Have you ever wondered where your set of morals originally came from? If you think about it, you will probably attribute it to varying degrees to your parents and your environment, and you didn’t really have much of a say about it. You’ve been told that you shouldn’t lie or steal, and you’ve been taught what’s considered good behavior and what to believe. 

The goal was to turn you into a functional member of society, and if you care about reading my articles, then your parents were arguably successful. After all, if making ends meet or putting enough food on the plate was your main concern, you couldn’t care less about spiritual and philosophical thoughts. 

But think about how you relate to the people around you. All you really do is following a script. Consider dating for a second. Too many people obviously didn’t experiment enough and listened to their elders or magazines, thus they insist on the hackneyed “dinner and a movie” script. Obviously, it doesn’t have to be this way. It is not natural to act like this, nor is this necessarily the best way to get to know each other. 

This example has further implications, namely that if we don’t know how we act, we blindly follow some authorities who probably don’t know better themselves and quite possibly don’t have our own best interests in mind. I was made aware of this when recently a friend of mine told me that the TV show Friends was the source of many of the “scripts” he adopted, and that it took him some years to realize that it was somewhat nonsensical. If you want to laugh about it, then please remind yourself of all the scripts you follow without questioning them. 

At first, I thought my friend was joking. This was because that’s the kind of joke he would make. Further, he is relatively well-adjusted, even thought I obviously couldn’t tell you how he acts around other people. Upon closer reflection, though, I couldn’t help but note that a lot of our behavior and morals are indeed influenced by what we lightheartedly call “entertainment.” I haven’t been watching TV for well over a decade, so I am at best a counter-example, but think about it: Hasn’t a certain blockbuster TV show about four women in their thirties who go after men like there is no tomorrow made many young women throw precaution out of the window and pursue a questionable lifestyle that is neglecting their biological role? 

Feminists, please keep your mouths shut for one second. I am not judging anyone. Yet, in the case of promiscuous women who forget about the fact that their beauty and fertility won’t last forever, I can’t help but conclude that they are not acting in their best interest. The life of a spinster is surely less glamorous than Samantha’s in Sex and the City. In the end, though, fiction wins over reality any time. Of course, portraying promiscuous New York women is more entertaining than depicting reality, but while the producers of that show were after commercial success, they didn’t really care that this show would influence society in a certain way. 

Of course, I am not calling for censorship. Instead, I want to make you aware of our susceptibility. Many of our role models are based on depictions in the media, after all. The current mainstream apparently is that women should view themselves as “empowered”, and men as indecisive, fumbling idiots, given we are commonly portrayed in TV shows and movies these days. 

One of the reasons I turned out the way I am was quite possibly that I never liked to be “entertained,” and if I reflect about how the media are shaping society, I can understand why some “conspiracy theorists” say that TV, magazines and mainstream newspapers are a means of brainwashing people into adopting behaviors they otherwise wouldn’t even consider. Viewed from this perspective, it is ridiculous that people are actually paying for “entertainment.”