Finding my zen

For a few weeks now, J and I have been talking about giving up TV for a little while. Even just a month.

By giving up, I mean not watching the news, the tv shows etc - anything that is on tv. We would probably still continue using the tv to watch movies and documentaries - anything we choose to put on. It all sounds doable except the news. About 80% of our TV watching is news and current affairs related. We're both such information junkies. Like I said to J, "...but I have to know what's going on in the world"

But do I really HAVE to watch the news every morning and evening?

Besides, I still have the internet. And Twitter. So it's not like I'm going to be a hermit. We just won't be watching crap like you tend to sometimes, when you can't be bothered getting off the couch and finding something else to do.

From an article called The Zen TV Experiment --

TV and the Illusion of Knowing

Marshall McLuhan says TV opens out onto an electronic global village. It would seem, rather, that it gives us only the illusion of being. It reinforces security by presenting danger, ignorance by presenting news, lethargy by presenting excitement, isolation by promising participation. The media confines reality to itself. And it limits knowledge by giving the illusion of knowledge. In the same way that the most effective way to deflect, diffuse and terminate a social movement is to announce that it has been achieved (the feminist movement must contend with this on an almost daily basis), the most effective way to deflect inquiry is to present it as fulfilled. TV acts in this guise as a thinking presentation device which offers non-experience as experience and not-knowingness as knowing.

It's not really that hard, I don't think. I think it will go a long way towards finding my zen. I just have to give up the need to know what the River Boys will get up to next.  ;-)