Compared to what?

I’m currently reading the book Th!nk, by Michael R. LeGault. I’m not even 26 pages into it and I’m already getting annoyed with him. The premise of the book isn’t bad, it’s a rebuttal of the book ‘Blink’, which I discussed a couple of months ago. He believes that it’s terrible that people are relying too much on their intuition and not enough on their abilities of critical thought.

What really annoys me, though, is his negativity.

To take an example, he rips into modern media and accuses it of being low brow and stupid. As an example he names Reality TV and how it’s destroyed all the good and intelligent shows of the days of yore. Now, I admit freely that Reality TV isn’t the height of intelligent entertainment, but I’ve got to agree with the book ‘Everything Bad is Good for You’, by Steven Johnson, that most people that attack Reality TV are really comparing it to the wrong thing. Reality TV shouldn’t be compared to the serials of yore, no, instead it should be compared to the game shows of yore.

It isn’t serials that have died out at all, instead they are going as strong as ever and getting more and more complicated by the season (Deadwood, Heroes, Lost, Prison Break, etc.) with each one needing you to follow multiple stories and threads, as well as pay close attention, with innocent appearing moments from one episode suddenly coming back to haunt characters eight episodes later. Deep involved storylines certainly knock the socks off any of the older comparable series, such as Star Trek, Miami Vice or 21 Jump Street.

Game shoes, on the other hand, seem to be in drastic decline and that’s a good thing too. Though admittedly there were many that were intelligent enough, shows like ‘The Price is Right’ were certainly not great contributors to the average IQ. And among the Reality shows one can also argue there is an attempt to educate, with such shows as ‘the Amazing Race’ at least occasionally nods to local culture in the challenges that participants take part in.

There is still enough stupid garbage broadcasted worldwide, but people should really rethink this constant need to bash TV and its many relatives. In my opinion there is a real attempt among modern media outlets to not only play to the common denominator. 20 years ago, were there such things as Discovery, CNN, the BBC, National Geographic or the Science Channel? Did movies such as ‘Fahrenheit 911’ and ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ become international hits? I don’t think so.

So, I'll keep reading the book, but so far I'm not very impressed. For a book about critical thought, Mr. LeGault didn’t bother to think very critically.