The psychologist was staying in a hotel in the suburbs. Sam called him up and made an appointment. When Sam arrived at the hotel, the psychologist was sitting in the lobby chatting with an old lady. In five minutes, he got free and came towards Sam. He shook hands with him and asked him the purpose of his visit. Sam gave him a brief account of what he had been going through lately and also commented on the article that the psychologist had written and how it made him feel.

"Your problem may not be directly due to the effects of television, as I mentioned in that article, but it is surely related. Television is definitely a cause but it is not the only cause. It is the conditioning effect of the environment, which includes television, amongst other things. However, television may be and usually is the most powerful and potent medium of conditioning. It is when one becomes slightly aware of it and sees the actual truth of it, and not as an idea or theory, that one becomes afraid and fearful. It affects the personality in many ways causing depression, anxiety and a sense of dissociation."

"I don't quite understand what you mean," Sam replied. "Do you mean that we are conditioned, as in programmed, and we are not what we think we are but are what various sources have molded us into, including television, which you say is the most potent and powerful amongst these mind manipulators?"

"Yes, that's what I'm saying, partly. Most of us like to think that our own minds and thought processes are impenetrable. We like to think that other people can be manipulated, but we cannot. We believe that our opinions, values, ideas and beliefs are totally autonomous. One of the principal tools in the mind manipulation arsenal is television, the cultural arm of the established industrial order. Television, the drug of the world, maintains, stabilizes and reinforces ideas, attitudes and behaviors through its programming and advertising."

"But don't we learn from our environment, doesn't watching television educate us, inform us too?"

"It is important to differentiate between education and conditioning. Does TV educate or does it condition us? Education is when you are involved, critically examining everything and seeing the facts of them and not just receiving and accepting blindly. You may think that TV does no harm because you know it's not real, but did you know that your subconscious believes it to be real? Do you know that they don't teach us one very important thing in schools, which is: the word is not the actual. The description, the image, the word, the symbol is not the actual. We are not taught that and our brains are not able to differentiate between them. That's why we think that the word is the thing. How many of us think that the word ‘love' is love? Aren't we conditioned by the word?"

"I think so," Sam replied, "But I'm not very clear about it. I do agree that it's sometimes hard for me to differentiate between the real and imagined."

"I have done a lot of research on this and have spent almost all my life learning about it. I think it is a very important subject. I'll give you some facts. Did you know in America, children and adolescents spend 22 to 28 hours per week viewing television, more than any other activity except sleeping? That means that by the age of 70 they will have spent 7 to 10 years of their lives watching TV. On average people watch 5-6 hours of TV every day. This figure is only an average; many people, especially children, watch far more than this. This not only programs their minds from an early age, but may also damage their brains, causing them to grow up and behave more like an animal than a human, thus driven by basic desires such as sex, violence and food."

"That's astonishing. But not all people watch TV. Would you say that even the people who don't watch much TV are prone to some kind of passive effects through others who do watch a lot of TV?"

"Yes, I would say that. It is infectious. After all, it's collective subconscious, not just an individual consciousness. What affects others affects you too. More than any other single effect, television places images in our brains."

"Yes, I remember having some dreams which I couldn't quite place. Then I recalled that the images I saw in my dreams were a part of some TV show I had seen a couple of years ago."

"I think that psychologically, we are still at a very primitive stage. We have not yet learned to distinguish in our minds between natural images and those which are artificially created and implanted. That is why I said our education should teach us that the word, the image, the idea is not the real, is never the actual."

"Yes," said Sam, "I think I'm beginning to see your point."

"TV has everything to program your mind. You know what that means? It means you are conditioned, programmed by outside sources, like a computer is programmed. That means that the brain becomes like a machine, accepting, recording and working within the program, never free and never original. Therefore, TV can be and usually is used to program you into behaving, reacting, responding as per the program. It may seem fantastic when you hear this but it's the truth."

"But it's hard to believe. It still seems to me like fiction, like in that movie, Matrix."

The above extract has been taken the short story,"Television and Conditioning", featured in the book - To Think or Not to Think and Other Stories.