Television, Trump and Buddha
There is an old Buddhist kōan in which a student asks his teacher 'what is the moon' and the teacher simply points to the moon and says, 'do not mistake my finger for the moon'. Analog and digital are similar. Here's how this helps us understand how we ended up with Donald Trump as president. Two technologies, television and the Internet, helped elect Trump. Not with ads and not with fundraising or social media manipulation by the Russian, though these helped. The real influence on the American public has been years of watching television. When television first began the shows were written to emulate modern American life and to entertain. People loved television and still do. They watched more and more. The shows got more and more entertaining with more exaggerated plots, language and situations. Do you ever feel, after you have just seen a really engaging movie, that you find yourself talking like the characters, or feeling similar to how the character felt? It m...