America, House and humiliation

Society’s hypocritical and overt obsession

The majority of the public would call themselves selfless, charitable, community centered and socially aware. The swarming mass of people called society would agree that in the “collective mind” a sense of togetherness and brotherhood prevails. This all for one and one for all nonsense seems to be established within the minds of an immense amount of people; but from objective experience (and T.V. ratings), I must disagree.

It’s apparent that the public craves selfish, judgmental men who do not care one iota towards anyone else. Society craves these so called character flaws in a person because they want so badly to be able to be the same way. Society is subconsciously telling itself it wants to be the opposite of what it professes to be.

Interestingly enough when Fox decided to air continuous House reruns one day their ratings sky rocketed. Fox held a 4.1 (million) rating sway over other networks such as CBS in the 18-49 year old demographic when they showed reruns of a sitcom promoting an “unconventional” diagnostician. In House’s fourth season, the show was only out ranked in ratings by the Super Bowl and the Super Bowl post game show, and tied with the seventh season of American Idol. It appears that “America’s favorite doctor” (as hailed by the suave voiced narrator of the Fox network commercials promoting House) is a selfish, adulterated atheist who loves to emotionally and physically extort people to get his point across while trying to cure a patient. I find it odd that the character Gregory House holds all the opposite principles of the American public, yet they love him for it.

The fact that more people watch House than a show where they help rebuild someone’s home tells me that the majority of viewers are fond of watching a man humiliate others, use objective reasoning (seeing as society is all about the subjective lately), and be an atheist-it’s confusing how the majority of the public says they disagree with these things. This promotes (if not proves) the idea that the public seems to live vicariously through a “selfish” actor on a sitcom rather than take action themselves, which is slightly pathetic to say the least.

The ratings of House are not the only proof of my theory of “societal self-hatred”. Take for instance… any reality T.V. show; which are effectively just reworked game shows that say they aren’t scripted (but we all know the truth don’t we?). The basis of all these shows is to depict how a certain person can out do another or how one person can find “true love” while putting 20 strangers through nonsensical games (and then having a sequel) or… whatever. For a society continuously professing fairness, brotherly love, socialized healthcare and all that happy jazz, we sure do like our competition to be rampantly forced and the degradation of others to be thick as a yeast infection. Yummy.

But wait, there’s more!

Go to youtube.com and the most viewed videos happen to be of people doing embarrassing things such as falling out of cars, drunkenly humping lamp posts, lighting themselves on fire and basically being idiots for no other reason than humiliation. And hey why not, it gets a laugh and a few thousand hits right? Right! The public literally loves to watch other people injure and embarrass themselves. Why goddammit? Why?

The answer is simple. And for the answer let’s get hypothetical. Say that you are a socialist who thinks that we are our brother’s keepers and that we all need to live for others (an absurd assumption… or maybe not). You would never do something to humiliate or degrade your “brother” as it were; you give selflessly to charity, you generally consider yourself pacifistic and you hold faith above reason. You would not hurt someone, you would not intentionally embarrass someone and there is no way in heck you would put your life over someone else’s. But you DVR every possible episode of House, you can’t get enough of reality T.V. and you laugh you’re gosh darn bum off whenever you see a funny you-tube video. So the logical conclusion here is that as long as you do not commit these disagreeable acts of anti-social behavior it is acceptable.

In other words, society is full of hypocrites that are vigorously infatuated with a life style they believe is wrong, anti-social and excruciatingly detrimental to the “progressive” ideals and morals of the era.

With every new reality show, every time someone uploads an embarrassing video on you-tube and every time House is watched, the hypocrisy of our culture is blatantly broadcasted nationwide (without commercials!). The amazing truth is that no one can admit that this society hates this society.