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An online news account narrates key officials from both the legislative and executive branches of the
government voicing out their concern on the possible ill effects of too much violence seen by children on
television. The news estimates that by the time children reach 18 years old, they will have watched
around 18,000 simulated murder scenes. This prompted then-Department of Education Secretary Bro.
Armin Luistro to launch the implementing guidelines of the Children’s Television Act of 1997 in order to
regulate television programs would help in the development of children’s values.

Children’s Television Act of 1997

Declaration of policy. – The State recognizes the vital role of the youth in nation-building and shall
promote and protect their physical, moral, spiritual, intellectual and social well-being by enhancing
their over-all development, taking into account sectoral needs and conditions in the development of
educational, cultural, recreational policies and programs addressed to them.

Likewise, the State recognizes the importance and impact of broadcast media, particularly television
programs on the value formation and intellectual development of children and must take steps to
support and protect children's interests by providing television programs that reflect their needs,
concerns and interests without exploiting them.

The State recognizes broadcasting as a form of mass communication guaranteed by the

Constitution, the exercise of which is impressed with public interest, and which imposes upon the
broadcast industry the social responsibility of ensuring that its activities serve the interest and
welfare of the Filipino people.

Definition of terms. – For purposes of this Act, the following terms shall mean:

a) Children – all persons below eighteen (18) years old;

b) Children's television – refers to programs and other materials broadcast on television that
are specifically designed for viewing by children;

c) Child-friendly programs – refer to programs not specifically designed for viewing by

children but which serve to further the positive development of children and contain no
elements that may result in physical, mental and emotional harm to them. These include
various formats and genre that appeal to children and are made available for all ages from
early childhood to adolescence; and

d) Child-viewing hours – hours which are considered to be appropriate for children to watch
television taking into account other activities which are necessary or desirable for their
balanced development.

Source: https://lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra1997/ra_8370_1997.html

There have been numerous studies on the effects of television violence on children. The
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, for instance, enumerated the harmful
effects of television violence such as being insensitive to the possible ill consequences brought
about by watching violent shows. The study also suggests that children exposed to television
violence begin to “imitate what they observe” and consider violence as “a way to solve problem”.
DesensitizedMedia/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxyTO-Q40u4

Aristotle(384-322)

Aristotle (c. 384 B.C. to 322 B.C.) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and scientist who is still
considered one of the greatest thinkers in politics, psychology and ethics. When Aristotle turned
17, he enrolled in Plato’s Academy. In 338, he began tutoring Alexander the Great. In 335,
Aristotle founded his own school, the Lyceum, in Athens, where he spent most of the rest of his
life studying, teaching and writing. Some of his most notable works include Nichomachean
Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics, Poetics and Prior Analytics.
Virtue ethics:
Virtue ethics is the ethical framework that is concerned with understanding the good as a matter
of developing the virtuous character of a person. Previous chapters emphasized different
aspects of ethics: consequences of an act for utilitarianism (the doctrine that actions are right if
they are useful or for the benefit of a majority.), natural inclinations for natural law (a body of
unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct.), and autonomy for
deontology (the study of the nature of duty and obligation). Virtue ethics, on the other hand,
focuses on the formation of one’s character brought about by determining and doing virtuous
acts. The two major thinkers of ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle, had discourses concerning
virtue. But Aristotle’s book entitled “Nicomachean Ethics” is the first comprehensive and
programmatic study of virtue ethics.
Aristotle and Plato’s view on virtue ethics:
Aristotle’s discourse of ethics departs from the Platonic understanding of reality and conception
of the good. Both Plato and Aristotle affirm rationality as the highest faculty of a person and
having such characteristic enables a person to realize the very purpose of his/her existence. But
at the end, they differ in the appreciation of reality and nature, which, in turn, results in their
contrasting stand on what the ethical principle should be.
For Plato, the real is outside the realm of any human sensory experience but can somehow be
grasped by one’s intellect. The truth and, ultimately, the good are in the sphere of forms or ideas
transcending daily human condition. On the other hand, for Aristotle, the real is found within our
everyday encounter with objects in the world. What makes nature intelligible is its character of
having both form and matter. Therefore, the truth and the good cannot exist apart from the
object and are not independent of our experience.

