Shawful

There was a knock on my door a few days ago, and I opened it up to find a young man dressed in a nice suit at my door. “Oh great, more Mormons” I thought. Close. It was a cable guy. He rehearsed his introduction to me and went over his official-looking clipboard noting what services his company was providing for me. He observed that I didn’t have cable and asked if I would like that service. I calmly declined the offer, explaining that I didn’t watch tv.

The young man stared at me blankly for a moment, trying to process my response. “Oh, you must get a lot of streaming video through the internet, right?”

“No” I replied, “I don’t watch tv.” The cable guy looked at me as if I had told him I would like to discontinue my oxygen services, for I have no need of breathing.

Since this young man was clearly unable to process this notion of not watching tv, and standing in awkward silence in the doorway was a waste of both of our time, I explained “My family is more of the book-type.”

“Oh!” A light seemed to go on for him, and he scribbled something on his clipboard: apparently “book people” is a demographic the cable company recognizes?

This got me thinking about the fact that there actually are people out there who don’t read much, and their lifestyles do indeed fit in those atrocious statistics I hear of, that the average North American family spends some 4-8 hours per day in front of the tube.

I think TV has its place, but there are a few things about the very nature of the flickering box that militates against something desperately needed nowadays: a lifestyle of informed reflection. The ability to think in linear terms. The ability to identify foundational principles and competing moral visions that lurk behind our actions. The ability to formulate sound arguments and communicate one’s ideas with clarity, force, and leadership. The ability to identify when a person doesn’t have their facts quite right.

Over the years, it has struck me how difficult it is to cultivate a well-educated mind. For starters, it takes information, and lots of information. Not just superficial facts, but depth of knowledge into history and human psychology. Acquiring such knowledge takes a lot of time and energy: we need to read, we need to listen, and we need to reflect. Learning is something that comes slowly. To learn and to love knowledge requires a good amount of discipline and energy, and a lifestyle consistent with those goals. All of this sounds a tad ascetic, and I suppose it is, but there are few things as satisfying and freeing as having a good framework of knowledge with which to understand what’s going on in the world around you. It’s freeing, liberating, a source of joy and peace. It also means work: often times the world around us is not good, and we need to work to change that. Knowledge gives us the needed information to know what to do, where to go, and how one ought to go about one’s business of doing good works.

Contrasted with this is the couch potato lifestyle. Generally living a life of informed reflection and good works makes the world of the couch potato seem quite offensive, shallow, and irrational. What argument could justify a duty to subject one’s mind to screenshots that change every 3 seconds, to be berated by a host of flickering advertisements and a general proclivity to toilet humour? Again, these all have their place: a well-educated mind needs periods of rest, passivity and laughter. But there is a vast difference between a season of rest and a lifestyle of stimulated passivity.

Television has a way of sucking us into ignorance: it is awfully enjoyable and entertaining, and to that extent can even be addictive. Even documentaries, which are a little more informative in nature than the sitcom or movie, leave us passive viewers of information imparted to us in the form of a dramatic narrative. The production of most documentaries is much more concerned with the rise and fall of a story than in cultivating a deep understanding of the subject matter. It’s informational, but it’s information placed in a dramatic narrative format and more often than not, it’s information that is sacrificed to the drama rather than the other way around.

So what does one typically do if one finds oneself caught in a dearth of knowledge? It isn’t much fun to be in the dark about what’s going on: ignorance is a powerful form of bondage, just as knowledge is a powerful tool for freedom. Learning is hard, while entertainment is easy, and entertainment has a pull to it that can numb the pain of bondage too much of it can bring.

As the proverb goes: “Taking the path of least resistance is what makes men and rivers crooked.”