The impact of Reality Shows and Talk Shows

[osho]

Americans are changing and the rest of the world with America in more or less degrees more than every before. There are paradigm shifts in terms of openness, and people do not give a hoot when they used to be when it comes to communicating with elderly people. There were fewer talks on sex, religions and politics and they had to maintain an alarming extent of decency and decorum. Orthodoxy mainly Catholicism was dominant and anybody going rampant were considered lewd and licentious. These were things of the past earlier than two decades or more .

Now there are soap operas, talk shows, reality shows and there are singles and the number is on the go and single mothers or fathers taking care of their babies. A greater degree of individualism with the “who cares” syndrome. Sex is amok and divorce is a quick fix solution. Instant joy is something almost everybody is looking to.

This evolutionary social stream is a matter of interest to me. What fascinates me more than anything at the moment they, we are living in the here and now, though less vividly in my country but Americanism or Occidentalism, a term that has almost sheen now, or sweeping some of us.

I wonder how our social conditions will go on in another two decades

[cafolini]

Where do you get the ignorant energy to attribute the whole status quo of today to reality shows?
Not to speak of catholicism which hasn't been dominant for centuries, not even during the 20th century short period of extreme fascism.

[AuntShecky]

Why would anyone ever use the phrase "paradigm shifts?" If you asked ten people, I bet nine of them couldn't tell you what it means. That's because it is merely a trendy buzz phrase that
means absolutely nothing.

[cafolini]

Why would anyone ever use the phrase "paradigm shifts?" If you asked ten people, I bet nine of them couldn't tell you what it means. That's because it is merely a trendy buzz phrase that
means absolutely nothing.

Bingo, Auntie. LOL

[Ecurb]

Why would anyone ever use the phrase "paradigm shifts?" If you asked ten people, I bet nine of them couldn't tell you what it means. That's because it is merely a trendy buzz phrase that
means absolutely nothing.

I'll grant that "pardigm shift" constitutes academic jargon. However, it means:

"paradigm shift — n. a radical change in underlying beliefs or theory." The term was coined by Thomas Kuhn in his book "Scientific Revolutions". Prior to Kuhn, the leading Philodopher of Science was Karl Popper (famously either attacked or not by Wittgenstein with a poker, depending on whose account one believes, during a philosphy seminar at Cambridge) . Popper thought of science as progressing in a steady, rational manner. Although he recognized the "problem of induction" (one cannot logically assume that the universe will in the future behave as it has in the past), he thought that science progressed through "falsifiablility". Incorrect theories were disproved, and replaced with theories more consistent with the data.

Kuhn saw that science was political. Academics were entrenched in looking at the world in a particular way (viewing it through a particular "paradigm" or theoretical model). Scientists had built their careers on looking at certain kinds of data, with particular theoretical biases. Only when irrefuatable, revolutionary new research FORCED them to shift their approach to what data they examined, or which theoretical frameworks they used to examine the data, would they "shift" their way of looking at things. Kuhn wrote in the '60s, and thought that science advanced not steadily and rationally, but fitfully, stagnating for long periods, and then leaping forward with "revolutionary" ardor due to a (you guessed it) "paradigm shift". Since his time, other philosphers have addressed these issues (Feyerband, for one). I'm not up on the latest philosophical thinking.

Academic jargon can be annoying. However, "paradigm shift" is now well understood by anyone with a basic education in the philosophy of science, and academics use such technical terms as shortcuts to avoid longwinded explanations, like this one. Also, I'll grant that Osho was using the phrase in a more general way.

[AuntShecky]

Well, yeah, but the connection between reality shows and science is pretty tenuous. Too bad I got stuck on that phrase, as the OP's contention about reality shows was generally valid.
For the record, I watch a couple of them, but for the most part I believe they're a cost-cutting move by tight-fisted network executives who don't want to spring for salaries for writers.

[Ecurb]

Well, yeah, but the connection between reality shows and science is pretty tenuous. Too bad I got stuck on that phrase, as the OP's contention about reality shows was generally valid.
For the record, I watch a couple of them, but for the most part I believe they're a cost-cutting move by tight-fisted network executives who don't want to spring for salaries for writers.

I agree the phrase, when used metaphorically, is often both vague and trite. One problem with reality shows (I read in an article once) is that they can't be used as cheap filler in future decades. Nobody is going to watch a reality show re-run. Seinfeld was expensive to produce, but it not only captured viewers' attention when first aired, but provided hour after hour of cheap re-run entertainment.

[Delta40]

I agree the phrase, when used metaphorically, is often both vague and trite. One problem with reality shows (I read in an article once) is that they can't be used as cheap filler in future decades. Nobody is going to watch a reality show re-run. Seinfeld was expensive to produce, but it not only captured viewers' attention when first aired, but provided hour after hour of cheap re-run entertainment.

Shows like Dr Phil, Judge Judy and Jerry Springer get very good mileage in the re-run stakes so I'm guessing its worth the investment.

[OrphanPip]

I sit on the curriculum committee at my university and we've added a course on television studies because of UG demand in cultural studies, it's actually going to focus on reality television. It seems to attract a lot of scholarly interest at the moment. Ideally we wanted to start offering courses that treated television like art, such as in film studies, but our budget got cut so our proposal to create a new faculty position for television studies kind of fell through.

[kasie]

I'm not sure the OP has the connection between Reality Shows and the state of society the right way round. Giving the post the title 'The Impact of Reality shows....' then proceeding to talk about the way society is developing seems to imply that the tv shows are responsible for that growth. I think it is the other way round - society has become more tolerant, to the degree where such shows are no longer regarded as shocking or even amazing. The shows have grown out of the state of society rather than causing society to become the way it is.

Speaking for myself, I'd prefer Society to be more open and less repressed - there was a lot of prejudice and hypocrisy back in the not so distant past - but I'd like a little more self respect to be exercised. I can't be bothered to watch programmes where people 'wash their dirty linen in public', as it used to be called, (though it can have a horrid fascination!) and I abhor programmes where people flaunt their ignorance and nobody bothers to point out to them that they have got things wrong. I've even stopped watching what used to be respectable quiz programmes because of the lack of basic common knowledge among contestants.

However, I'm heartened that there are still young people around who are thoughtful and consider matters other than instant fame and fortune. To make a sweeping judgement on the state of society based on a current tv fad is hardly doing justice to these more intelligent members of society.

[AuntShecky]

I agree with you Kasie ^^^^. Maybe the appeal of so-called reality shows is that viewers enjoy deriding people who seem -- SEEM-- to be dumber, uglier, less "civilized" than themselves. In a way it's a perverse pleasure, "Schadenfreude" (to use another trendy buzz-word) or what the medievalists called "the abominable fancy," the joy of looking down from Heaven at the wretched souls in Hell.

[stlukesguild]

Osho... where do you live? I ask this because I would question making any sweeping assumptions about another culture based largely... if not wholly... upon what you read or see in the media... especially today's media with its questionable standards of veracity.