This might seem completely off the theme of this blog, but this morning feels totally relevant.
This headline appeared in one of the FT's mid morning mails:
The ability to make a 65" television seems to me to be entirely irrelevant, but what it symbolises is powerful.
This is the symbol of a life spent outside looking in.
Of a life divorced from reality.
Where the home is simply the space where we consume the images we're fed.
Where the opportunity for living is squeezed out of us if we succumb to such products.
It's a symbol of the loneliness Aditya Chakrabortty wrote about this morning, as did I.
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This is why I particularly object to giving free TV licences to pensioners. I have no problem with bus passes and heating allowances, but the idea that TV is a necessity and that parking people in front of the TV is acceptable is offensive.
So what would you expect the home bound pensioners, with no family left, do? For some people TV is a comfort device, background noise rather than quiet and loneliness. Some people like films and dramas which puts them in a different place, away from realities of life. I’m sorry but that is a rather narrow minded view.
65″ of it?
What I would like is a society where people were not left alone. A society where advertising and TV didn’t solely pander to the notion that unless you are “yoof” you are worthless. TV sums up what is wrong with society – that it is totally atomised and there is no sense of community any more.
I read an article about Greece recently, and one island which ahs the highest life expectancy in Europe. The old people all walk to a cafe a couple of times a day, where they talk, play dominoes, get some gentle exercise.
Putting people in front of a TV is the opposite of caring. Only the negligent do it to children and the same applies to trying to imprison people in their own homes in front of the idiot box.
The whole world is no longer a place for doing, just a place for being. I’m lucky enough to have driven many thousands of miles rallying in vintage cars, and feel more alive, and get more enjoyment, from that than I do from being cosseted in a modern automatic car with satnav, iPod, air con etc. And yet for so many people that vicarious internet experience is all they crave, and for our children may (if we don’t do something about it) be all they’ve ever known if we don’t get them outside, playing with one another and learning the value of real interaction with the physical world and actual human beings (and animals). OK, so its a very first world problem and one I’d rather have than walking 15 miles a day for fresh water, or scavenging dumps for saleable scrap, but if we don’t address it then it’ll be still more lives wasted, albeit in different ways.
Actually, Guest, people are not very good at ‘being’-the ‘doing’ is more of the problem, like the creation of the 65″ TV! I new it would be only a matter of time before TV’s could be pasted on a wall like wallpaper. I’m surprised that we don’t have a contact lense TV so you can watch it fill the entirety of your vision.
I think there are already glasses that get close to achievening that! Apparently excellent for 3D gaming.
“Where the opportunity for living is squeezed out of us if we succumb to such products”
.. only if we agree with your particular definition of ‘living’. My definition includes enjoying and appreciating many of the wonderful films, dramas, documentaries and sports events that I can have piped onto my TV screen. Whether I enjoy them alone or with others, they still enrich my life.. just as they enrich the lives of many others.
A 65in screen isn’t something I want. But that doesn’t mean I should look down on people who do.. or suggest that, somehow, those people are not ‘living’.
Exactly – different strokes for different folks, after all. I might favour watching films in front of a very large TV screen with my family than going to the cinema, for example. My family might simply really like television. Why should anyone be judged for that?
I’m sorry – but this remains consumer society gone mad
A 65″ television is conspicuous consumption at its worst
I have seen many cases of sickening conspicuous consumption far worse than a 65″ television. I’m thinking gold iPhones or diamond encrusted e-cigarettes, where the excess doesn’t even serve a useful purpose. You might want a larger screen to do justice to glorious nature documentaries, for example, or to watch films on because you don’t like the cinema. But my post wasn’t talking about judging people in terms of wealth in any event – it was talking about what judging other people’s lifestyle as lonely. My original comment was aimed at the fact that owning and watching a very large television doesn’t necessarily indicate that you have a lonely lifestyle.
Perhaps, but s it possible that people use these massive TVs more to have friends round to share in viewing experiences rather than individually watch small TVs alone in their homes?
Who are you kidding?
Television is the ultimate solitary experience for most people
Do you ever stop to think what world are you living in?
Yes
That’s why I post comments like that
As opposed to reading?!
Do you have evidence whatsoever on whether screen size makes any difference to the amount of time a persons spends watching that type of screen? Lots of people seem to spend an inordinate amount of time looking at rather small screens on their phones and tablet computers mainly because they are convenient. We’ve also had large cinema screens for over a 100 years.
