Media Addiction

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Sally Miculek

9 October 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

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AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Sally Miculek

My husband and I don’t have Cable. We don’t have satellite. We just have an antenna for our television, and sometimes find ourselves watching a little extra fuzz. A couple years ago, when we moved in together in anticipation of our coming nuptials, both of us looked forward to getting Cable hooked up. But then it just didn’t happen. We set up DSL. We signed up for Netflix. Finally, we talked it over and decided that maybe we don’t need all those extra channels after all. We get enough TV shows from Network Television, and the Netflix keeps us in a steady supply of movies, so my cinephile mate doesn’t think longingly about what he could be watching if we had HBO or the Independent Film Channel. Anything that comes on Cable that ends up good enough for us to want to watch it will come to DVD soon enough, and this way we get to skip the commercials!

Inevitably, one night as I was happily watching Antiques Roadshow or The American Experience, or some other vaguely wholesome PBS offering, the doorbell rang. I opened the door, encountering the ubiquitous Time Warner guy. He launched into his schpiel about the current offer from Time Warner, and how much money we’d save if we hooked up now, and what kind of introductory package we’d get, blah blah blah. I was in the process of turning him down when he looked around behind me, saw the television, and then stared blankly at me, incredulous. “You don’t want Cable?” “Nope.” “But you’re watching Public Television. Don’t you want better TV than that?”

Now, I realize that the poor Time Warner guy is programmed to tell people that Cable is way better than PBS, but come on! How on earth could the folks who brought us the Golf Channel possibly claim that what they’ve got to offer is somehow of higher quality than the Keno brothers? Are the Sopranos really much more interesting than a documentary on Appalachia? Needless to say, the poor guy didn’t get his commission that evening, and the Miculek household soldiers on in its Cable-free state, much to the shock of many friends and extend family members.

I’ll be the first to tell you I’m a media junkie. My VCR is programmed to record The O.C. And I admit it. I’m sure a lot of you are junkies, too, even though you may not watch shows about beautiful people in California. Maybe you don’t watch television at all. Maybe you’re addicted to your computer. Or books. I’m a junkie for media in most of its forms. My morning isn’t complete without Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep. I check multiple email addresses many, many times each day. I paid for New York Times Select so I can still read all the online articles I want. I choose purses and bags based on whether or not they’re likely to hold a copy of my trusty New Yorker and/or whatever book I may be reading at the moment. In short, I’ve got a lot of means at my disposal to tune out the world around me, and I’m a fervent user of them all.

But how do I keep from letting a small amount of media-induced isolation mushroom and truly cut me off from the things I love to do and the people I like to spend time with? I work on tilting the balance away from rampant media consumption and towards activities that encourage actively participating in my life. I record and watch two television shows on a regular basis. That number’s down from about four last year and about eight the year before. I still watch other TV, but I try not to let it become a priority. I try to make sure the books I read are good ones. I talk to people about what I’m reading, whether they’re going to read the same things or no. I jog. I use my husband’s new banjo habit and the endless practice sessions to help pass the time while I take on what would normally be tedious household tasks. I am definitely addicted, but at least I’m aware of the problem and am trying to do something about it. Maybe some of the folks in the congregation are on the same path. And perhaps someday we can all go toss our televisions and computers (figuratively, at least) off Mount Bonnell. Until then, though, a few minutes reading Maureen Dowd, or a little time spent dwelling on the trials and tribulations of the Cohen family isn’t going to kill us. And, no matter what, I’m keeping my books.

SERMON: Media Addiction

My name is Davidson and I’m a recovering television addict. That may sound silly, but it’s true. When I bought my house two years ago, I decided not to have cable connected. So for the past two years, I have not watched any television at home.

I made the decision to go cold turkey when I realized that I’d been watching an average of over four hours of television a night for several years, and couldn’t remember ever seeing anything I really needed to know, and very little that I could even remember.

Now I read more books, and go out to my shop and turn wooden bowls, and sometimes have dinner with friends – things I didn’t have time to do when my television addiction was in full swing.

Four hours a day may sound extreme, but it isn’t. An online Indian magazine just reported that in the twelve months from 20 September 2004 to 18 September 2005, the average American watched four hours and thirty-two minutes of television a day, and the television set was on for an average of eight hours and eleven minutes a day – the highest figure in the history of television. (http://www.Indiantelevision.com/, 29 September 2005)

Children spend more time watching television than they spend in school now, by over a hundred hours. They see an average of 30,000 commercials a year. At that rate, by age 65, they will have seen over two million television commercials. And the people who write commercials are much better storytellers and much better at appealing to their deep fears and wants than public school teachers are. After all, toy manufacturers spend 92% of their advertising budget on television ads.

In some important ways, television is the real teacher of our children. It’s where they learn the most powerful stories, see the most powerful images, where they learn how to look, what to wear, what to eat, and to a large degree who to be.

Still, is this really a spiritual or religious issue, or just the kind of rant you’d expect from a recovering addict?

It’s a spiritual matter, and I want to think about it with you in two different ways, one theological and one more down-to-earth.

