There’s more killing, more sex on TV because our thresholds get systematically desensitized to disgust and arousal.

So says Dr. Eldon Taylor in this interview on mind programming. Eldon has been studying mind programming for years and written many  books on the subject.

In a study of “Grand Theft Auto”, researchers found that after playing   the game for 7 days, their attitudes to alcohol, theft, drugs had change. They were much more accepting.

Take a look at the Rambo series, and the number of killings in the movies.

Rambo 1 – 1 person was killed in 29:31 minutes.

Rambo 2 – 69 killed, starting at 33 minutes.

Rambo 3 – 132 killed, starting at 41 minutes.

Rambo 1 – 236 killed -  started right at 3 min 22 seconds.

What’s happening is that in order for the show, the game, the movie, to grab us and be exciting, we have to have MORE. It’s about desensitizing values.

Not only that – watch out when watching TV. It can make you more susceptible to advertising. Watching television puts you into the alpha brain state – a hyper-suggestible state. Your defenses go down.

The takeaway – be careful what you watch. Be careful what your kids are watching. It changes our brain.

Norman Doidge writes about this too in his book The Brain That Changes Itself with a very disturbing fact that since the 70s -  we’re progressively getting dumber. In fact, Universities across the world have had to “dumb down” their courses. Doidge says the culprit is TV. Ever since MTV started delivering fast paced clips and images, the brains of kids got wired for speed, but not depth, and this makes the ability to hold attention for prolonged periods difficult. Shallowness is indeed in the brain in this instance.