For Entertainmen Purposes Only
November 10th 2008 16:58
Think about your direct bodily experience of life.
No one can lie to you about that.
How many hours a day do you spend in front of a television screen?
A computer screen?
Behind an automobile windscreen?
All three screens combined?
What are you being screened from?
How much of your life comes at you through a screen, vicariously?
Do you have enough time to DO all the things that you want to do?
Do you have enough energy to?
And how many hours a day do you sleep?
How are you affected by standardized time, designed solely to synchronize your movements with those of millions of other people?
How long do you ever go without knowing what time it is?
Who or what controls your minutes and hours?
The minutes and hours that add up to your life?
Can you put a value on a beautiful day, when the birds are singing and people are walking around together?
How many dollars an hour does it take to pay you to stay inside and sell things or file papers?
What will you get later that could make up for this day of your life?
How are you affected by being in crowds, by being surrounded by anonymous masses?
Do you find yourself blocking your emotional responses to other human beings?
And who prepares your meals?
Do you ever eat by yourself?
Do you ever eat standing up?
How much do you know about what you eat and where it comes from?
What are we deprived of by labor-saving devices?
By thought-saving devices?
How are you affected by the requirements of efficiency, which place value on the product rather than the process, on the future rather than the present, the present moment that is getting shorter and shorter as we speed faster and faster into the future?
What are we speeding towards?
Are we saving time?
Saving it up for what?
How are you affected by being moved around in prescribed paths, in elevators, buses, subways, escalators, on highways and sidewalks?
By moving, working, and living in two and three dimensional grids?
How are you affected by being organized, immobilized, and scheduled...instead of wandering, roaming freely and spontaneously?
Scavenging?
How much freedom of movement do you have--freedom to move through space, to move as far as you want, in new and unexplored directions?
And how are you affected by waiting?
Waiting in line, waiting in traffic, waiting to eat, waiting for the bus, waiting for the bathroom--learning to punish and ignore your spontaneous urges?
How are you affected by holding back your desires?
By sexual repression, by the delay or denial of pleasure, starting in childhood, along with the suppression of everything in you that is spontaneous, everything that evidences your wild nature, your membership in the animal kingdom?
Is pleasure dangerous?
Could danger be joyous?
Do you ever need to see the sky?
Can you see stars in it anymore?
Do you ever need to see water, leaves, foliage, animals?
Glinting, glimmering, moving?
Is that why you have a pet, an aquarium, houseplants?
Or are television and video your glinting, glimmering, moving?
How much of your life comes at you through a screen, vicariously?
Do videotapes of yourself and your friends fascinate you, as if you are somehow more real in image than in life?
If your life was made into a movie, would it be worth watching?
And how do you feel in situations of enforced passivity?
How are you affected by a non-stop assault of symbolic communication-- audio, visual, print, billboard, computer, video, radio, robotic voices--as you wander through the forest of signs?
What are they urging upon you?
Do you ever need solitude, quite, contemplation?
Do you remember it?
Thinking on your own, rather than reacting to stimuli?
Is it hard to look away?
Is looking away the very thing that is not permitted?
Where can you go to find silence and solitude?
Not white noise, but pure silence?
Not loneliness, but gentle solitude?
How often have you stopped to ask yourself questions like these?
Do you find yourself committing acts of symbolic violence?
Do you ever feel lonely in a way that words cannot even express?
Do you ever feel ready to lose control?
If this inspired you, I can provide you your ticket out of this world.
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Comment by Lady Henrietta Muddling
Potter in a Harry
This is such a great post.
So many great questions we all need to ask ourselves. The one that sums them all up to me is:
It might not be a question a lot of people want to answer. And may explain why people watch Neighbours and Home & Away vicariously.
I'd even go a step further in relation to you highlighting how much time we spend behind screens nowadays. 'Since the advent of the internet, would the film of your life be two contrasting stories?'
This is another great question:
And this one:
I'd go a step further in relation to blogging and ask, 'How often do you ask questions of other people, rather than telling them how things are?' Or, 'What do you learn by telling people about what you already know, compared to what you could learn by listening and asking questions?'
Again, great post. I'll be interested to read the comments section on this one.
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
Dang, David has beaten me to it again (great minds think alike I guess) ... AND taken the very lines I would have chosen to highlight AGAIN? *Tapping my foot* re thinking ...
The fact is that I thoroughly enjoyed this post too. I have not worn a watch for years. I do not switch on the TV veyr often and spend as little time as possible in front of the Computer. The little work I do is counselling others who have lost touch with their lives, treating them as if they are happening on their TV screens.
People I meet in society talk to me in precise sections of time, before they launch into commerical time fast speech, chained to their drugs, of preference, repeating last nights news or or current affirs, or ready to bust someones head up over the footy results?
Bizarre behaviour and further self evident proof of a system that is clearly a fauilure, I agree.
I have children and so will not attest to all labour saving devices being bad. Some are necessary in order for my now middle age to be so and not suddenly my old age from overwork. Perhaps that too is bad in a world that has no food, not that the starving would get if I didn;t eat it.
Saving it up for what?
Thsi has puzzled me for so many years. As if there is a time bank somewhere where you can deposit it and withdraw it later *lol*
Only now in later life can I really get into a moment to enjoy the time that I suddenly find on my hands. Waiting has become a much looked forward to adventure. anticipation it seems, often so much better than the actual event, sometimes directly in proportion to the time waited to achieve the final outcome.
There are so many more and your post has cheered me immesley, thanks.
Lilla ..
Comment by Janet Collins
Acceptable Etiquette
The Social Critic
Janet Collins Blog
Comment by Pat
Books Are For Losers
Comment by Morgan Bell
Deep Pencil
Current Business News
Movie Train
Artist Quirk
How are you affected by standardized time, designed solely to synchronize your movements with those of millions of other people?
i am the least punctual person you will ever meet, a couple of years ago i decided to sleep when i was tired and eat when im hungry, and if i miss an appointment, tough . . . its not the end of the world . . . i think we all need to move at our own pace
im a big fan of 24 hour supermarkets and late night chemists!
Comment by Louie
Climate Forum
Climate Red
randomthoughts
Phil's Wellness Tips
What exactly does this mean?