Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (21 page)

We learned in high school that plants ingest light and then convert it to energy for growth. The process is called photo-synthesis.

The plant literally takes light into its cells and converts it into nourishment. For a plant, light is a form of food. Ott has shown that changing the light source so that a plant ingests one set of spectral ingredients rather than another changes the nourishment and therefore the cellular and growth patterns of the plant. If you grow your own plants at home, you also know this to be true. You may not have a microscope with which to watch it, but if you move a plant nearer to the window (or farther away), it changes. Plant stores now sell special bulbs which help plants grow. When you move the plant or buy the bulb, what you are doing is changing the amount and the spectral character of the light the plant receives. You are changing its diet.

Through photobiology we are finally beginning to grasp that what is true for plants seems also to be true for animals and humans. For all, light is a kind of food. Humans take the light in through the eyes; and via the retinal-pituitary-endocrine system, it passes into the cells.

Ott’s particular contribution to photobiology is that thirty years ago he began saying that the exact mix of spectral ingredients that we ingest affects many aspects of human health and vitality. As you change the light, you change the spectra; as you change the spectra, you change the light-nourishment that finds its way to the cells; as you alter the cells, you alter the human body.

Outdoors to Indoors

To determine what mix of spectral ingredients is likely to produce the most vital humans, a logical place to start is with natural light, since this is the
only
light that humans ingested for millions of years.

During all of that time, the only human experience of light was of natural light: sun, moon, stars and, more recently, fire. Therefore, whatever light-receptive capacities exist in humans, and whatever cellular reactions humans have to light, they must have evolved to be attuned to the particular spectra emitted by those light sources.

Four generations ago, representing one one-fifty-thousandth of the human experience, we invented artificial light. It has been only two generations since artificial light became so widespread that we moved into artificially lighted environments. Now, most of the light we ingest through our skin and eyes is artificial. Meanwhile, we no longer receive the light we formerly received, because we are no longer outdoors. It is a kind of madness to think that this change would not affect us, another sign of our removal from any understanding of our interaction with the environment.

Ott has coined the term “malillumination” to describe the results on the body. We are “starved” for some natural light spectra, he says, and we have “overdosed” on those spectra that come from artificial lights: incandescent, fluorescent, mercury vapor, sodium, television and others.

Imagine that you suddenly gave up eating all fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and meats, and began eating pasta, candy and sugary cereals only. All these groupings are “food,” but the nutrients within each are substantially different. Where they are the same—there is
some
protein, for example in candy, and there is starch in some vegetables—they are of entirely different proportions. Eating pasta, candy and cereal will keep you alive, but eventually it will affect your health. And so it is with alterations in light-diet from the “natural” mix of spectral ingredients to the artificial mix.

Ott suspects that malillumination causes disorders ranging from lack of vitality to lowered resistance to disease, and hyperactivity. He believes it can also lead to aggressive behavior, heart disease and even cancer. He argues that the body cannot handle this intervention in a natural human relationship with the environment any more than it can handle food additives or chemicals in the air. The body breaks down on the cellular level.

As our life-style removes us further from full-spectrum natural light and into artificial environments, our condition becomes worse. Even when we are outdoors, Ott points out, we filter the light that we receive in our eyes with sunglasses (which eliminate certain spectra, while allowing others to pass through) as well as eyeglasses and window glass. Smog also has a role, he says, quoting a Smithsonian report indicating that during the last sixty years there has been a 14 percent decrease in sunlight reaching the surface of the planet.

My interest in the effects of light on humans was rooted in my investigation of television. Considering that human beings had not only moved away from natural light into artificial light, but that now our experience of artificial light is confined for four hours daily to television light, it began to seem obvious to me that a new level of distortion was underway. Human beings are soaking up far more television light, directed straight into their eyes, than any kind of artificial light that preceded it.

It seemed to me that if variations in kind and volume of artificial light can affect humans, then there might be specific effects to be discovered from the enormous amount of television light most people absorb.

If you will inspect your color television screen closely—I suggest you use a magnifying glass—you will find that your picture emanates from a collection of red, blue and green dots, or lines. As you move away from the screen the colors merge in your eyes to seem like other colors, but the television is emitting
only
red, blue and green light. These dots are made of phosphorescent metal placed inside the glass. The phosphors glow when the cathode gun shoots electrons at them. This process is barely different from that used in fluorescent lighting. Television is fluorescent.

I pored through Ott’s books and papers trying to learn if he had thought to look into the effects of television phosphorescence while studying other fluorescents. I couldn’t find any references and so I sought him out personally.

I asked Ott if he had studied the effects of the particular spectral emanations of color television: the red, blue and green phosphors. If so, what had he learned? If not, would he care to conjecture.

He said he hadn’t done such research, although recently he had begun to think he should, but he added:

“We
have
studied the greens, reds, and blues that come from fluorescent lights, which of course would be very similar since both involve the excitation of mineral phosphors. It may not be precisely the same, but I’ve already proved what can happen with certain phosphorescences, particularly pink.

“In any event, I am sure they [TV phosphors] have three very narrow wavelength peaks, just as in fluorescent, but how broad the bands are, I just don’t know.” (A narrow wavelength peak would indicate a very high concentration within one spectral range; this would be suspect because it would more seriously concentrate and distort what the human ingests.)

Ott told me that color television was probably less harmful than black and white because color sets produce wider spectra, although seriously distorting the natural range of sunlight. On the other hand, color sets produce more X rays.

Ott volunteered another concern. He said that lately he had been thinking there might be a relationship between the light emanations from color television and other fluorescent lights and chemical food additives, causing hyperactivity in children.

