…or An Irrational Lesson in Self Control

When I was a teenager I had an unspoken agreement with my father. I could watch R-rated movies at home under one condition: Any time so much of as the suggestion of a nipple or pubic hair appeared on the screen dad retained the right to jump from where he sat on the couch and cover the screen with his body, arms waving madly and distractingly in front of the picture, and block the scene from view. Televisions were still small enough back then. I called it the nudity dance. Of course, I had little to complain about: the only thing overtly censored in our house was a little innocent nudity and scenes of (largely consensual) sex despite he fact that we were a fairly religious family. The jumping and waving about — obviously memorable — often left us kids casting knowing glances at each other and laughing in confusion at the moment. Now from the perspective of a parent, I can begin to somewhat understand how that desire to filter media from one’s kid can be irrationally — almost instinctively — strong. But, as illogical as this censorship might have seemed (both then and now) I’ve started to wonder if there was a bit of skeptical rationality at play, too.

The filter was small, however. Were his only objective that I follow in his moral belief system (at least more rigidly than I’ve done) dad would have been far better to filter the more intellectually challenging material that crossed my path (such as the piles of science fiction novels I read that were so often subtle treatises on alternate philosophies.) But he didn’t and so this isn’t an argument for or against the definition of such a filter, only a skeptical look at how it is often applied and the meaning derived from its application. The filter may have been small, but the effect… well, that now seems quite big, arguably emerging as a key factor in how I now filter the barrage of information I face each and every day.

In thinking back on these experiences, and considering my perception of the quaint oddness of dad’s blocking of the television from such content — content that was admittedly of great interest to most any teenage boy — I’m left to wonder what exactly he was blocking. I suggest here that maybe the content wasn’t the point: resourceful kid that I was, and had my interest been so inclined, I could have named a dozen friends (for each a point of swagger and bravado) and twice as many other sources of far less restricted access to porn. I mean, by thirteen, anyone without such access either didn’t care or hadn’t bothered trying. And this was pre-Internet. I dare not even offer a guess at the exponential increase in access that has since occurred.

Any father extrapolating back to his own childhood and assuming a general, relative increase in availability over time, should have assumed that blocking, restricting, and demonizing said material was a futile pursuit. What I can only presume then is that there was a meaning in the message that only years later — as a parent myself — begins to make sense.

But how does one then rationally — skeptically and logically — apply a filter to the media (and by this I mean television, movies, radio, books, and web content) pouring in ever increasing volumes across the gaze of our kids? And should we? I suppose the first question that must be explored is why might we need to filter?

Depending on where one grows up, perception of the subjective morality of content is very different. I recall my first trip to Europe. (Need I go on?) Visiting from the upright, mock-Victorian-style virtues of small town Western Canada, the streets of Amsterdam, London, or Paris are bubbling over with raw sexuality. It became very obvious to me, even based on that trip alone, the filters projected by my parents upon me as I grew up were hardly universal. In that way, it can hardly be obvious to claim a standard for right and wrong; Note I say neither impossible nor unlikely, just not obvious. Moral philosophers have been arguing these points for centuries, and this is no place for such an argument.

One humble possibility emerges in popular psychology. I’ve been reading on Freud lately and it got me thinking about ego and id. Freud broke down the unconscious mind’s id into the factors of life-seeking and death-seeking. I doubt that he meant that deep down we were all suicidal, but the latter — death-seeking — is often applied to the universal search for peace and quiet, escape, or solitude. In this way, our desire to escape into media — the narratives of books and movies, et cetera — might be deemed to fulfill an id-like desire. Through such escape, the isolation of bits of reality is an attempt for our minds to find peace between the activities of our lives. That is to say, by consuming media we could be — extrapolating from Freud — forcing ourselves to focus and drown out the rest of reality while we isolate a single element of information and absorb it in the form of a description or narrative. In this way, it could be argued, that perhaps we are unconsciously compelled towards the entertainment provided by a seemingly unlimited quantity of information and media. That’s not to say our consumption of media is necessary, but easily and arguably (in a way and using the definition loosely) addictive.