Happiness and ultimate purpose:

Aristotle begins his discussion of ethics by showing that every act that a person does is directed
toward a particular purpose, aim, or what the Greeks called “telos” (an ultimate object or aim.).
There is a purpose why one does something, and for Aristotle, a person’s action manifests a
good that she aspires for. Every pursuit of a person’s hopes to achieve a good. One eats for the
purpose of the good that it gives sustenance to the body. A person pursues a chosen career,
aiming for a good, that is, to provide a better future for his/her family. A person will not do
anything which is not beneficial to him/her. Even a drug user “thinks” that substance abuse will
cause him/her good. This does not necessarily mean that using drugs is good but a “drug
addict” would want to believe that such act is good. Therefore, for Aritotle, the good is
considered to be the “telos” or purpose for which all acts seek to achieve.
"Happiness depends on ourselves." More than anybody else, Aristotle enshrines happiness as a
central purpose of human life and a goal in itself. As a result he devotes more space to the topic
of happiness than any thinker prior to the modern era. Living during the same period as
Mencius, but on the other side of the world, he draws some similar conclusions. That is,
happiness depends on the cultivation of virtue, though his virtues are somewhat more
individualistic than the essentially social virtues of the Confucians. Yet as we shall see, Aristotle
was convinced that a genuinely happy life required the fulfillment of a broad range of conditions,
including physical as well as mental well-being. In this way he introduced the idea of a science
of happiness in the classical sense, in terms of a new field of knowledge.
Essentially, Aristotle argues that virtue is achieved by maintaining the Mean, which is the
balance between two excesses. Aristotle’s doctrine of the Mean is reminiscent of Buddha’s
Middle Path, but there are intriguing differences. For Aristotle the mean was a method of
achieving virtue, but for Buddha the Middle Path referred to a peaceful way of life which
negotiated the extremes of harsh asceticism and sensual pleasure seeking. The Middle Path
was a minimal requirement for the meditative life, and not the source of virtue in itself.

Happiness as the Ultimate Purpose of Human Existence

One of Aristotle's most influential works is the Nicomachean Ethics, where he presents a
theory of happiness that is still relevant today, over 2,300 years later. The key question Aristotle
seeks to answer in these lectures is "What is the ultimate purpose of human existence?" What
is that end or goal for which we should direct all of our activities? Everywhere we see people
seeking pleasure, wealth, and a good reputation. But while each of these has some value, none
of them can occupy the place of the chief good for which humanity should aim. To be an
ultimate end, an act must be self-sufficient and final, "that which is always desirable in itself and
never for the sake of something else" (Nicomachean Ethics, 1097a30-34), and it must be
attainable by man. Aristotle claims that nearly everyone would agree that happiness is the end
which meets all these requirements. It is easy enough to see that we desire money, pleasure,
and honor only because we believe that these goods will make us happy. It seems that all other
goods are a means towards obtaining happiness, while happiness is always an end in itself.
The Greek word that usually gets translated as "happiness" is eudaimonia, and like most
translations from ancient languages, this can be misleading. The main trouble is that happiness
(especially in modern America) is often conceived of as a subjective state of mind, as when one
says one is happy when one is enjoying a cool beer on a hot day, or is out "having fun" with
one's friends. For Aristotle, however, happiness is a final end or goal that encompasses the
totality of one's life. It is not something that can be gained or lost in a few hours, like pleasurable
sensations. It is more like the ultimate value of your life as lived up to this moment, measuring
how well you have lived up to your full potential as a human being. For this reason, one cannot
really make any pronouncements about whether one has lived a happy life until it is over, just as
we would not say of a football game that it was a "great game" at halftime (indeed we know of
many such games that turn out to be blowouts or duds). For the same reason we cannot say
that children are happy, any more than we can say that an acorn is a tree, for the potential for a
flourishing human life has not yet been realized. As Aristotle says, "for as it is not one swallow or
one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed
and happy." (Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a18)
Thus Aristotle gives us his definition of
happiness:
...the function of man is to live a certain kind of life, and this activity implies a rational
principle, and the function of a good man is the good and noble performance of these, and
if any action is well performed it is performed in accord with the appropriate excellence: if
this is the case, then happiness turns out to be an activity of the soul in accordance with
virtue. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a13)