implications of a life without TV or radio... without media.

by Aussie Oz 9 Replies latest jw friends

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  Aussie Oz

  We have been without TV for 6 months now.

  I don't listen to the radio

  I don't have news service as my homepage

  I don't buy newspapers

  Thus i have no idea what is happening in the world until somebody tells me. And then they look at me and ask what rock i have been under.

  So... i have no concept of whether the world is in some sort of mess never before seen, whether there is some new developmenbt in the middle east or if the reserve bank of america is in danger from the U.N or whatever. I do not know what country has been hit by an earthquake or a tsunami either.

  For me, the world is a marvelous place. I get up and greet the sheep in the field and cackle at the magpies, i watch the rabbits in the long grass in front of the house. Toddle off to the shed and do some work.

  If the satelites fell from the sky, and the internet and mobile phones wouldn't work one morning, i would put it down to those lousy internet providers. After a few days i might conclude something was amiss, but until i went into town i wouldn't have clue.

  It was not until 1865 that international morse code allowed information to be sent from one country to another, and another almost 70 years for wide spread telegraph and morse code accross the globe. WW2 really sped up the transmission of international information. Even in WW1, the world relied mainly on information by sea. Often the 'news' was already months old when we got it.

  So before MEDIA, the world was a smaller, safer place. In ones own little world, one was only effected by true local happenings.

  I wonder... could i miss 'armageddon'?

  If we think the world is on the brink of destruction, our world will be on the brink.

  oz
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  frigginconfused

  Ive always thought that the rate at wich we can exchange info is greatly tied to the end.
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  losthobbit

  It's kind of a policy of mine not to watch the news. Bad stuff happens all the time, and the news is there just to tell you what the latest bad stuff is.

  Here's the news that's never on the news, and most people probably don't know:

  1. 300,000 people die every day.

  Depending on which site you go to about 20,000 of those are hunger related, and about 30,000 are caused by cancer.

  Basically 99.99 % of news is nowhere near as significant as 300,000 deaths... so news usually doesn't matter.

  2. Global warming may, or may not end the world as we know it.

  3. New things are invented all the time, but they are mostly based on artificial consumer demand, rather than human need because the system the world currently runs on is money.

  I think that's about all you need to know :)
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  transhuman68

  LOL. You really are swimming against the tide, Oz. Here we are switching to digital so we can have more TV channels, and more radio stations, and you don't want any of them!
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  TotallyADD

  I admire what you are doing Oz. I know when you are not bombarded with all that negative news your anxiety level goes way down. The general thinking that we are living in the time of the end because everything is so bad is mostly caused by all this instant mass media we have today. I know when my wife and I go on vacation we have a TV but no dish network or antenna just our favorite DVD to watch. When we get back home we are always amazed at what we did not miss. That really helps to clear the head. Talk about low tech about 2 years ago when we had to get a new cell phone. I told this young girl who was taking care of us I do not want anything but a phone nothing else. She keep pushing for me to have internet access, camera, texting and bunch of other stuff. I said to her look when I was a child the only type of phone we had was a large wooden crank phone that hung on the wall then in 1963 we finally got a dial phone but we were on a party line and you had to remember what your ring was. Ours was 2 shorts and 1 long. She looked at me like I was a caveman. She never heard of anything like that. I ended up with a phone with a camera. Thats was the least tech phone they had. The young people today don't know what they are missing. It is no wonder alot of young ones are so stress out hearing all this bad news all the time. Totally ADD
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  suenott63

  Hi Oz,

  I lived and worked on a ranch in turkey for about a year no tv, no,radio, but did have music. I went horse riding every day up in the hills overlooking the sea, watching the sun go down behind Kos was breathtaking. Also the night sky was amazing I could see the milky way very clearly and track sattelites accross the sky. All this was better than TV with one exception I missed the simpsons! sad i know. The countryside and the sea ( I went sailing on a turkish gulet. And visiting Ephesus Smyrna, Pergamon, Sardis and other ancient sites was great. So keep it up enjoy it while you can.
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  keyser soze

  I assume since you post on this forum that you at least have internet access. That's actually where I get most of my news from. Some from the newspaper. I never watch the news on television, though I like The Daily Show, and Real Time With Bill Maher.
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  NomadSoul

  I want my brain to be connected to the Internet 24/7.

  If only my brain could process triple the information it does now. That would be bliss.
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  kurtbethel

  Oz, you are in the real world.

  The plugged-in world is a construct that occasionally overlaps with the real world.

  I can give you a catch all headline right now, that will fit any day you care for a summary of what happened:

  People Muddled Through
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  Aussie Oz

  Funny thing is, none of it was planned.

  we bought a house in the country that happens to be in a TY dead spot. We can get it, just couldnt be bothered paying a tech to come and sort it out. So in the end we became far happier without it at all. Soon the area will switch to digital and we dont have a capable tv or converter box so...

  The plugged in world is really the matrix i reckon!

  oz