But the value orientation of an infantile only seems so harmless. Especially when you remember the current political situation: NATO bases on the territory of the former USSR, the excesses of America, which behaves like a giant unbridled heboid; the inclusion of Russia in the "axis of world evil", Japan's claims to the Kuril Islands, Germany's claims to the Kaliningrad region, the purchase of domestic enterprises and land by foreigners. This is the background against which grown-up, combat-ready men are taught to enjoy, throwing these "nonsense" out of their heads – they say, nothing depends on us anyway – Klin beer and pastries of the Yum-Yum company (a name that invites not only to fall into childhood, but to identify with a baby who has not yet come out of the period of babbling speech).

And the actors who make ridiculous faces, depicting food delight, simultaneously with advertising yogurt, advertise a pathological image of a person. "According to the theory of social learning, both children and adults acquire certain attitudes, master emotional reactions and new types of behavior of film and television characters (Bandura, 1973; Liebert, Neale & Davidson). In view of the highest efficiency and wide spread of television modeling, the mass media play an extremely important role in the formation of human behavior and social relations," writes N.E. Markova, who studied this issue, in her book "Technology of Destruction" (Moscow, 2002).

Of course, the soil has been plowed for a long time.

After all, they did not even pray at home for those captured and killed by the godless authorities, but went to cinemas set up in desecrated churches, had fun in parks laid out on the sites of former cemeteries, thanked the Soviet government for giving them the opportunity to relax in the resorts of the Crimea and the Caucasus. Then, however, entertainment was not as primitive as it is now, and a lot of space in people's lives was occupied by high motivation: building a bright future, creating advanced science, developing virgin lands, conquering space. At the very next turn of history, moral corruption grew into mental corruption.

Standards, aka symptoms

It is impossible not to mention the purposeful splitting of mass consciousness. Both television and newspaper journalism have a special term: "cutting". This is so that there is a little bit of everything, and all in one pile. At the same time, the editors declare with aplomb that people have allegedly forgotten how to perceive more or less voluminous and serious materials. I remember that at the dawn of perestroika, director A. Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, enriched by his experience in Hollywood, spoke about the peculiarities of the demanding American public.

"The attention of the viewer there," he explained, "is very narrow, as if they were looking through a spyglass. And a very short-term one – they are not able to fix it on one thing for more than a minute. That's why there are such highly professional films in the States: no lengths, only "action".

Now such a "demanding" viewer is being formed in our country. But Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, without suspecting it – he is a director by profession, not a psychiatrist – described patients with the so-called "field behavior" and attention, professionally speaking, "narrowed by the type of a corridor". Even in children, field behavior is considered the norm up to the age of two, maximum up to three. And here it is in adults... Comments may seem tactless.

It is better to move on to a brief list of other pathologies provoked by the ill-fated "cutting". This is the discontinuity of consciousness, when a person is unable to build the simplest logical chain. This is (again professional terminology) a leap of ideas. This is emotional stupefaction, which arises as a pathological defensive reaction to the merging of tragic news with neutral and even joyful news. ("The maniac brutally killed another victim. The dollar exchange rate remained the same. Tomorrow the beer festival opens.")

And when a person is stunned by so much shocking news every day, he has amnesia, also of a protective nature. In war, such memory disorders are often the result of concussion. In today's information war, the role of shells and bombs is played by cleverly arranged and appropriately presented information. Shell-shocked by its blast wave, viewers can hardly remember what they saw yesterday. And the political events that they followed so intensely a year ago cannot be recalled even at gunpoint.

And how much effort has been put into introducing as many people as possible to various sexual perversions, which (maybe not everyone knows this?) also belong to the category of psychopathology! For example, the sensational TV program "Behind the Glass", among other things, provoked such a psychosexual disorder as voyeurism (simply put, this is when you get a specific pleasure peeping through the keyhole of someone else's bedroom). Or take the program "The Naked Truth", where, reporting the news, the presenters undress step by step. Both these two programs, and a lot of others, encourage voyeurism on the part of the audience and exhibitionism - a deviation associated with the love of public nudity of the participants. And how monsterphilia (pathological love of ugliness) and pedophilia (until recently this term had to be explained, but now, alas, it is no longer required, television has taken care of educating the masses) are heated up in the media!

Sometimes a clinical diagnosis is not easy to make. For example, in a TV commercial, when the whole family, gathered at the table, steals sausages from each other, and it is presented as a funny game. Who are these toys: oligophrens or kleptomaniacs? Or can we talk about a combined defect? Professor Gannushkin is sorely missed...

Until recently, at least very young children were left alone. Computer games, idiotic books and even cartoons with Batman and cyborgs - all this was not for them yet. But now there are developments that cover this age group as well. What if they have time to form normally in the first three years of life?

"Teletubbies, the world's first program for babies under one year of age, appeared in England in 1997 and were immediately exported to the United States by PBS (Public Broadcasting Station), a company specializing in children's educational products," writes sociologist N.E. Markova, who has already been quoted above, "From the very beginning, the producers of the TV program persistently positioned it as an educational one... The advertisement claimed that the program developed infants' imaginations, facilitated their motor development, promoted preverbal language development, and taught how to use technology.