Suicide TV: Turn on and Tune in

Modern life really has become a carnival of self-destruction. The question is, why are so many people, young and old, acting in wildly self-destructive ways? In many cases, such as obesity, it derives from a lack of self-discipline compounded by genetic susceptibility. In other words, over the millennia the human body has evolved to fit its environment like all other life but just over the past 100 years we have gone from existing in a natural environment to an artificial one where we can much more easily acquire in abundance all the things we crave on a biological level.

Weak minds are easily influenced by the power of suggestion especially when it originates from formative authorities such as the mass media. This is why the American public, and increasingly the rest of the developed world too, is witnessing an unprecedented pandemic of obesity. Biological predilections coupled with high levels of mental suggestibility are a deadly combination.

The purpose of the human mind is to over-ride instinctive impulses when they become self-destructive, yet in the majority of cases this is not occurring. Our human bodies are constructed to live within the natural environment, we have evolved to live off the land in a natural, survival setting but now we have advanced to the point where we have constructed or own environment, and the vast majority simply cannot fit into it – it destroys us instead! The human species has engineered its own extinction event and eventually the environmental pressure will create a new species to replace Homo sapiens.

Even the rampant employment of technology in the effort to alleviate these problems stemming from the very fabric of the human organism, have so far not only failed to solve them but in many cases made them worse through unintended consequences. Antibiotics gradually become less effective through over-use as disease organisms evolve resistance. Anti-impotence drugs are abused in parties leading to explosions of STDs. The list is endless and reactionary technology will never be anything but a false savior.

In the short term the human species faces a forked path, we can either destroy the artificial environment that we currently exist in and revert to a more primitive and difficult subsistence form of living as our ancestors have since time immemorial - but sacrifice the vast majority of technological comforts we take for granted in the process. Or we can simply accept the inevitable deaths associated with our own self-imposed evolution and gradually emerge as a new species capable of resisting ancient impulses and possessing the intellectual stamina and self-discipline to live a healthy life of moderation and tune out destructive influences be they from mass media or anywhere else. Neither path will be a pretty or easy picture but the default path is always the one of least resistance, in this case it's mass suicide. 12.02.04

The underlying preventable causes of death were, in order: tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, alcohol, microbial agents, toxic agents, motor vehicles, firearms, sexual behavior and illegal drug use. Together, these accounted for about half of all 2.4 million U.S. deaths in 2000.
From: We're Eating Ourselves to Death