what I'm missing

Over Thanksgiving, I took time to watch some TV, something I rarely do. I did this in part because I was invited to by my host, who wanted to kill some time before our feast of turkey and gravy and butternut squash, and in part to see what life is like for the tens of millions of average Americans who make it their habit. As part of my efforts to make myself a better and wiser person, I have been reading books on a wide range of topics and generally avoiding wasteful and IQ-diminishing activities such as the mindless consumption of packaged content, so I was excited to run with the crowd for a moment and check out what TV had to offer. My host and I watched a show about tattoo artists competing to see who could perform best under pressure, best on camera, best before a panel of judges. Thankfully, the show had been taped, so we could fast-forward over the commercials; thankfully, dinner was served before any of us had to suffer through too much of it.

Since taking the first steps toward self-sufficiency by running most of my household from a bank of 4 deep-cycle marine batteries fed by 6 solar panels, I have restricted my personal viewing time to but a few hours a week – I hook up the 750 watt inverter to watch only one movie at a time, whereupon I detach it from the battery, thus shutting everything down. I do not veg regularly on the couch flipping through channels; I follow neither show nor series, episode nor finale, nor do I bring up watching TV in conversation or stick around if someone else does. In short, at the mere mention of television, I become a butt-hurt curmudgeon. And so I was shocked at how stressful watching the boob-tube has become, how stupid I felt afterward, and how many more commercials there seemed to be now than when I watched it regularly just a few years ago. It is as if producers, studios, and networks had baited the viewing public into watching compelling and interesting shows and then switched formats to reflect their ultimate goal, that being to trick the American people into thinking they were having fun when they were in actuality being force-fed one advertisement after the next in bewilderingly frequent intervals, minds rotting while waist-lines expanded, ambition draining away while creativity was crushed under the jack-boot of rerun content.

Before this thankfully brief exposure, I had begun to wonder if I was missing something important, if I had erred in canceling my cable TV service, if I were somehow worse off for swimming against the crowd by not succumbing to TV's mind-numbing allure. Today, however, my curiosity is stilled, my wonder has abated, and I am confident in one thing: I am better off for having avoided television these past few years. As a person who has glimpsed the eternal silence of the Great Vast Crushing Nothingness and lived to tell the tale, I have a decent understanding of the preciousness of human existence; therefore, my decision to try to better myself as a person, as a scholar, as a linguist, and as a writer rather than waste my short life glued to a self-illuminated, talking rectangle appears to be bearing fruit, if only slowly. By no amount of talking, warning, cajoling, begging, demanding, nagging, or urging will I ever convince anyone else whom I care about to join me in ceasing to watch TV, in preserving a shred of self-respect and personal dignity, or in saving the self by switching off the tube; all forms of salvation – even ones that are so simply accomplished – come from the realization that there are always better ways than the current path, that nothing worth its while is easy, and that the hardest things are the most rewarding. So, please, cancel your cable subscriptions, dust off a book, and start living well again. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

on fighting fear

I am stumbled into the viper's pit, into a home suffused with Fear. That force against which all upstanding and self-respecting persons fight diligently and with indomitable passion reigns here nearly supreme; its stifling cloak has settled over most aspects of life within this home; its sinister influence has calcified upon the brains of this home's mother, poisoning nearly every thought that sparks within her mind and every tone that sounds within her mouth. The father – the SAR of whom was written just this week, on the moon's day – he contends with this his most deadly foe, but he fights it head-on rather than by the round-about, directly rather than sneakily, with thinly-veiled contempt rather than with clandestine, consummate compassion.

Our wartime President Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” These words ring true now more than they ever have; America is being pulled under by the slowly sinking wreck of consumption-driven capitalism, downspiraling into ignorance and small-mindedness by the hollow promise of convenience, brainwashed by the 24-hour news cycle as it drowns slowly in the brackish and sugary waters that seep from our society's crumbling foundations. As with everything else, however, as with obesity and sloth and the loss of independent thought, as with all the other ills that plague this once-fine land, fear's stranglehold is rooted in the propensity of humankind to take the path of least resistance, or what appears to be the Easy Way Out. Especially for a person whose daily activities revolve around the twin pillars of watching television and eating, it is easier to fear that to trust, easier to hate than to love, easier to despise than to praise. Especially for someone whose parents never modeled for her that love and compassion spring only from hard work and patience, dedication and sacrifice, who rather than teaching her that life is neither fair nor easy complained constantly of what they did not have while cursing other persons who appeared to have more, especially for a woman such as this – even though she is not fully to blame for her pitiable state of mind, since she has during her life neither known, nor thought to search for, a different path – fear comes easily, and it comes quickly.

It would be fine if the aforementioned woman kept her fear to herself, but, being a person averse to physical exertion and one addicted to such soothing, creeping soul-death as is addiction to television (and playing the lottery, buying name-brand foodstuffs, being driven around to nail and hair salons, and always looking for something to complain about), she talks about her problems over and over and over again instead of doing something about them. Fear has suffused her life to the point that it – rather than inherent rationality or latent compassion – is the first thing that springs from her lips; fear, which quickly becomes mistrust, which quickly becomes malcontent, which quickly becomes hatred, fear is her baseline mode of operation, the jumping-off-point from which she plans the steps of her life. How does one combat fear? By slowly and gradually showing it that it has no power, that it has no business lurking in the hearts of this nation's more gullible persons. Better this way that the other – to combat fear directly, with spiteful and equal malice – because combating fear with anger serves only to fuel fear, to make it grow and blossom so that it sinks its roots deep into the psyche. Just listen to the tone of this article: it is suffused with fear, as I have allowed evil into my heart. Oh, brother. Mahalo.

場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit