Talking Heads, not Thinking Ones

Let it go. Let it go. Let it go.

We cannot trust our own wisdom anymore. Thinking for yourself is declining and we feel obligated to look to some other source for our reasoning. Deciding it's not something you can work out alone is a good realization for children---they need the wisdom an adult can provide. Explaining not only how to call 911 but when, or why they can't stay home alone, is information they need, but aren't suited to figure out. They need the greater experience and reasoning skills of an adult.

With the rise of television, people who would ordinarily have lived a more constrained life were able to see and hear things new to them. The Vietnam war was covered by television, as were the assassinations of MLK, JFK, and RFK. With this influx of new and disturbing visual content, people needed to understand what they were seeing.

Network news provided experts to provide perspective on these types of dramatic events and those viewers absorbed their ideas and felt relieved that some one obviously understood the problem.