SELF-NEGATION THROUGH EXTERNAL MANIPULATION

1. On the subject of soul, or the soul, it seems to me that the man who can get emotions directly from himself or, rather, his self ... is wiser than the one who tends to rely on externals, like television or radio, since the latter habit would seem to reflect a lack of self-esteem.

2. Few media are morally more dangerous or corrupting than television (cinema being one) in the extent to which it sucks the life out of viewers by jerking them off emotionally, reducing them to passive playthings of what so often transpire to be lurid images and vulgar sounds which monopolize the mind to the exclusion of everything else, not just the soul (in any genuine sense of that term) but even the ego, which is unable to function in a sufficiently detached manner to remain critically independent and aloof.

3. Divested of ego and soul, one is reduced to mere spirit and will, neither of which are strictly germane to the self but reflective, in female manner, of the subordination of self to not-self, including not least of all the medium in question, which chiefly panders, in its fiery basis, to metachemical sensuality and thus to optical appreciation in the form of protracted viewing, which is to say, staring at artificial images.

4. Modern life is so greatly in the grip of images, imagery, image, even imagination, that it is the friend of appearances and, by implication, enemy of essences or, at any rate, of those essences which thrive independently of imagery ... to the greater glory or, rather, contentment, in the self, of genuine soul.

5. Alas, the souls which are so image-friendly are very shallow indeed, being of that metachemical breed of essence that takes its cue from appearances and is only intelligible in relation to such appearances as the viewing mind ingests.

6. It is for this and related reasons (environmental, social, sexual) that a majority of modern people are so crassly superficial, given the extents to which imagery has control over their lives and is able to dictate fashion. For profundity does not issue from a television screen but is negated by it, as, in effect, is the self.