“After forty-odd years, the evidence is everywhere that television, far from proving a great tool of education, is a tool of stupefaction and disintegration.”
Wendell Berry
“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books.”
Roald Dahl
“Throw out the radio and take down the fiddle from the wall.” Andrew Lytle
M.C. Tuggle, Writer 
And now it is the phone.
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Alie,
Sad but true.
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TV disappeared one year ago. Have not missed it at all.
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Sandra J,
Way to be. We never watch broadcast TV. Ours is for movies only, and that’s maybe one a week.
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Same here, we gave the big 40 some inch TV away. Have a little one sits on a shelf for movies. TV programs are so bad now, nothing but commercials and just plain non interesting things. The birds at my bird feeder are more entertaining.
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Sandra J,
We’ve spent more time enjoying nature as well. Our bird and hummingbird feeders are an endless source of entertainment.
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TV, unless it is an educational video, rarely if ever teaches anything worth knowing. Great post Mike. I almost never watch TV, I rather writer or read a good book.
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Karen,
And that’s the key — be active, both mentally and physically. Don’t be a passive receptacle.
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Mike…never fear…I excerise daily for about 2 hours per day, I am in top physical shape as a dancer (I taught dance for years and even had my own dance studio for ballet) and I read and write all time. Whereas TV, for the most part is so boring. Karen 🙂
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Mike, sorry it has taken so long to reply, I have been on vacation and don’t worry, I am anything but passive. I just jump right in to whatever I wish to do. I have great self-confidence, always have, because I can do and be anything I choose. How is that for being non-passive. Karen 🙂
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Karen,
Keep it up!
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Wise words. I haven’t had a TV in years and haven’t missed it for one second.
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And it’s only getting worse. Nothing can beat the feeling of reading a good book in my opinion.
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Yesss. I don’t even own a TV, for this exact reason. It’s like junk food for your brain.
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Madam Mim,
To quote Pete Seger, it’a all “Garbage, garbage, garbage …”
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As John Denver once wisely advised, “Blow up your t.v…” I have one to watch my collection of movies; other than that, nada. As others have mentioned, the phone is getting almost as bad as the t.v. in helping to dumb-down the country and I agree. Enjoyed the post.
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Jack,
Sadly, the phone is a more insidious menace. At least the TV could’t follow us everywhere.
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I’m in IT up to my eyeballs, and I think the phone is the work of the Devil. instead of facilitating communication, it’s done the exact opposite.
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william,
I’m afraid you’re right.
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I couldn’t agree more!! I was raised only watching ABC – Dr Who and Monkey Magic lol – but no ads – until my parents weakened with my younger brother when I was ten.
I got rid of our tv over ten years ago:) When my eldest was in yr 12 and an English assignment was due in regards to TV crap – she had to go watch it at Nana’s ha:)
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he simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true. French post-structuralist philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard’s theory from his 1981 text Simulacra and Simulation, that meaning in modern life has been replaced by symbols and that all human existence merely simulates reality, has become the future of television. Baudrillard claims that society has “replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of reality”.
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We are indeed veering that way. That’s why it’s more important than ever that we go out of our way to experience and appreciate the real whenever we can.
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