Most of us grew up in the atmosphere of Western religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And all three religions make a big deal out of idolatry, the difference between worshiping gods and idols.

Here’s an easy lesson in Religion 101, on the difference between gods and idols. If you think in these terms, then it matters a lot what we worship, and whether it’s a god or an idol. To put that in ordinary language, it matters what values and ideals we put at the center of our life. We want to serve things with our life that serve us too, that make our life richer and more satisfying. Some theologians call these gods.

We all have them, whether we call them gods or just call them ideals and values. And we all make the same deal with them. See if this isn’t true for you. We make a kind of contract, a covenant.

We say “I’ll live my life in your terms. I’ll make you the center of my life and my energies and activities. I’ll serve you heart and soul. And in return, you must give me a life that will have been worth living.”

One person gives their life to working for justice as they define it. They’ll break dates to work at this, and gladly do this work rather than take a vacation or read a book about something completely unrelated to the kind of justice they want to see. And they do it gladly, because they believe that there is nothing that is more worthy of them and their time. They expect, when they look back in years to come, that they will be able to say, “I served this, I made it the center of my life, I made it my god, and it gave me a life I am proud to have lived.” If we can say that, we don’t ask much more.

But not everything we chase after can give us life. Some things we chase after were never really interested in us at all. They just use us for their own ends, and take life away from us, leaving us drained and empty and depressed. It’s such a shock when it happens. They were so seductive! We were so sure! It seemed so good!

This is what Buddhists or Hindus call the difference between living in illusions or maya, and living in reality. In Western religion, we call it the difference between serving gods and serving idols. And chasing after idols, like chasing after mirages or living in illusions, usually ends up by draining life from us rather than giving us more and deeper life. Because idols use their seductive powers to take us in, use us up, and throw us out.

This word “seduction” is the right word for what’s going on. It’s always surprising to learn that “seduction” comes from the same root as the word “education.” And the difference between the two words is precisely the difference between idols and gods, illusion and reality.

The root of both words is the “-duc,” which means “to lead.” So a conductor leads the musicians through the music, or leads his bus or train through the countryside. Induction leads you into something – the Army, or the Hall of Fame, perhaps. Education means to lead you outward, out of your smaller self into a larger and more adequate self. That’s what education is about. It’s why we go to school: to learn to become bigger, deeper, more aware and nuanced. We want to be led into a bigger sense of identity and a bigger life; we want to be educated.

And seduce? It means to lead astray: to lead off the path. To lead somewhere that doesn’t make you bigger or deeper or better. It means to lead you in ways that serve not you, but your seducer. Your seducer takes you in. You follow gladly, willingly, because you’ve been seduced but think you’re going to be educated. They you’re used to fill the seducer’s needs, used up, and tossed aside.

A seducer is an idol, a powerful but illusory presence that you want to follow but shouldn’t follow.

The oldest and most vivid story of seduction I know of comes from around three thousand years ago, in The Odyssey from ancient Greece. If you know the story, you’ll remember the scene where Odysseus’ ship must sail past the Sirens, those supernatural but deadly women who would seduce him and his crew with their Sirens’ Song. No one could resist that song, he was told. But he was curious. So he had his men tie him to the mast so he couldn’t escape, then had them fill their ears with wax so they couldn’t hear the seductive song, and they sailed by the island of the Sirens.

The Sirens called out, and even mighty Odysseus screamed for his men to turn to shore, to follow their seductive song. But they couldn’t hear him, so they kept sailing. If you looked closely on the shores of their island, you saw the many piles of bones bleached white by the sun and surf. That was all that was left of those who had followed the Sirens’ Song.

The seducers, like the Sirens, are only doing what comes naturally to them. They’re simply a lot better at it than you are, so they take you in. It’s so easy for them to take you in, and then to use you as they will. But anybody that easy to take in is hard to care very much about, and they don’t. You can see why so many people want to say that whatever else you could say about God, God is Love. Because love wouldn’t do that to you. Seduction would, but not God, not Education, not anything that cared about you.

What does this have to do with television? Seduction means leading astray, leading away from wholeness, truth, health, into a direction that serves the seducer at the expense of the seduced – in any field. Television distracts us from life in order to draw us into crowds to hawk their wares to.

You might ask, “What about news? We need the news!” I would ask you to think about how much news we get, how complete it is, how reliable it is, and whether news programs, just like other entertainment programs, aren’t really trying to draw a crowd for their sponsors, rather than educate them. If “news” is the information that keeps people free, I don’t think there has been much news on television for decades.

And look how the time is actually spent on news programs. About 30% of the total time is taken with commercials. Nearly 54% of the time is spent on war, crime and terror, and one of the slogans of nearly all news programs is “If it bleeds, it leads.” Is this education, or seduction? Do they want to serve you, or use you?

“Well,” you might think, “if the world is really that full of war, crime and terror, then don’t we need to know about it?” Well, we need to know why there is war, who is making money from it, what deceptions were used to trick others into losing their lives there. It would help to know the economic background of most of our crime, why people feel driven to crime in order to get by. But we don’t hear these things.

