Comments on: What’s On For 2013 http://laingholm11.co.nz/classes-2013/ Mon, 14 Feb 2022 04:24:17 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1 By: Valera http://laingholm11.co.nz/classes-2013/#comment-1335 Tue, 26 Mar 2013 20:26:27 +0000 http://laingholm11.co.nz/?p=385#comment-1335 As for my personal experience, I stopped watching television about 12 years ago. I noticed a few benefits from doing this:
Firstly it freed up a lot of time. This could be 2-3 hours per day, which is 1/7 of the waking time or one seventh of life!
Secondly, not having the dominant cultural norms reinforced on a daily basis makes it easier to be a unique individual and get in touch with how I really want to live my life.
And thirdly, it can be substituted for a more active form of entertainment such as using the Internet. The Internet lets users choose what information they want to access and the choice is much wider and not censored by someone else. Also it allows for active and creative engagement, such as making a web site, exchanging ideas with other people via online forums, etc.

Maree, I’m with you on the fact that it’s not the technology but the use we put it to. In other words I think television is a great invention with a lot of good potential. However, I think that most programmes currently shown on television are “mental junk food”.

]]> By: Maree http://laingholm11.co.nz/classes-2013/#comment-928 Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:44:03 +0000 http://laingholm11.co.nz/?p=385#comment-928 Hey Valera. I think television has the capacity to be fun and / or informative, so it’s not all bad. And obviously most shows are centered around significant dramas – after all, shows that truly depicted the average life would probably make us all nod off! But I believe constantly subjecting yourself to violence, over-the-top drama and cynical comedy starts to impact your sense of who and how you think you should be in the world and what your environment is like. You can lose touch with reality (and “reality TV” deserves the quote marks I just put around it). So it’s definitely a good idea to get out of the habit of zoning out in front of the TV every night. Watch what you really want to and turn it off. And these days there’s more than just TV – we can be constantly connected online if we really want to which can get overwhelming and addictive. I don’t use Facebook, watch shows on DVD only and spend a minimum amount of time on standard news sites. After a while of doing this, I noticed how irrelevant most of the information I was loading myself up with really was. I reckon it’s better to connect with real life as much as possible – it’s rich in its own way and generally makes me feel much more optimistic about life!

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