gets involved in the action. It also differs from traditional … suspense novels because it moves more slowly and has more character interplay and psychological conflict than the fast-paced violence of [most] suspense thrillers. Fantasy] Science fiction can be defined as literature involving elements of science and technology as a basis for conflict, or as the setting for a story.
The science and technology are generally extrapolations of existing scientific fact, and most though not all science fiction stories take place in the future. There are other definitions of science fiction, and much disagreement in academic circles as to just what constitutes science fiction and what constitutes fantasy. This is because in some cases the line between science fiction and fantasy is virtually nonexistent. Despite the controversy, it is generally accepted that, to be science fiction, a story must have elements of science.
The most effective way for Hugo to break his repeating pattern of misery is to go into the subconscious mind and heal his emotional world. Emotional vulnerability is at its peak before the critical faculty of the mind is developed. As you may recall,that takes place in very early childhood, when the subconscious mind is completely exposed. We enter this world as pure vessels, wide open and absorbing life like a sponge.
This includes the good, the bad and the ugly. Hey, nobody said life was fair. The stork settles a few of our darlings into lovely, cushy feather beds. Others get dumped into this world under absolutely horrendous circumstances. Wherever we land is where our journey begins, like it or not, and our emotional charges develop at the whim of our surroundings.
Your suffering is not your fault. You did not create your problems, dysfunction, or disease. You are only responding to circumstances at your given level of awareness. They were also responding to their charges at their given level of awareness. Take it as far back as you need to go.
Who is ultimately responsible? You may not believe it now, but suffering is actually what paves the road to the Divine. We inherit all sorts of stuff from out family: We never asked for any of it. We also inherit from our ancestry through the subconscious mind, including emotional charges. She later married a guy named Smythe, who ironically or maybe not so ironically resembled her dad. Her mother had three kids, all girls. She had three kids, all boys.
Listing the similarities between those two would take all day. For some, inherited ancestral traits can skip a generation. I have an acquaintance whose grandfather was a bit of a bigwig powerbroker, married three times. My acquaintance never met him and resented growing up in his shadow. His level of influence was born into him. The more he has accepted himself and his pedigree, the more his destiny of success has unfolded.
We inherit traits from our families. And what does that mean? It means we also inherit suffering. Some of our suffering is caused by an unusual subconscious connection to our heritage. Understanding this possibility opens the potential for subconscious healing to a whole new level. A young woman came to see me for recurring anxiety attacks that were happening at an accelerated and stronger rate. They exploded into her life whenever she crossed some ambiguous line of going from a romantic to a committed relationship.
It had ruined several previous relationships. She was now involved with a man she genuinely loved. The attacks were becoming so frequent and so strong that she could barely function. This was in the early days of my practice, back when I took more of an analytical approach to subconscious healing. Over the course of a few sessions, we probed into the events of her childhood and had some initial satisfactory success. However, the anxiety attacks still came back, albeit with less frequency and intensity.
In conversation, I asked about her parents, and that led to the topic of their divorce. The split happened rather abruptly, and it was rather grueling on her mother. Maybe she picked up emotional charges from her mom while she was pregnant. By the next session, her anxiety attacks gone… permanently. This creates internal conflict and puts us at odds with ourselves and our world, which is — you guessed it —a powerful subconscious emotional charge.
We go back generations. I need to beat to my own free-spirited drum. For me, becoming a lawyer would be a straight shot to hell. Families can be blown apart by adherence to family conditioning, especially if it supersedes genuine needs.
How many of us know someone who has gone into the family business and hated every minute of it? How many of us have been crushed by family disapproval over something we were genuinely passionate about? If we are to grow and mature into the people we are meant to be in this life, we need to listen to the voice within. It may or may not be in accordance with family approval. Blind adherence to family conditioning, at the expense of yourself, can produce a lifetime of suffering.
Because each of us projects the circumstances of emotional charges into our lives, many societal values are tainted with the spewing of these charges. It can be a vicious cycle that propagates even more suffering. Collective values get filtered through the charges and chattering minds of millions. Ideals behind a societal system can easily be polluted into the perpetuation of things like needless war and excessive corporate greed.
As each of us goes, so goes society. In order to transform our world, we must transform ourselves on the inside. As we do, our values will shift. Emphasis will then be placed more on the quality of life and less on the trappings of the conscious and subconscious mind and unresolved emotion. Talk about a runaway freight train. Most kids nowadays are more familiar with some flat, illuminated screen than members of their own extended families.
We are absolutely hammered every day with electronic media. The media tells us what to do, how to be, who to be with, where to spend our money, and that violence is acceptable. And, boy, is it effective. When we watch TV, surf the web, or play on our phones, we go into a mild trance state. This allows images, sounds , and emotions to come right in and attach themselves to the framework of our belief system.
It is creating and shaping our era. Again, this is neither good nor bad. A couple years ago I visited India, a country steeped in the belief of reincarnation. You can always do it in your next life! Can suffering originate in a past life? However, entertaining the notion in subconscious healing provides some enormous benefits. It allows clients to step completely outside of the context and mental framework of their present-day lives and gain an entirely new perspective on their own suffering.
There was no logical explanation for the incredible pain he felt in his body. When he finally arrived at my door, he had been through numerous examinations and a treasure chest full of medications.
Between his work with me and another local alternative health care professional, he was able to heal about 90 percent of the pain over the course of a year. His biggest breakthrough came during a past-life regression session. The experience gave him the opportunity to completely reframe the context of his life. It was absolute freedom. Somehow, in the context of that liberty, he was able to free an enormous amount of physical pain. The connection between his stored subconscious emotion and physical pain was released. As previously mentioned, emotional charges can enter the subconscious mind before the critical faculty of the mind is formed in early childhood.
Charges can also enter when the critical faculty is let down. This can occur in times of shock and excessive trauma. Examples may include sudden physical injury, surgery, or receiving unexpected shocking news. The critical faculty relaxes, allowing negative emotional information into the subconscious mind. Sometimes, understanding the cause of an emotional charge can powerfully accelerate subconscious healing. However, every now and then, you can psychologize, analyze, and snoop around for sources of pain without ever finding the source.
Ironically, we come into this life alone, and we go out alone. We must also face every life transition by ourselves.