And the focus on crime and terror aren’t to educate us. They are the evening news version of “If it bleeds, it leads.” It’s car-crash journalism, meant to draw a crowd of passing sailors to its shores, like the Sirens.

For example, during one five-year period (1990-95), television coverage of homicides went up by 336% — nearly three and a half times. Yet during that same period, the actual homicides in the real world went down by 13%. That’s not news. That’s a Siren Song, a seduction, an idol.

And it’s not a secret. Four out of five Hollywood executives believe there is a link between TV violence and real-life violence. Over nine out of ten children say they feel upset or scared by violence on television.

The longest we go on television without a commercial break is eight minutes. Violence, terror, murder, sex and brutality are featured on the news for the same reason they are featured on so many regular television shows: because they draw a crowd that can be used by the superb seduction of the advertising industry to reward their sponsors. Is this education or seduction? Is it serving us or duping us?

Spending an average of four and a half hours a day watching television means that we are spending one quarter of our waking time, and nearly all our leisure time, sitting in front of the tube.

When I was watching an average of four hours of TV a night, I watched mostly the Law & Order-type shows, or CSI, or Monday Night Football. I found that I was more paranoid, more aware of danger, less aware of grace or kindness, more suspicious of others, and when I dreamed, the dreams often had violent themes. Since I stopped watching TV, I seldom dream, and almost never have violent themes in my dreams or my waking imagination. It is simply easier to see and believe in the loving and kind parts of people, and to see violence and deceit as sins against humanity, rather than the way things are in a dog-eat-dog world.

Even when I watched good dramas – and I thought a lot of the Law & Order shows were good dramas, well-acted – the aftertaste was violent. I never felt better after watching them, never felt uplifted, never had my faith in myself or in humanity strengthened, only weakened.

And so, like many addicts, I don’t have much good to say for the drug that seduces me so easily.

But I don’t hate television because:

1. of car-crash journalism that draws crowds to sell them things rather than to educate and enlarge them

2. or because it seduces Americans into living vicariously within the stories it spins to attract them, while its commercials help them run up their credit card debt to an average of about $10,000 at over 22% interest.

3. I don’t hate television because it tries to seduce us into wanting material wealth when what we need is spiritual wealth.

4. Or the reality TV that both reflects and programs the selfish and deceptive behavior used to get ahead while downplaying or ignoring our humanity, our decency and our compassion.

5. And I don’t hate news shows that titillate rather than educate, and turn serious debates into the shallow sensationalist joust of the day.

6. Or the fact that after a few years of watching over four hours of TV a day, I still can’t remember anything I learned that I needed to know.

7. And I don’t hate television because I resent the fact that commercials work, and I, like millions of others, keep buying things I don’t need.

Well … yes I do. Yes I do hate television for this, for all these reasons. But I hate it the way an alcoholic hates alcohol, because if it’s on I’m drawn to it like a moth to a flame or a sailor to bone-covered shores. I watch it like an idiot. When I’m on the road, I sit in front of the TV in my motel room for four hours every night. The next morning, I can’t remember what I watched or why, and am glad to return home to a TV set that only plays movies and videos on how to turn bowls.

You may not be addicted. Your self-control may be much better than mine – unless you’re also watching four and a half hours a night. But television is not an innocuous presence in our homes. I think it’s a dangerous one.

Because we are shaped by the most powerful stories we learn, molded by the ideals and values that we absorb. All of education and all of religion know and rely on this fact. So do advertisers. But education at its best is about leading us out of ourselves into a bigger identity and more satisfying life. Religion at its best is about inducting us into a Sangha, a community of faith where life is valued and only the best in us is encouraged. And the media, I think, neither educate nor induct, but seduce. They lead astray. They are the Siren Songs of today, and few of us seem very good at resisting them.

Think about it this way: Would you invite a storyteller into your home every night to tell you stories of blood, greed, murder and violence, leaving you more fearful and paranoid, robbing you of the time you might have spent doing things together? And then the next day, would you rush out to buy things you don’t need, so that the sponsors would send this same toxic storyteller back into your home again the next night? No, of course, you wouldn’t do that. Or do you?

A few years ago, the Surgeon General of the United States sponsored Turn off the TV weeks. When the Surgeon General sponsored a Turn off the TV week a few years ago, he said, “We are raising the most overweight generation of youngsters in American history … This week is about saving lives.” The surgeon general says television is bad for physical health. But most of it is just as bad for emotional, psychological and spiritual health.

A second grader named Drew Henderson of Donora, PA said “I really didn’t like TV-Turnoff Week except that I did notice that my grades went up and I was in a good mood all week.”

So I wonder. What if we could kick the TV habit, stop spending most of our leisure time ingesting stories that make us more afraid, more suspicious of our fellow humans, and more insensitive to real-world violence? And what if, instead, we had more time to spend with those we love – learning how to turn that love into memories worth having – and our real-world performance went up and we were in a good mood. If we could do that, would that be a bad thing?