From Amanda's very early writing (1990s to early 2000s), shared as it was originally written.
117 reality challenged
A few months ago I saw a cartoon in which there is a father and his young son sitting in front of the TV. They are watching a sunset in all it’s splendid beauty. To their left is a window with a view over a hill showing the real sunset they are watching on the TV!
As are many of Michael Leunig’s cartoons, this is a massive statement about what is happening to us in the world of ‘virtual’ everything. We experience sport through the TV instead of running around ourselves; we visit foreign countries via the TV and lose our urge to travel abroad and actually feel a different culture; we watch real life drama rather than deal with our own by communicating; we play games on the computer rather than run around playing games together outside; we lose ourselves in chat rooms on the internet instead of taking the risk of meeting someone real; etc.
I was speaking at a conference last week and the charming gentleman introducing me was a medical professor. He illustrated a point by telling us about children who were born with a neurological defect that prevented them feeling pain. When we first hear this, we think, lucky kids. But this is not the case. These children experience many difficulties that range from biting their own tongues as a play activity, to not knowing when they have broken a limb or if their hand is sitting on a hotplate. It is a nightmare of a condition.
If we lived our lives without emotional pain we would be the same. Avoiding the pain of living means avoiding the joy; escaping into a virtual world where we are sheltered from reality means we miss both the highs and lows and all the stages in between. Not to mention we miss out on personal growth and development, the whole purpose of being on this earth!
Imagine sitting on a grassy patch somewhere and watching a magnificent sunset with all the associated sounds of nature ; seeing the amazing change of colors and the impact of those colors on everything around you; feeling the zephyr of a breeze on your face and the temperature as it gently cools. You feel at one with nature and peace descends on your soul. (Poetic huh?)
Compare that with a room full of furniture; you’re sitting on some artificial fabric; the TV is on and you see a part of the sunset (the main part of course); the colors are dependant on the way you have set up the color button on the TV; out of the TV speakers you hear selected sounds that may or may not be added to the sounds of a radio blaring in the background; and you hear those at a volume that is preset you. That’s it. No unique experience; no communing with nature or bathing in the beauty of the soft colors and sounds and temperatures.
Are we in danger of becoming reality challenged? Are we missing out on living in the real world and escaping permanently into the TV or computer worlds? Are TV’s and computers absorbing too much of our children’s time? Do we set the example of watching sport rather than playing it with them? Watching comedies as a family together is great bonding. Once a week.
Sitting in front of TV every night, eating all our meals there and never spending time together away from that constant distraction is threatening the family unit.
Maybe it’s time to stop and look at the technology in our lives. Is it encroaching on our relating time? The only way we can forge and maintain bonds in our families or with our friends, is to have time with them. Time when we are really together, not just clustered in front of the TV or computer.
We need to talk. Communicate, share, express feelings, or just ‘be’ together. We need to play sport together or just play together. And this applies to couples and families. Perhaps it would be wise to schedule in a Techno free day each week? We have alcohol free days, smoke free days, why not techno free days? Sounds good to me. Anyway I’m off to play tennis, real tennis and risk the pain of losing to real people who’ll see me lose!
720 words
