Economy: Following up on Tim's Excellent Comments

Just wanted to provide my responses to a couple of comments Tim made to my "Epidemic of Entitlement" post with its kill-your-TV subtext.

First, I highly recommend the Scientific American article he references, which can still be read in PDF format here. It's a pretty intriguing look at what's happening at the cognitive level when we watch TV, and why, as the title indicates, it's not just a metaphor to speak of being "addicted" to the habit. (For a bit more on television and cognitive development in babies, I recommend this article, which cites recent studies that resulted in the American Academy of Pediatrics issuing the recommendation that babies watch no television -- even educational videos -- until age two.)

Tim also poses a question: "Do you think that our greater society would be so civilized after the loss of our lifestyle? What happens when the televisions go dark?"

Obviously the question is only philosophical, since the screens won't be fading to black anytime soon. But before I go on to answer the question, I first want to make clear what my own stance on TV is. Many of you know that it's an uneasy relationship the two of us have, the boob tube and I. I had no TV for most of my upbringing, and again lived without it when I was a single young buck in Mt. Vernon. There, my home life was all about reading, writing, and music. Now that I live with TV, I of course find myself enjoying it often enough. I don't judge people who watch a lot of TV -- or at least I try not to, until they judge me for not watching enough (True story: Once when I had to make a TV appearance to talk about an article I'd written, I was sitting in the hot seat with the earpiece in, waiting for the program host to come on and begin the interview, and I happened to mention to the PR guy who had accompanied me to the studio that I had no television. He was deeply offended, and set about haranguing me for not having a television, as the seconds ticked down to airtime. When the host came on, I was still in heated debate, defending my lifestyle choice to this guy. Touched a nerve in him, I guess).

But I digress.

It's impossible to imagine what would happen if all the screens went blank, but I daresay we'd quickly become less civilized, not more. Given the fact that, as I mentioned in my original post, our economy pretty much now hinges on mindless consumption, to pull the rug abruptly out from under one of the main vehicles for encouraging this consumption, i.e., television, would be pretty disastrous for the economy -- and thus would do our level of "civilization" no favors, either.

But to restate the point I made in my original post, as an individual act of financial self-defense, cutting back on television makes a lot of sense. The financial advisors I've been speaking with are pretty much unanimous on the idea that we have a huge, huge problem in this country with sorting out needs from luxuries. By nature, each of us has a pretty accurate compass for arriving at this distinction, but the needle gets thrown way off by the cultural forces that swirl around us -- and television is probably foremost among them as a driver.

So my main point in all of this is not that no one should watch any TV at all anymore. Instead, I would simply reiterate the two main points I may have flubbed in my first post:

1. Holy crap. Even the finance gurus are recognizing how influential TV has been in creating both the personal and national debt problem.

2. For those of us who are having difficulty controlling mindless spending, one step might be to monitor our TV habits and consider to what extent the medium's messages are corrupting our ability to make wise financial choices.

And finally, just one note on the larger, civilizational issues related to television, followed by a question to you the reader:

As I've traveled to remote places around the world where television and consumer culture have not yet taken root with the same force as in the U.S., I've struggled with a kind of ethical question about what's "best" for people who live in these places. It is a balm to the world-weary soul to walk a starlit country road in rural Jamaica and hear children playing tag out in the dark, or to sit in the cool of an African evening and visit with families who have finished their workdays and are now relaxing by lantern light -- people interacting, not shut into their homes staring at a flickering screen. Yet most of those people want, rather desperately, what we in the U.S. have. Arrogance, indeed, to tell people who have nothing, "Oh, no, you don't want all these nice computers and big TVs and flashy cell phones and everything. Your life here in poverty and darkness is far preferable to our trashy consumer culture." Yet it's clear that we give something up when we opt for shiny new things. And clearly that something is what a reasonable person might define as "civilization" (acceptable levels of violence, knowing our neighbors, spending time with our families, having meaningful conversations, etc.).

Now my question to you the reader: Where is this all heading? The TV/infotainment/consumption lifestyle has amazing momentum, and it's hard to imagine our culture not going ever deeper into that place; were we to pull the plug on it, we would cripple our economy such as it is; and the rest of the world is hot on our heels in terms of achieving our rather dubious lifestyle. Where we goin' with all this, and is there a palatable way forward?