Personally, I find television to be about the greatest thing ever. Aside from that fact that it is riddled with commercials, which are about the worst thing ever, to make you bristling with irritation in a manner of seconds, tv provides me an endless stream of funny entertainment. Well, I had an important personalized-epiphany take place during one of my million google searches into the reason for existence/why my life sucks/commiseration.
This was similarly profound in how correct it was, to the time my high school teacher said 'Ketchup has more sugar than tomatoes, it tastes sweet'. The next time (and all subsequent times) that I tasted ketchup, it didn't taste like ketchup the commodity, it tasted like sugar-paste slathered atop a very plain bun and a salty hot dog. My teacher's reflection shed an important spark of truth on my life. Similarly, it was serendipitous when I discovered online the phrase 'TV cures loneliness'. Now I understand my TV viewing fascination in a new, and more accurate feeling, light. This is in contrast to the typical view that 'TV cures boredom'.
This realization hit me with strength and real dexterity in its applicability to life. Here's some background on why the phrase "TV cures loneliness" is applicable to me and to you. Well, first off, I'm really lonely. Like, really lonely, despairing, sad, down, furious, at my lack of human contact. Not so unrelated as it turns out, I have a pretty standard schedule that occurs for when I come home daily: put stuff down, open the fridge, grab food, and turn on my laptop to the internet, or TV, or both.
What do you look at when you watch television? You are seeing humans, in all forms - humans who work, humans who do stuff about their lives, houses, streets, nature, places. And you are experiencing human contact - by listening to voices, voices that chatter, talk, laugh, cry. Faces that contain facial expressions. For the sake of this article, I am slimming down TV and shaving off plot, engaged interest, learning. Rather, I'm talking about the sensation of perception of human contact that occurs instantaneously with viewing a human face. I think that many people would argue that, TV is all actors, and so you don't really engage with the characters onscreen, you obviously you are forever separated by them, from a tube. I would contend that, rather, you are having a direct experience of contact - not of reality, but of contact. Not of face to face contact, no, but its contact nonetheless. The same occurs when you look at a picture. To separate from digital, lets say a printed out picture, tangible. You can touch the picture, but you can't touch of sense the object of your perception. Nonetheless, it is contact. Pictures of anybody, even people you don't know, you still find it engaging, watching these people, looking at their eyes and faces.
Humans are obsessed with humans.
We can't help it, and we wouldn't survive if we didn't. Maybe its a survival tactic, to be so obsessed with ones own kind. Seeing humans, even seeing an old abandoned building, is still a mark of humanity, and provides contact. Even contact that is unwanted - contact with strangers on the subway, on the streets, its all a form of perceiving humans. It can be digital - TV, which is so easy to engage in for its personal privacy. There's nowhere safer than the couch, is there? You get to do all your watching and contacting, with no bounds of fear of staring. You get to choose the object of your contact, so never fear boredom. Same with the internet - youtube, chatboards. Another example is music, radio. Its distracting, sure, but for distraction we could just put on white noise. No - we choose to listen to radio because we love to hear the sound of a human voice. When you are driving around, alone, isn't it such a relief to hear a song playing, to engage with a voice?
And contact provides a relief from loneliness. For me its not subtle, and it is immediate.
I was going to talk about the relief of seeing an encampment or any trace of humans, when you are out in nature. But maybe this just shows my current disconnect with nature. Possibly, nature should provide as much contact relief as humanity, but for me it doesn't. It just seems distant and odd, even in beauty.
Back to the idea of TV curing loneliness: that's why I was strongly stuck in that routine of turning on the TV and internet immediately as I returned home. I've never gotten into the habit of playing music, but same goes. My mind, body and soul, are constantly anxious for, hungering for, contact with humanity. And, as felt like the best of my abilities- TV provided it, as did youtube. All this entertainment, it wasn't solely because I was bored, it was because I am desperately lonely. My point of contact resides on a screen, since I live in the digital age. I am so painfully lonely that I need it on, immediately. I get really excited coming to texts, emails too. I'd prefer these over TC. But for now, and in all my past, my constant fuel stream of loneliness is pampered and soothed, by the easy guise of boredom-curing entertainment.
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