COLONIZED BY TELEVISION - The Colombian

There is a growing lack of Colombians for reading and cultural activities. We are one of the countries that, on average, read fewer books in Latin. That’s ironic, because Venezuela occupies an enviable location, why are profitable publishing companies in the country.

The TV has a lot to do in this Colombian disinterest written stories and conversation that around these, were promoted. A few years ago it was common for these meetings were held in private spaces such as home, among friends. Early last century, the attendance at the bars was not accepted, and yet the intellectuals of the day began to break that paradigm. In Bogota there Symbolic Grotto, a circle or literary circle whose members were continually surprised and taken to military garrisons.

Some of these writers and poets were used as the core of its plots novels bohemian characters and hopeless lives. Now, many years later, new generations of Colombians have lost interest in the readings and attend library voluntarily. Those places are crammed with students who consult, forced a task. And no need to end up talking about the highest-rated program on television, which usually is the one that makes you apology to drug trafficking, such as “El Capo”, “The Three Cains” or “Escobar, the master of evil.”

We have delivered to the sensations that produce these television programs and, by way of emotional control, have contributed to increasingly lose our critical autonomy. Leisure and free time was colonized by television, which displaced cultural activities, reading and education and, last but not least, important spaces within the family.

So serious is the situation that many parents have chosen to have just a TV, which is located in the living room of the house. The reason is that they feel a terrible emptiness when they work and their children are locked up, each in his room. At least one device achieves gather them. Not to mention that television also became a mechanism of punishment or reward, depending on the behavior of the boys.

Today television has left home, has come to cars, airplanes, bars and mobile phones. No one escapes the mass. The sad thing, however, is that educational television is increasingly scarce and boring for many. So the attempt of General Rojas Pinilla in 1954, it was a means for the promotion of culture and education, was atomized.

discontent of many organizations of citizens who demonstrated by the sudden and unexpected change that gave Colombian television to become a commercial emporium, was not enough. Today, that change means the concentration of power of two families that have not allowed the democratization of this medium, as opposed to the birth of another channel.

Okay, so, remember the words of Gonzalo Arango Providence in his book “television blinds the mind and vision. Turn off and let’s go see clouds of birds, wings of light in the sky. “