TV Outlook; reply to a survey

I don’t have TV in the house. One winter I tried it out for a month to keep the kids entertained. It’s a powerful monster. I wouldn’t have it again. Reasons: –

• (a) One can’t yarn with the neighbours who visit.
• (b) Even the best TV programmes have a certain intellectual ceiling. One gets accustomed to thinking at that level. They also leave out a lot – the coarse, the bizarre, the primitive – and one gets gradually accustomed to leaving that out of one’s thinking.
• (c) It would fog up my mind and destroy the power of meditation on events.
• (d) Its effect is basically a drugging one. If I want a drug I’d prefer marihuana.
• (e) It extends the hideous modern invasion of privacy by advertisers.page 743
• (f)) It gives children square eyes and keeps them off the streets or out of the bush, eyes glued to the screen like little leeches sucking in the sludge.
• (g) It costs more than it’s worth.

I like the ‘Laramie’ series and ‘Steptoe and Son’, but I’m prepared to do without them.

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