by ki'une on August 30, 2008
News Keeps You Informed, Right?
When I was a little tike, my dad thought the same thing, and he introduced me to the daily newspaper. I began with the comics (minus Doonesbury because I didn’t understand the humor) and the front page. Soon I was devouring the entire first section. By the time I finished high school, my daily habit included reading most of the daily newspaper, and I believed anyone not informed on the news was an ignoramus.
Fast forward to the present day and I have since given up the news completely. Funny how things have changed.
News Makes You Negative
A few months ago, I was having a breakfast with my friend Thomas and his new girlfriend Jane. It was an awkward meal because Jane had a pretty strong personality, complained quite a bit about the restaurant, and continuously chose to talk about the news for conversation. Many of her sentences resembled in one form or another: “Did you hear about …“, “It’s so awful“, “I can’t believe…“.
Out of curiosity, I asked her, “Do you read the news often?”
Her reply was, “Yes, I love the news. It’s an addiction. Every morning I read all The Toronto Star, The National Post, and The Globe and Mail. I like to keep up to date on current events.”
Constant news exposure can invade your subconscious, resulting in you complaining more, becoming more pessimistic, and being difficult to satisfy. If your news source is a biased publications, then you’ll easily become more opinionated on a subject, feel the need to be right (and others wrong) about your views, reinforce certain beliefs, and swallow points of views verbatim, no questions asked. Seriously, when is the last time any of us have read an Afghani or Iraqi newspaper?
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by ki'une on August 30, 2008
In my previous article, Give Up TV Now, I introduced the concept of freeing yourself from the clutches of TV. Here are some practical tips to help get you on your way.
1. Remove the TV From Your Room
The TV really serves no purpose in your room. When I was young, sure, it was cool to have a TV in my room. Now, the concept of having a TV in my room is alien to me. The bed is reserved for sleep and sex. Anything other activities only serve as distractions that yield restless sleep, especially if you want to become an early riser.
Watching the news or a violent TV show in particular prior to sleeping will only disturb your subconscious and you’ll end up taking those images with you to sleep, whether you want to or not. If you live in a studio apartment or the like, make sure the TV isn’t facing the bed.
2. Reduce the Number of TV’s to One
When I was young, my family’s house had three TV’s, one TV short of one for every family member, and very often we’d all be separated into different rooms watching our own programs. Watching a TV program with my brother essentially separated us, as we zombified ourselves into the glowing world in front of us.
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by ki'une on August 30, 2008
“Where’d all the good people go? I’ve been changing channels I don’t see them on the TV shows”
- Jack Johnson
TV In Our Culture
Somehow, our culture has evolved so that the main room in the house is the entertainment room (aka The Living Space Formely Known as The Family Room). Rather than being a room where people can sit face to face and talk, all chairs and sitting furniture are oriented to face glowing plasma pixels.
And what an entertainment room it has become – the epitome of grandeur and success for many (especially single guys). Movie theatre digital sound system. Piles of remote controls – or the one universal remote to rule them all. Gaming consoles stacked one upon each other. Everything we need to become disconnected from the real world.
I’m sure you know someone who has a TV in every room of the house, and perhaps even know someone who has a TV in the bathroom, for distraction from those precious moments .
What would a room be without a TV? It would be such a boring place, right? It would require people to sit together, face each other, and have conversations about life outside the box. It’s hard when there are a lot of great dramas out there, but living vicariously through the lives of onscreen characters only serves to weaken your sense of reality.
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