"The more complex the mind, the greater the need for play."
- Mr. Spock, Star Trek: episode "Shore Leave"

"It seems today that all you see is violence in movies and sex on TV. But where are those good old fashion values on which we used to rely?"
- The Theme Song of Family Guy

"TV - you give so much and ask so little."
- Homer Simpson

"Everything has been said before. There's nothing left to say anymore when it's all the same you can ask for it by name. Babble, babble, bitch, bitch, rebel, rebel, party, party, sex, sex, sex, and don't forget the "violence".
Blah,blah, blah, got your lovey-dovey sad-and-lonely, stick your STUPID SLOGAN in!"
- Marilyn Manson

"TV and web addiction are fundamentally about an active orientation to life. Addiction is passivity, lack of control (and thus a need for artificial control), and consumption; its opposite is interest in life, active engagement, seeking and obtaining real-world activity and reward. "
- The Stanton Peele Addiction Website (www.peele.net)

June 12th, 2004

How many people here don't think I'm going to be serious? Okay, that would be all of you.

Well, here is the shocker: I'm serious about this. TV addiction is very, very real. More so than smoking, more so than pot, and more so than alchohol. It is more insidious than any of these addictions because an entire industry and institution has been built around television entertainment. It is such a part of mainstream America that we don't even realize what we're doing until it's too late. TV addiction is uncontrollable. The price for TV addiction is higher than any of us will consciously admit. I'm certain that it is the downfall of most marriages and the reason why half of this country is unemployed, overweight, lazy, and has attention deficit disorder.

My name is Vikar... and I'm a TV addict. (Okay, I'm waiting for the rest of the room to say, "Hi Vikar!") I have yet to find one support group like TVA (Television Anonymous) around. It apparently exists but I've never seen its ilk about in New Jersey.

You may ask, "Vikar, how did you become a TV addict?" Well, I don't know exactly. I've been watching television since before I remember. As a matter of fact, I don't remember a time in my childhood when I wasn't watching the tube. It's not like some shadowy figure rolled up to me with a Neilson box and said, "Hey kid, wanna try this for free? It's black and white but it'll get better... trust me." No, that didn't happen. Also, I wasn't strapped to a chair as a toddler and force fed TV programs.

Well, maybe I was, come to think of it.

I had a relatively normal childhood. I was active in sports: baseball, soccer, karate and judo. I had friends. We would watch television together and watch the Saturday 4:30 monster movies with Godzilla and Gamera. And aside from living in a suburban area that was duller than moose shit on a summer day, we made do with what we had - which was pretty much nothing. We did normal kid deviant things like throw rocks at each other and jump from the roof of new housing constructs onto large piles of dirt. On rainy days we stayed inside and watched Looney Tunes. We rode our bikes everywhere in Howell Township to Lakewood and went exploring. And when we had access to explosives, like firecrackers, we blew things up. (Take that! You bubble wrap moms of the new millenia!)

However, with all that aside, I did watch an abnormal amount of television. I would get home from school and watch TV immediately. This was bad. I would watch TV until about 8:PM, do my homework, and come back downstairs and watch some more until I had to go to bed. My parents actually owned one of the first pilot VCR's back in 1978. It never really occurred to my parents to actually turn off the TV. Especially when they were getting comments from parent/teacher conferences that I had problems paying attention in class and "lacked self control" (Pay attention, kiddies, these are all symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder). So, apparently, it was my fault for lacking the self discipline at ages 6 to 18 to not watch television. How was I to know?!! I WAS ADDICTED!!!

It was all I knew.

I watched so much television I could tell you the difference between the two Darren's in Bewitched. I could probably summarize every plot of I Love Lucy, Gilligan's Island, I Dream of Jeannie, The Brady Bunch, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, All In The Family, The Jeffersons, Welcome Back Kotter, Good Times, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, The Carol Burnett Show, as well every cartoon that came on a Saturday Morning since 1971. As a child, I can remember sneaking into my parents' room on a Saturday morning and hitting my mother in the head with a straw cowboy hat in an F-Troop Corporal Agarn-like move.

