It's now been 8 months since I have been without television access in my home, a conscious choice my husband and I made when we moved to our new environs. That means no food network or travel channel or bravo(these are all supposed to be "enriching") or sporting events and all the other commercial business that used to fill, as my husband says, our "poor little brains."
There have been brief periods in my life where I haven't had television, but this is the longest in my recent adult life. It's amazing to me just what a radical act it has been. It seems to me to be one of the best things a person can do to help this planet, to change human/social consciousness. It means not having to be inundated with: advertising; shameless capitalist product placement; racist and sexist narratives; images of a hyperactive, over-caffeinated society; violence; cynicism; and the social construction of unnecessary needs and desires that harm this world in infinite ways.
Living without tv means reading, writing, listening to music, walking in the woods, cooking soulful meals, creating things, enagaging in conversations about philosophy, religion, literature, and politics with my husband, playing a game of cards, meditating, and just daydreaming or staring out the window.
I am not completely puritanical; I still listen to the radio, rent movies, and consume my share of internet time. But, I am free of the psychic burden that television, invented to manipulate my desires, perpetuates.
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