“All those artificial colorings have a certain wavelength resonance. Dr. Ben Feingold of Kaiser Hospital has found that eliminating some of these artificial colorings and flavorings from children’s diets will reduce their hyperactivity and also their allergic responses. What I’d like to do is take his findings and tie them to wavelength peaks of mercury-vapor lights, fluorescent lights and television light, because the heart of the matter could lie in an interaction of wavelength resonances between the chemicals and the light the body takes in. In television it could depend upon what the spectral peaks are. If they correspond to the wavelength absorption of some of these synthetic materials, then you can get tremendous reactions.

“It’s the same with food. Different pigments have different wavelength resonances, so different food ingredients may resonate with different light ingredients. Let’s say you eat a lot of spinach and raisins, both of which contain iron. Iron has a certain wavelength resonance, as do all metals. In fact, all matter interacts with other matter which may be similarly resonating. This is why soldiers will break rank when they walk across a bridge. Too many of them walking in step sets up a wavelength pattern which has been known to resonate with that of the materials of the bridge and the whole thing can collapse. It’s the same with food and light. If you eat a little bit of iron or calcium in your food and that wavelength is lacking in the light you get, then you’re not going to get any benefit. On the other hand if you find yourself in a peak of light, whether it’s television light or any other that reacts to iron, then you would have to watch your quantities, because if you get too much, you get an overreaction. [Allergy, hyperactivity.] It could be too much of one or not enough of the other. Now with sunlight, you don’t have those kinds of peaks. I’m sure that one way or the other your diet of both food and light is responsible for a lot of different physical reactions that we haven’t been able to measure yet.”

Seeking the Light

There was a time while I was working on this book that I became thrilled about the implications of the human ingestion of light. As I began to understand for the first time that there is a concrete relationship between our bodies and light, and that light is a kind of thing that we ingest for nourishment and growth, like food, I began to feel that humans probably hungered for and sought light the way plants do.

We know that humans seek food. A lot of life is spent in this process. We can say that seeking food is instinctive in all humans. Even babies know how to do it, within their limits.

If light is also food, then might we not seek it, as plants do? Is this why we look at the moon? Is this why we gaze at fire? Is there an innate longing for light, like a kind of cellular hunger? If so, then I suppose Anne Waldman could be right. With natural light gone, we seek a surrogate light: television.

Well, I couldn’t possibly say any of that in a book. But I did write it in a letter to an anthropologist friend of mine, Neal Daniels, who is acquainted with both “primitive” and “esoteric” religions. He wrote back:

“If photobiologists are correct, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t be, then they may be onto the biological foundation for the fact that every culture and religion in history has placed light at the center of its cosmology. ‘Receive the light.’ ‘Seek enlightenment.’ ‘The mind of light.’ ‘The luminescent soul.’

“The Hopi Indians speak of light entering them through the tops of their heads. It’s a goal of theirs to keep the tops of their heads open for the light. Of course they are speaking in spiritual terms. I know you are speaking more in health terms, as with food. But why couldn’t the two be the same? It’s very efficient and sensible to develop religions around natural processes which are the bases of survival. Most indigenous cultures do that. Only ours doesn’t.

“Do you remember that film we saw on those Bolivian Indians? They had a meditational routine every day at the same time, sitting high on a cliff facing the sun. They called it ‘taking light.’ They give it the same kind of meaning as ‘taking waters.’ They claimed it had medicinal value, as well as stimulating spontaneous insight.

“As I think about it, except for Western medicine, there’s hardly a medicine healing system in the world where light is not used for health purposes . . . physical, mental, spiritual.”

Anne Kent Rush, the author of
Moon, Moon
and a professional polarity therapist—a massage system that uses much of the knowledge of Chinese acupuncture medicine—gave me a compendium of data in this area. She told me that Chinese healing systems coordinate treatments of various organs with foods of specific color. For example, for lung disorders, white foods like turnips and onions will be prescribed. Heart disorders are aided by eating red foods such as beets and pomegranates. These might be combined with meditational practices in which the patient is asked to keep a certain color in mind. A spleen problem is considered to be caused partly by the body’s insufficient absorption of nutrients found in green vegetables. Intestinal problems may be caused by an insufficiency or an overabundance of foods containing pink light. (Ott told me the reason vegetables are green or blue is because of their interaction with selected light spectra. When I asked him if he’d read about any of these color healing systems, he told me he had not.)

In Mahayana Buddhism, each
chakra
(energy center) of the body is described as processing certain parts of the color spectrum, while also intermixing the colors processed by other energy centers.

In acupuncture, the two principal light-reception glands, the pineal and the pituitary, are the subject of specific light treatments, designed to keep them in balance.

Rush told me that many cultures consider the body’s experience of color, which is to say spectra, as a prime factor in health. However, when faced with this kind of evidence,
this
culture places it all in a “primitive” category. We consider it superstition or mythology rather than knowledge or science.

It is only when a James Reston submits to acupuncture while having his appendix out in China, and then writes an article about it in the
Times,
that most of us are willing to have another look.

Serious Research

Not feeling that I could rely upon esoteric religion, primitive medical practice, or the work of John Ott as my only evidence that television light might be harming our bodies, I made a telephone call to the head medical researcher at a well-known nonprofit organization which, like Ott’s organization, has done some excellent work in exposing the danger of X-radiation from television. (He declined to be named.) I asked him what, if anything, had been done on television light. Had he looked into the possible effects of the red, blue and green emanations?