Haven’t owned a TV since 1995… oh, wait I think I had one in my closet for a few years but got rid of it. But I do end up watching TV about an hour every week when visiting people.
I have several reasons for liberating myself from the boxed opiate:
1) it would ruin the imaging between the speakers. Instead I use a projector with a pull down screen when I want to watch a DVD. (well actually much of this got damaged in a fire, but I’m slowly rebuilding… I just wish cd’s were fire proof
)
2) even with 500 channels there is usually nothing interesting to watch – and the more channels you have the more time you end up spending flipping through channels to find anything… and by the time you come around to where you’ve started, there are all new programs on that you are now tempted to flip through to see if these are any good = waste of the short time that I have to spend in this world.
3) even when I do find something on an interesting topic, I end up feeling hollow after wasting a hour watching because all that the program gives you is some random information. Not that I mind random information – yes I am interested in Greek mythology and what not, but the problem with TV is that they frame everything within a lowest common denominator perspective (to capture the greatest # of viewers) . Consequently, it forces me to conceptualize and think of the given information in the stupid common denominator mode in order for me to keep up with the program, thereby pounding me down and keeping me at that level. Yes I am arguing that it diminishes our thinking capabilities. Maybe that’s why I feel so hollow afterwards – I feel dumber because it encouraged me to become dumber for at least the period of the time that I watched it.
4) you know how when you just look at someone’s face and mannerisms you get a sense of what kind of a person you are dealing with; well just about all of the people that appear on TV, when I try to visualize them in real life I come to a conclusion that I would not trust them to clean my toaster, never mind having them shape my notion of reality.
4) I rather live it than watch it.
