Reality TV — Getting Real

Edition #54 — March 6, 2004

Greetings one and all. Last month I confessed to having made peace with reality TV shows. Upon closer inspection, I see them as a teaching tool; a classroom of cultural reflection from which we can learn more about ourselves by proxy. Then again, sometimes it's just fun to watch people eating worms.

Sure, most contestants are younger, more attractive and in better shape than the majority of us viewers but it's still not difficult to imagine ourselves in their place. Their experiences are a valid and credible learning medium for viewing our own greed; fears; laziness; integrity and even our sinister vengeful selves as as they affect our TV peer group. Okay — we experience our goodness too — but sin gets better ratings.

Were we to admit to it: we'd all have to say we were goods slightly damaged in transit. But we're all hoping to heal, someday. Getting it out in the open — like on TV — is the first step. Hence, "reality tv". It's "voyeur vision" — with a therapeutic twist.

Jenna Morasca — An All-Star Psychic

After commiting to a better attitude about reality tv, I began to witness some rather astonishing evidence to support what I see as its spiritual, perhaps metaphysical fringe benefits. The story of Survivor All-Star, Jenna Morasca, was one case. She left mid show on a psychic hunch that her mother was about to die.

Now some people are going to say "Well, her mother already had cancer..." Well, she had cancer for 12 years prior and that didn't keep Jenna from being in the first Survivor show, nor joining the All-Star cast. Consider also the preparation, mentally and physically, she'd endured to be on the show again — and no doubt planning to win that million bucks! All this would make it extremely difficult to leave prematurely without a very good reason.

In light of this, we know what a difficult decision it must have been for this young woman to tearfully declare that she "knew" her mother was dying and that she had to leave the show immediately considering she could offer no proof of her convictions.

It was never mentioned what form Jenna's psychic knowingness took ie. dreams, voices, or visions of her mother's passing? Whatever the medium, she was convinced beyond a doubt that this was happening. Survivor host, Jeff Probst, obviously thought it was a flakey moment. His sarcastic remark that she was acting as though she'd just spoken with her mother in person was a typical response. Contestants have no contact with the outside world so the "How the hell would you know?" attitude is understandable. Well, despite the skepticism, Jenna obviously did communicate with her mother while she was on the island, whether Jeff and others had video footage or not.

So What's The Point?

The bottom line is that Jenna's mother did die from the cancer, exactly eight days after Jenna returned home. Jenna "knew" she had to go back, "right now".

How this benefits us is that Jenna's experience helps us learn to trust our own instincts better; our own intuition and psychic impressions. Nature has protected and aided us with many tools, though many have been shelved over the years because we falsely believed that "reason", sequential logic and the religion of science would solve all our problems from giving us control over our fears to bringing happiness. Still waiting on that last one. In the meantime, sales of Prozac and other psycho-pharmaceuticals are up.

Let others wallow in their own confusion. Don't deny your God-given gifts, no matter how others are going to react to them, or your behaviour. Trust yourself. Listen.

Psychic experiences and premonition don't come with a warranty signed by the dealership. They're just insights and you do with them what you will: ignore them, or act decisively. Jenna Morasca's decisive action demonstrated that we too can take our "sixth sense" seriously, and that our "knowing" can sometimes even be proven empirically — scientifically - as was the case when the show's credits rolled announcing that her mother had indeed died within days of Jenna's return home. That's as close to a warranty as you'll get...

Had Jenna not heeded the wisdom of her inner guidance, she'd surely be emotionally fractured from trying to atone for her neglect at not being at her mother's side when she was "called".

And that, my friends, is what makes the sixth sense such an important tool for "surviving".

A Real American Idol
singer/dancer/spiritual educator William Hung

American Idol's William Hung (he's "Will Hung", get it?) has also become an unforeseen role model. Not for excellence in the performing arts but for courage and determination. He sings and dances poorly and he's no Latino sex idol but young viewers of the American Idol show have made William Hung their newest superhero. What is his superhuman power? He makes kids feel less ashamed of aspiring to greatness.

William Hung did not win the shallow pageant but he won first prize in the soul division. He is a hero because he has not won yet, but aspires to win, someday, by actively questing for greatness right now.

And he does win. He wins against fear; that nagging fear of rejection, ridicule and punishment that many people with tenfold his talent and looks cower from as they put their destinies on hold for yet another "someday" — whenever they can overcome that threatening sense of awaiting shame.

