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Religion has been and still is a value, a creed for millions of people. During the years people have fought in the name of religion, have lived according to its principles and precepts. Politics and culture have always been linked to religion and for this reason the church has always played a big role. Even if religions are different they have influenced various cultures and even whole countries throughout the world. Marx was right when he said that it was the opium of the masses, a belief to follow. Probably saying that howdays religion is replaced with television is going too far but whoever will think about the twentieth century will consider the television one of its mains features and elements. Certainly people don't follow the precepts of tv but it has an incisive role in our society the same. When it was discovered it was considered a simple means of communication. People spent a little time to watch it, after work or in the evening . Now tv is a kind of indipendent entity instead of being an object .
The problem is the effects it could have on people. I don't think that an object does completely good or harm. It depends on how you use it. Tv can have a positive effect. It is a great, useful invention; it allows us to know what happens in the world everyday; through it you can see place that you will never visit, cultures that you don't know because they are far and different from yours. In this case tv could be more useful than a geography-book because it gives you the precise idea of what you want to know. You can enjoy yourself watching amusing programmes or you can see beautiful films ( pieces of art ). Our duty should be to select programmes and to see only things that open our mind. There are programmes that should be forbidden because you could lose your intelligence watching them. Tv could have a very negative effect if people used it with bad purposes trasmitting distorted news or violent programmes. They sometimes use tv to do meddle with politics and not to inform .
Another problem is the relationship between people and tv. Nowdays we have a very close bond with this ingenious machine. Some use tv to pass time, to relax but most of them have a strange relationship with it, as if tv were a human-being. They watch it all the day long because thei are alone or they feel like that, and they need someone ( or something ) to comunicate. They become fond of actors, singers, tv characters; they love them as if they knew them really. Old people use tv as a companion because they have no friends, to talk to or somebody who cares about them. Children consider tv a friend, a playmate. They are alone, their parents work or have no time for them, they spend the whole day at home, they are bored and have no hobbies so they communicate * play * with tv. Some of them seen to become robots in front of it. They seem the inanimate objects and tv is the thinking object watching them .
Another problem is the interpretation of the reality through tv. It sometimes manipolate reality. On tv you can see things that are not real. It is fiction ( and you know ) but it seems so real that you believe it. Fantasy replaces reality. A person should be able to distinguish what is true and what is fiction and should not accept everything for true .
People should also have an active attitude before tv. Most of them are passive, they don't interpretate what they are watching. Tv is different from a book. When you read a book you have an active role because you have to understand, catch the sense of what you are reading. Words are fixed so you have time to think. Tv is different. Images are fast, they don't give you time to think, to filter them so that at the end you receive what they want you to receive. You have to be careful, to pay attention to what you watch .
The best thing to do would be to use tv with intelligence, in a useful way, moreover people should find other interests, different manners to spend their time .
