Monday, December 25, 2006
Humans or Vidiots?
I don’t watch TV. Do You? Really? Why? What do you get out of it? Don’t you have anything else to do with your time. No matter what you are doing at this moment, what you are really doing is doing your life. Your one and only, over before you know it life. Are you going to use up your precious limited time watching and listening to a bunch of actors "playing" out the lives others have scripted for them, in order to amuse (origin of term: OF amuser ‘entertain, deceive’, from muser, ‘stare stupidly’), entertain (From French entretenir, from Latin tenere 'to hold'), divert (our attention from things we should be attending to), sell (is this what tv is really about; I read that the average American, by the time they are sixty-five, has seen 2,000,000 commercials).
I have to accept the truth: Americans are addicted to it. Someone said that we are a nation of "vidiots." But why? Can we not read? Are we afraid of contact with reality, so we watch virtual reality, hyper-reality, sort of like when movies changed from black and white to color? The color was called "technicolor." Technicolor was more intense, more brilliant, more vibrant than life in the quotidian. It was an escape from reality into fantasy. Meanwhile, our life is slipping away. We all are facing a "dead"-line.
"No matter how long you’ve been traveling down the wrong path, turn around." Don’t allow the tube to steal your life as you mindlessly watch and allow the robbery go on. Get acquainted again with real people, people you have said you love. Love is not a once-for-all thing; it must be maintained.
What is it I hear people saying these days, "Get a life?" Well, God has already given us one. The question is: Are we going to live it, or . . ..?
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I admit I have been addicted to TV. I sometimes suffer with depression, and it was an easy, though ultimately ineffective escape. Since I became pregnant with my first, we have alternately limited or totally excluded TV. There is a lot of research out there to suggest it actually changes the brains of young children, leading to increased attention problems. I and several friends have noticed improved behavior when TV was totally eliminated in our offspring. For my hubby and I, we notice that our amount of reading and discussion increase dramatically. My house is cleaner. We do much more with our kids interactively. And there is an increased hunger to socialize with real people. Occasionally, the TV comes back for a brief visit from my Dad's so we can watch a movie together, and I let the kids watch a few good ones, but all in all I love not having one in my house. I love being forced to face real life. I personally found that I spend a lot more time in Bible study or prayer or in just relaxing and watching the clouds. I recommend that eveyone should at least try two months without it at all, because it takes a while to get over the withdrawals and to find meaningful pursuits to replace it. We didn't watch that much, but we watched more than we thought. Most people who say they don't watch that much, can tell you several plot lines I have noticed. It is amazing how studpid some of the shows i thought I would miss are now that I go back to them.
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