Where’s the judgment?

I was watching some dopey reality TV show the other day, and I noticed something that is obvious but thanks to the mind-numbing effects of shows like these, I had never really thought much deeper about it until now.

Ever since Survivor, the standard pattern of reality shows is: group of young beautiful people show up at some mansion, frequently in Mexico where insurance is cheaper, perform dopey challenges, and are slowly whittled down until only one one person is left.

The first observation I have about this pattern is the overuse of democracy.  Most of these shows, including Survivor, and nearly every crappy competition show on MTV/VH1, involve the group voting one of their own off the show.  While there’s usually an angle, like if you actually win the competition you can’t get voted off, it still boils down to the group making its own decision.

I thought about this because when I actually saw for the first time a situation where instead of the winner being rewarded, the loser was sent home by the host without a cutesy little pow-wow where his teammates get to condemn him.

This event was refreshing to me.

It’s disappointing to me how these fallacious microcosms called reality TV shows suggest to the public that decisions about who wins and loses are made by a group, and the authorities above (e.g., the show’s host and crew) are charged only with enforcing the rules.

At face value you might think to yourself, but hey, that’s how America works!  That’s what a democracy is!  The people choose, and the government only makes sure all the rules are followed!

The deficiency here – and the part that saddens me – is the manner in which these decisions are made.  If reality TV is a reflection of the democratic process, it’s no wonder that Barack Obama can base entire campaign on five letters.

The method that is used to determine who goes home is based chiefly on “alliances”.  The translation of “alliance” is some bitches whisper in dark alleys and bloc vote whoever they don’t like.  Very rarely do the players’ performances in challenges actually reflect their likelihood of winning or losing.

You aren’t judged on skill, intelligence, or even luck.  You don’t need these things on a reality show.  All you need to do is kiss the right ass and stay on the right side of the majority.   You don’t need to be objectively better than any of the other competition, you just need more than half of the other players to vote your competition off.

This is a very shallow interpretation of how to survive in the world.  I feel sorry for kids who grew up watching TV shows like this.  Boy will they be in for a surprise when they get fired for the first time.  They’ll never get their chance to convene the tribal council of their coworkers and democratically elect which one of them gets fired, oh no.  Their boss makes that decision, informs them, and then they are escorted off of the premises by security.  Oh, and also, their paychecks stop coming.

It’s no wonder people can’t connect with religion.  One of the chief concepts of virtually all religions is that you are being judged from above by a being who makes independent decisions without democratic input from anyone.  This concept fits well in the natural world.  When the hungry sabretooth stalks your hunter gatherer camp, it chooses which one of you to eat.  You don’t get to vote which one of you gets dysentery.  You don’t sacrifice one of your own.  You have no control over your fate, or the fate of the rest of your camp.  Something else is choosing your destiny for you – or maybe not, maybe it’s all random chance – but the last thing it could be called is a group decision.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – all of these fancy aspects of life we enjoy so much, such as civilization and democracy, are luxuries.  Try to imagine how the world would be if all of our modern trappings were taken away.  We’re still human beings and we’ll still get hungry.  How do you suppose things would play out?

Unfortunately, we can’t show reality on TV, mostly because the resulting scenario would be too horrifying for all of the idealogues to stomach.  If Survivor were actually about surviving, it doesn’t take a great amount of creativity to imagine how the islanders would have behaved.  The last thing they would have done is assemble a democratic tribal council and voted on who gets to eat and who doesn’t.  The strongest males would instantly band together and control all of the resources, giving only to themselves and any attractive women with whom sex is traded for food.  The starving betas with no resources would attack out of desperation and they’d kill each other.  That’s how life actually is.

But actual life is too hard for a lot of people – especially those who know they’d be in the starving beta group if such a scenario were to play out – so they erect the kind of facade that the Survivor we all saw neatly depicts.  There’s no starving, no fighting, no non-consensual fucking (although on more than one occasion the girls on Survivor were more than willing to take off their clothes for Oreo cookies).  That’s exactly when Survivor’s ratings started going down hill because all of the people who live in the fairytale world of pretend and political correctness (100% of liberals) didn’t want to see the wicked truth of the real world.  When the air conditioning is shut off, when there are no flush toilets, when the only thing to eat – god forbid – is plain white rice – women instantly forget ideas like self dignity, self control, values, and words like “objectification.”  They’re willing to whore themselves out for food.  So much for feminism, right?

If you have children, you are doing them a disservice to let them watch reality TV with its nonsense rules where consensus is the only factor in winning and losing without explaining to them in no uncertain terms that in no way does reality TV depict reality.  In the real world, judgment comes from above, not from within.  Then again, if your family is religious, your kids already know that.