Screenworld - Page 7


Is this bad? Is it good? I'm not making those judgments. I'm simply pointing out that Screenworld is another order of reality, one that has overwhelmingly instituted itself amid what we used to call reality, changing the givens, the rules, the environment. As animals, we're built to live in a physical world; in Screenworld, we're living in something else. In our overlay of cyberspace and physical space, bodily reality is devalued, while the adage that "the unexamined life is not worth living" gets distorted into "what the screen does not record or project is not really happening."

Without anyone's intending it, the Ÿber-reality of Screenworld tends to frame as inferior or minor that which is beyond its concern or reach, for that's the fundamental and unstated assumption that it enforces, and it's Screenworld's most dangerous illusion—or, more accurately, its delusion, a delusion that should interest the entire field of psychotherapy, a delusion that what's untranslatable through Screenworld, or of no interest to it, has no urgency, no vitality.

That very delusion bestows upon Screenworld its power—the notion, especially in the young, that not to pay close attention to all these screens is to be less than fully engaged.

The dilemma is: how does one find or grow a sense of centeredness amid this continually shifting screenscape?

That isn't a question Screenworld encourages or entertains, and isn't a question I'll attempt to answer here, but it's an issue that psychotherapy must investigate—because, for many, Screenworld is the only world. Psychotherapy is uniquely positioned for such an investigation, because it's one of the few endeavors that Screenworld doesn't rule.

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