IJSP Number 5, 2023

94 back then. It is more than nostalgia that brings such a memory back because that cultural model was the epitome for a way of life and its correspondent philosophy. More than that, it was an anthropological manifestation in accord with the older ways of being, ways humans have adopted since millennia (that are nowadays outdated by the globalized progress and regarded as been obsolete, once and for all). Back then, the whole family gathered in a single room, usually the best and more accommodating of the household, around the TV set and the only channel that was airing, that was the focal point and the crowning of every evening. This main cultural focal point, concentrated in a wooden box brought, after supper, bien entendu , all the family, “grouped ‘round the TV set” (as R. Waters pointed out in his Amused to Death, [1]), under the same roof of togetherness and whatever was on was to see in that magnifying glass of the world. What is even more to the point is that the programs as such were thought to appeal to everyone, rather as a cultural approach addressed to the general public, in contrast to the highly specialized news channels and various programs we are used to watch nowadays – all conceived as a daily fix of alienating and dependency enhancing flow of never-ending information [2]. Those wonderful times when we still had the warmth of the family nest and lived in that homelike mode (and mood), permeated by the need of care and togetherness, are now obsolete. The needs Abraham Maslow [3] subscribed to the third level – the need for love, affection and warmth – are, in our Singlegesellschaf t 1 , outdated and hardly conceivable any more. Our emancipated Egos and the more or less postmodern narcissism that possesses us cannot conceive how such needs were not only possible but could be satisfied by so simple means as a single TV set in a room (it is to remember here that those TVs were not the flat ones we are used today, they were a little larger than a computer screen and the image was black and white – as for a remote control there was no need because there was only one channel). If back then we had a family as a system that worked and had a certain cohesion, warmth and emotional empathy, nowadays, when everyone has their own TV, laptop or phone, in their own room, it is more or less presumptuous to speak of family, at least in the traditional sense. The evening gatherings of those times are nowadays replaced by a growing sense of separation and a hard to comprehend need for isolation or self-centeredness. But as we know from the TV series, Once Upon a Time , “Everything comes with a price” [4], even our individualistic way of life centred on the whims and endless wants of self-centeredness. 1 Singlegesellschaft is the contemporary german expression formed by the welding of the english “single” and the German substantive “ Gesellschaft ” which means “society”. As such it designates the ultra-modern tendency of every man for himself (or woman for that matter), living alone and, at least during the sexually active years, having to decide to the famous question we know from American films: “My place or your place?” if they want to have a romantic and more intimate evening.