Opium of the People
How the average Joe is going to spend the time till Armageddon.
Karl Marx is famously (miss-)quoted as saying that religion is the opium of the people but these days I wonder if he would revise that dictum to read television is the opium of the people. Not only is it more up to date but it is also more accurate. While religion can certainly tranquillise and numb the populace who follow it, I don’t think it has the same addictive quality that opium presents. There are plenty that having tried religion find it is unsatisfactory and tire of it; drifting away either to other religions or ultimately to atheism. On the other hand TV viewers appear to become addicted to their viewing, craving more and more, willing to spend large amounts of their life just sitting and watching. Also while religion usually requires some activity on the part of its adherents, such as attending church, all TV requires is that you have your eyes open. Finally, many religions have a kind of in-built law enforcement regime, often forcing its believers to perform actions that are physically or mentally detrimental. All TV requires is that you keep the set turned on. And TV certainly has aspects of addiction: just try and turn off the set when someone is watching or threaten to take away a streaming subscription. TV addicts constantly crave the comfort and escape from reality that opium provides in chemical form. Television is a way of…
