For most of the time that people have been alive on earth they finished the day and rested. Then they looked out at the trees moving in the wind. Or they looked at a fire burning in the fireplace. Or they watched the clouds changing shape as they moved across the sky. Or the stars slowly appear and turn far away.

It was beautiful to them. And it was quiet. They felt a part of the world they lived in. And it was mysterious too. And if they watched long enough they could see that everything was in motion. Everything was changing. Changing place. Changing form. Coming into the world and going on for awhile and vanishing again without a trace.

They noticed that each thing had its own character. The earth was firm and the wind moved, water flowed and fire was hot and they changed character in predictable ways when they came in contact with each other.

In each plant and animal, in each human being, if there is enough peace and time to see it, there is a spectacle, a miracle. Each little thing having its own way it wants to live. And trying so hard and so patiently to do it. And so much beauty. You can’t help but cherish it when you are in its presence, and you will do whatever you can to take care of it and protect it.

How can we be so cut off from this human way of being in the world?

Television is the opposite of this. It never gives you peace or lets you wonder. It stimulates you to want things and feelings that you do not have.  It continually disturbs you and never lets you settle down. It doesn’t care about how you feel.  It only cares about what you want and what you will pay to get it. And it will never ever let you stop wanting.

It will not let you see the connections between things because it fakes them or clips them apart from their real context. It shouts at you. It doesn’t like you. It doesn’t listen to you or respond to you. Instead of letting you learn about the marvelous world around you it cuts you off and keeps you passive and ignorant and needy. It is the fountain of ignorance. And we cannot get enough.

In the olden times some people died in floods and famines. They got eaten by animals and slaughtered by raiders, died from germs, burned in volcanoes, and worked themselves to death scratching a living from the grudging land. So they say on TV.

Now we sit at computers and sit in cars and sit on couches and get fat and weak and angry and take prescriptions and watch pornography and complain about the people who disagree with us.

It’s not better. 

But we can be.