No none at all
I made a personal comment on my personal blog
Fair enough. Perhaps if they paid all the tax you think are due they could only produce a TV with a 32 inch screen thereby meeting two of your goals.
And if that were true it would be the right outcome
What is wrong with that?
Wouldn’t that necessitate two separate rooms and split viewers unnecessarily? Not to mention the additional electricity emissions involved.
In this context, see my post of Monday 21st on Tales Of Old Times. Personally I am thinking of going big screen with BluRay and streamed web items. Instead of all that travelling to and fro and time we can flop out in comfort and just enjoy the performance. Was it Sartre who said “hell is other people”?
Just a little grumpy, maybe ? 🙂
I have a separates hi-fi system that I have had for over thirty years and it still sounds great. I have no intention of replacing it!
It may be just me, but didn’t we get more enjoyment out of vinyl 33 rpm records and cassette tapes than we have from i-pods and surround sound systems?
Yes….analogue sound is much warmer and has more presence. Anybody who has just listened to cd’s for years try some vinyl and it feels like the music is really ‘there’ and the cd a holograph!
Stevo. No. It’s called being young. But that’s just my perspective. I quite like having 9,000 songs in my pocket and whatever I want to hear on spotify.
I’m not saying I don’t like new technology, I have an MP3, which is relatively new, but in my experience, and maybe it’s an age thing, I had a great time with vinyl records and cassette tapes, even though the sound quality of cassettes compared to reel-to-reel tape was dreadful.
Plus, we tend to get new fancy gadgets that we might use a few times, then leave them gathering dust. The point I was making is that I have a 30 year old sound system which still sounds great and which I have no intention of replacing simply because it isn’t the latest thing.
Technology has to move on, but many of is generally acquire things we don’t need and, truth be told, often don’t want.
I have a 32″ television bought the Christmas before last because my husband was too ill to go out to the pictures any more. He died in January last year, 19 months ago tonight. I have the television on much of the time on the news channel, or parliament, because that gives me a voice to listen to. Have you any idea what it’s like to not hear a voice for days on end unless it’s on the television or radio? I have Newsnight on now.
Wouldn’t get a 64″ one, but my husband’s uncle probably would. His wife died a few years ago, and he has a disabled daughter at home to look after him. He does not go out either.
I am not criticising television per se
I am asking why television need dominate
And a 65″ television in any house is bound to dominate
It was the television created isolation that was my target
Not the role of television in relieving it
I recognise both
I think the issue is the contemporary paucity of human interaction. Our culture has become incredibly vacuous in many ways. people don’t meet to talk, read poetry to each other, play music, discuss philosophy, engage in the sort of issues discussed in this blog, study together. Intellectual curiosity seems to be on the wane. One of Thatcher’s most philistine achievements was the destruction of adult education. These facilities have nigh on disappeared in many areas.
Richard
I loved your post &, even more, the replies.
I don’t think it takes a philosopher of Augustinian or even Abelardian standard to know that a life lived on its own is, unless you’ve deliberately chosen hermitage or some other journey into faith, a fairly bleak, pointless life &, obviously, real hermits DON’T want TVs (big screen or otherwise).
It is funny to hear people protest “I have all I want” when its blatantly obvious they don’t. You can’t buy laughter, compassion, affection, amusement. You can’t, in fact, buy almost anything that makes life worth living. So why do we set such great store by the sordid pelf that does more to ruin lives than enrich them ?
“You can’t, in fact, buy almost anything that makes life worth living.”
Thank you William. That pretty much sums it up.
May as well just go away and kill myself, then.
Far from it
Indeed-may as well go out and start living and disencumber ourselves from the veil of manipulation and propaganda.
Already there are TVs which are bigger than this one, e.g. 90 inch, plus there’s laser TVs, e.g. LGs 100 inch Laser Display which is really a short-throw projection TV.
I clearly need to get a life…
Or not..
Come now Richard!
“A 65″ television is conspicuous consumption at its worst?” At 78 I do often struggle to read the text on a 42″ tv – with glasses on!
But I do often think the size on the TV is often inversely proportional to the number of books in the house.
And,to be fair,I think that anyone who drives a car larger than a FIAT Panda is also displaying “conspicuous consumption” – and have a pathological hatred of big 4 x 4s !