This weekend I read. A lot. All day Saturday and all day Sunday I read the history of Christianity. In the evening I read a novel. There was a time when I would sit for hours, barely moving, and read. I would forget to eat. All that existed was what was on the page.
Now it’s become more difficult. Part of it is I can't sit still for as long a stretch at a time. My attention drifts. I go through periods of massive TV viewing, yet still manage to read a bit more than most. I’ve gone through periods when I banned TV all together. One of those periods was right after I read Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. (I recommend to anyone also interested in classic argument essay construction.) This weekend though, I wanted a break, so checked out the movies, and nothing there worth the time, effort, or money. Went to the vid store, and nothing worth renting. Tried watching a basketball game, which has gotten an air of silliness about it now; I just see giant wanna be gangstas in pants skirts running around bouncing a ball. No interest there. So I went back to reading.
Most people, I think, would have just continued to flounder around the visual media. I remember Pastor Jack Hayford saying one night he was exhausted and wanted to just be entertained, fill the void, and he channeled surfed. I don’t remember how long he said he did this for, but he realized how much precious time he had wasted, and got down on his knees and asked God’s forgiveness for wasting so much precious God given time. We do have a finite existence after all.
Edward Abby said television is based on the principle of the vacuum tube, and that’s exactly what it does to the mind. There was a study done last year, published in the “Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine” about the physical and intellectual effects of massive TV viewing. The more TV the lower the scores in class and the less physically able the viewers became. There was a definite increase in the consumption of junk food. The BMI goes up correlated to the number of hours watched.
Kids with TV’s in their bedrooms watch 56% more TV than kids without. I’ve always been of a mind that no TV should be in any bedroom. Bedrooms are made for sleeping, making love, and reading. Why should the vid set trump those marvelous activities?
What we’re ending up with are quick discussions lacking analysis and depth, by a growing number of people with increasing physical heft and diminishing intellectual heft. That imperials freedom and liberty. It imperials personal health. It imperials free minds.
Too many are shutting out the world, not living, experiencing, getting involved, learning new stuff, and being attentive to others and the world around us.