A Good Old Fashioned Stoning
aka The Simon Complex

Sometimes, to feel better about ourselves, we need to make others feel bad. Some shows, like America's "Funniest" videos, exploit this weakness in our character. Gleefully watching other people suffer is called Schadenfreude (a German word, ironically). Much of any reality tv show is watching others make fools of themselves, lose, and get kicked off the show.

In our competitive world, sometimes we may pounce like vampires upon the weaknesses and failings of others as a means to measure and reaffirm our own failing sense of power, manhood, authority, talent, intellect or whatever, to ourselves. The most notorious vampires are those who complain but do nothing, and the creatively inert who act as judges and authorities over any endeavour, talking as though they'd invented the world itself.

These are the people who want but do not seek and they are fearful as hell of the very ridicule they dispense toward others. How ironic. If only they'd stop. But they live in a psychological coldwar.

Those kinds of people also made William Hung an Idol — just like every woman about to be stoned to death in the Middle East is an idol. Such idols are also surrounded by a mob of screaming onlookers. But rather than uplifting William Hung's spirits, they seek to bludgeon him for daring to step outside his boundaries and move beyond his seemingly obvious limitations — one being that he is a buck-toothed smallish Asian man competing in an industry that largely idolizes beautiful, shapely caucasians, or "near-whites". In making fun of him they reassert their own fear to move beyond their own boundaries and limitations. Such behaviour, including cynicism and skepticism, is rooted in that "Alpha male" sexual competition mindset I spoke of in another newsletter: "If I can't have it then I'll make sure you can't either!"

Yet, imagine if our world was created in the image of skeptics and critics instead of dreamers and doers. No wheel. No light bulbs. No trips to Mars. No Macintosh computers. Just endless bitching and moaning - the kind of atmosphere that inspires mass suicide — or suicide bombing and general self-destructive stupidity. Something to rise up and fight against with every last ray of hope in our being.

Leveling The Playing Field

Those who make fun of William Hung do so because they are William Hung inside. They are condemning themselves by projecting their own feelings of inadequacy upon him; exorcism by proxy. Some do it with Jews, with blacks, with Democrats, but it's all outwardly directed inner anger and fear of ourselves and ironically, of our own greatness.

We keep the playing field level by chopping off other people's heads. We recreate the world in our own image every day by chipping away at others, bit by bit, until they look exactly like we need them to - usually humble and non-threatening, especially to our fragile egos.

Some parts of us are strong and admirable, others weak, vulnerable and needy. We all seek attention in our own way, sometimes on our own terms, and sometimes, as in the case of televised "competitions", on other people's terms. Yet, there is some aspect of us that is wanting to come outside to play, to sing, to express itself and to reach out to others. That is the part we fear.

Hope must be crushed — stoned to death — for it is both a sin and a crime not to be perfect — in fact to be born perfect. To not be number one and "the winner" is unacceptable. Which makes many of us cynical about even trying when we know that we may not even finish the race, let alone win it. And we project that feeling of futility as anger, which is a frustrated fight or flight response.

Mistakes and failures are for "losers", some people think. They don't realize that every failure is like another step towards our own ultimate success. William Hung may not become the next Elvis Presley, but his influence is far deeper and important than selling records and making women horny. If he were a great spiritual leader he'd be saying: "I am every man — especially the lowest and the meekest of you. Yet I rise. Come, rise with me." Yet William Hung is living those words through his actions. He sets an example that the rest of us can follow. Have fun, don't take other people's criticism seriously — and just do it!

It is because of shame that so many of us in this world will only yearn for, dream about and aspire to greatness — but never achieve it. History has shown that the most important ingredient is not always talent, but courage.

Three cheers for those who dare ridicule by doing what they love.

Wait — I Have My Own Psychic Prediction!

I predict that in early December of this year, 2004, after a relentless search by the invading Democratic forces, George Bush Jr. will be found alive, unshaven and hiding in a hole somewhere in one of his father's oil fields in deep Republican Texas. He will then be held in custody for no other reason than for having messed up The United States of America for the next twenty years. He and Saddam will share a cell. A romance will ensue. There will be talk of marriage.

Any psychic worth his six cents should see this one coming...

Your Psych-Kick, The Amazing Rolando


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