Such an analysis does put the moral perspective on media consumption into a different light for parents concerned about filtering media in a rational way. For such a parent, the throttle-back of content into the minds of our young charges becomes less a kind of moral stopper of the content and more a kind of lesson in regulated dose. It is then no longer just about blocking it — or even censoring it at all — but rather about inducing a kind of perceived understanding of both a larger, societal taboo towards some kinds of information and an introduction to a culture increasingly overwhelmed by the availability of that information.

In keeping with my own example, it might not have been that my father was banning such content completely — forbidding it or censoring images of nudity and sex in our house, then — but rather giving the message that dosage and control are important factors, too. He jumped in front of the television and blocked the screen not because of what we might have seen but rather because it was his job to help us understand that filters do exist — should exist — agree with them or not, and that those were his. Just as like he conveyed with, for example, alcohol — it exists, we partake, but until you are old enough and responsible enough, not in our house — media and information got the object lesson on responsible substance-abuse. Obvious, right?

I might argue that from this perspective, moral philosophy and the nature of the content in media — good, bad, right or wrong — then becomes a mere definition. It would follow that the greater and higher meaning of such actions are drawn from the way we first learn, then teach in a rational way, about the responsible consumption and control of that media.

That isn’t to say subjective morality is non-existent or irrelevant. On the contrary. Numerous studies are available that show correlations between childhood diet and television^[1] or childhood aggression and media.^[2] And as a humanist I’m hardly in a position to be interested in enforcing any form of morality on anyone. If parents want to be a Ned Flanders (satellite TV, with nearly all of the two hundred and thirty channels blocked out!) go nuts. Again, this isn’t an argument for or against the definition of such a filter, only a skeptical look at how it is often applied and the meaning derived from its application. As a humanist I’m not interested in interfering in the moral framework of others, but as a skeptic I insist that framework be a rational one.

So then, from the perspective of a parent can filtering of media be rational? Or put in another way, was my dad onto something logical when he did his television dance or was he merely enforcing a vague moral rule without reason or context? And what is the lesson for the skeptical parent with the job of figuring out if and how to filter media from their child?

Would it be stating the obvious to suggest that these rules are completely fluid and possibly irrelevant? Morality, after all, is only a definition and definitions of such abstract concepts by their nature are fluid, changing and evolving to meet our needs for meaning. It is the meaning that is important and the context that makes it such. And a filter applied rationally might not be a filter applied because of the definitions it inhibits, but rather a filter applied because of the meaning it conveys. That is to say, an irrational filter may seek to hide bare breasts where a rational filter might teach that the context for seeing bare breasts needs to fit into a framework of behavior and broad spectrum of moral opinions. Even a proponent of the strictest propriety would have reason to admit that the best lessons are those that are backed by evidence, and a filter with neither meaning nor context remains merely a definition of one individual’s version of right and wrong.

How then is the filter to be applied? And should it be applied? I suppose the rational response to such a question is that parents have little choice but to apply some kind of filter to the stories and images that enter the minds of their child. My dad’s literal barricade of the scenes from the television may have done little to prevent me from access to such content, but nonetheless impressed upon me the understanding of a broader sense of responsibility and control around it, whether he intended that lesson or not. Practically, a skeptical parent might extrapolate the lesson here any many ways; Perhaps we select certain channels or quantities of time to watch television, limit the number of scary stories we read before bed, or shun advertising by fast-forwarding or turning down the volume on the tv or radio. The things we choose to filter are personal choices, but arguably irrelevant. What becomes obvious later on — the unstated lesson — is that we filter at all, and it’s how we keep control and in-check the information (from media or elsewhere) that will bombard us for the rest of our lives.

References

[1] D . Borzekowski, The 30-Second Effect An Experiment Revealing the Impact of Television Commercials on Food Preferences of Preschoolers. Journal of the American Dietetic Association , Volume 101 , Issue 1 , Pages 42 – 46

[2] Thomas N. Robinson, MD, MPH; Marta L. Wilde, MA; Lisa C. Navracruz, MD; K. Farish Haydel; Ann Varady, MS, Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Effects of Reducing Children’s Television and Video Game Use on Aggressive Behavior , 2001;155:17-23. http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/155/1/17

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