Why I Want to Live off the Grid - Part I, Interdependence, or how the TV is the Devil
In High School I quickly became a teachers pet for a paper I wrote called "Television: The Work of the Devil?". Most people who know me, know that I am a well-meaning Christian, and I must first say that this paper was not about the moral evils of television content (though indeed I do find most television content unsavory). It was rather a look at how television has influenced our culture, our selves and our sense of well being. But first and foremost it looked at the ways in which television is a mind and creativity destroyer.
Being on the grid necessarily implies dependence on a larger framework for sustenance. Now to be clear we must reaffirm that one can never be fully independent. No man is an island to quote John Donne. In fact let's review his poem here; it speaks volumes about the very core of humanity.
"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - Meditation XVII
Knowing that we are all interdependent and connected means that in some way we have a very sincere and natural need for human interaction. How sad is it then that the average American spends about 5-7 hours watching television a day? In fact, if we sleep for 7-8 hours and work for 8-9 hours, that leaves us with about 1-3 hour of totally free interaction with our friends, our spouses, people we don't know or haven't yet met, much less our grandparents and other distant relatives. To put this in perspective, 5-7 hours a day of television watching a day works will end up being 20-30% of one's lifetime.
At this point, it strikes me that when we talk about off the grid living, we are really talking about a way to become more interconnected with life, humanity, and the environment. An off the grid lifestyle is paradoxical then in that our images of an off-the-gridder is a solitary person in a cabin, by himself, who is kind of nutty and has a very long and disgusting beard (if he is a male of course). However, on the grid people seem to live in nice suburbs with all the modern conveniences and are quite content with the status quo. Thus the paradox is that not having to depend on the modern infrastructure (independence) will lead us to greater interdependence (an independence conditional on other more immediate human beings). However the dependency on modern conveniences has led to a great deal of Independence in the on-grid person...so much so that they often lead lives of quiet desperation and loneliness.
I believe that the first step to getting off the grid of mental dullness, the grid of contentment with the status quo, the grid of normality and blandness is to get rid of our televisions...or at the very least to get rid of cable television and to remove the television from the prominent spot in our living rooms. I think that real life has enough challenges, adventure and mystery to never get bored.
I hope in the next few posts about getting off the grid that we will begin to further understand what it means that get off the grid, and why it is the best thing we can do. We will further understand that becoming independent will lead to interdependence because, in essence, getting off the grid means changing our dependencies to a much more local set of people...something known as interdependence.
4 comments:
I can think of someone who is a little nutty and has a beard. Hmm.
I think the biggest thing that TV pushes out of Christian's lives is intimate time with God, and those he has placed in our lives. That is so core to understanding the Romances of out faith (with our father and our Spouse). Not having a TV is one of the best decisions I have ever made. The only time I regret it is when I think about buying a WII or a 360.
Well said.
I can also attest to the fact that life is much better since we got rid of our tube.
The amount of time we have in our days now is unbelievable. I can't help but resent our past selves for wasting so much of the day being hypnotized and indoctrinated with blatantly consumerist ideas. It seems to me that it all boils down to the fact that TV is one sophisticated, manipulative marketing machine.
Amusements. To "muse" is to ponder, to meditate, to use the human mind as it was intended by its Creator to be used -- to THINK. "A" is the negating prefix. An "A-MUSE-MENT" is something DESIGNED TO KEEP US FROM THINKING.
Television -- seeing things from afar from someone else's perspective -- is but ONE of the MANY evils that we have become addicted to in this modern world that are perpetuated by our foolish absorption with acquiring more pleasures and attempting to create more free time for ourselves while the essence of life itself, relationship, lies starving at our doors and we step over the nearly-lifeless body and push away the outstretched hand and turn up our iPods (ironically to listen to "MUSIC", which was originally God-intended to CAUSE us to MUSE! and which now is created to do the exact opposite!) so that we don't have to hear the crying and the pleas for attention.
Perhaps one of the questions should be "Why is that we have developed a lifestyle that is so utterly dependent upon large-scale industry and its products?" WHY do we have houses that now NEED natural gas and electricity? Because they're easier or cheaper than the way that we used to heat our houses for the past 6,000 years? Is that truly a justification?
Running water. Handy. Saves us the time of digging our own wells (like we used to do) and the energy of pumping and carrying water. That leads to two questions: (1) What are we doing with all of the "extra time and energy" that we now have available? Something functional, Godly, ultimately valuable and worthwhile? (2) Why is it that the water that comes out of our taps now is utterly unfit for human consumption or even for safe bathing, being filled with pesticides, artificial hormones, birth-control drugs, mind-control drugs (so many Americans are on tranquilizers that Prozac is one of the known contaminants now affecting our water supply), and multitudes of other poisons.
And that's not to even begin to mention the incredible hazards of the PURPOSELY PLACED POISONS in our water, such as chlorine and fluoride! BOTH ARE DEADLY POISONS!! (To some that sounds like an odd proposition; do a Google on "fluoride" or "chlorine" and read it for yourself.)
The fundamental reason for an internal hunger to "get off of the grid" (or out of the matrix?) is that there's in each of us a God-given desire to live life the way that God intended it to be lived, and almost NOTHING of our current American lifestyle - our jobs, our houses, their design, heating, sanitation, transportation, schooling or government - shows ANY signs whatsoever of Godly wisdom at work, and can almost always be shown to be foolish, ungodly and ultimately destructive.
Post a Comment