Mom wasn't happy. My parents through the grace of the ten commandments allowed me to live to age 18.

Fortunately, my grades were good enough to get me into college. Fate was also on my side. I didn't take a television with me to college and I read more. I found that I was able to focus a little bit better in class and I could actually do relatively well in school. I also learned that without the "plug-in distraction" that I had at home, I had no urge to procrastinate (or at the very least, had to get creative on how I procrastinated). When I came home during the summer off seasons, I worked and had no real time for TV. I would only watch TV on Saturday Mornings (I just love cartoons). There just wasn't any time for any TV.

When I moved out on my own, I did have a television and I did have cable, but I rarely watched TV (only on Saturday mornings after being hung over). I was pretty much on the bar and dating scene at that point. I was working relatively insane hours at my new job (13 years ago, it was new) and all of my friends were around after work. So, television was still not really a big part of my life again.

However, when I began to settle down... and when I got married... and when I moved back down to Freehold, I realized that I was getting tired and there was absolutely NOTHING to do around here. I started to watch TV. At first, it was just to unwind after a hard day. Then it was to watch my Saturday morning to Saturday afternoon ritual. After that, it was my Sunday daily ritual. Pretty soon, I was watching television every non-working, non-commuting, non-sleeping hour. My attention and ability to concentrate on things other than the television began to decline. I realized that outside of the television world, I didn't have a life. At least if I drank heavily at a bar, I'd be getting out of the house.

It was starting to be a real problem.

My epiphany came when on May 31st, this year. I was sitting down and watching something I really did not want to watch, I can't even remember what it was. There were literally 57 channels and nothing on. I kept watching television.

And somewhere in the back of my mind ego said, "STOP! What are you doing?!!"

So I came to a resolution. Beginning on June 1st, I went on a month long prolonged television fast. It is a purging, if you will. I have a stack of books I have not read. I went out and bought a couple more - just in case. I would not watch a nanosecond of television. If I needed entertainment, I'd talk to my wife or read a book. And it has not been easy. There were definitely times when I was bored, I could actually feel the draw back to my chair to click on the television and veg out.

It's a hard habit to break.

However, in giving up television, I've found a new road to self discovery. I've found more time for personal meditation. Unfortunately, personal meditation is not always a good thing. I've started to investigate the methods of Buddhism where I'm peeling back each layer of my life and ego and not liking what I see. I now have the opportunity for REAL self improvement. I'm planning on seeing a therapist to confirm what I've long suspected to be, through my readings, Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. If what I have self diagnosed is true, I have a long road ahead of me.

But I digress, back to the boob tube.

I've begun to wonder about the big picture. You know what I'm talking about - the BIG picture. What has happened to the American people as a society because of the invention of television? We are reading less. Literacy scores are going down the toilet. Why should someone read a book when they can just watch a television show or movie about it? What kind of future does the US have because of its involvement with television? There's a reason why East Indians and the Asians are kicking our asses in every cerebral occupation and event. It's because we've allowed ourselves to become slaves of an idiot box. It is truly making us idiots.

If you'll observe the people of Great Britain, on the average, I believe their culture to be more sophisticated than ours (I know, it's a horrible stereotype and those British are sooooo superior). But I believe they only have three or four channels to work from for the BBC. But those shows are a leap beyond the sewage we Americans watch. I don't have BBC America but what I do have is a DVD player. By the way, that's another sign of too much television watching. I have approximately 240 DVD's in my personal collection (and growing). All of which I've watched at least twice. If you take the dollar amount of what I've spent on those little discs, I could live happily in Hawaii for about a month.

In any event, I've managed to compile a large amount of BBC produced shows like Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Black Adder (full series), Father Ted (All 3 seasons), Red Dwarf (everything they've released so far in the US), The Wodehouse Theatre, Jeeves and Wooster, Granada's Sherlock Holmes (starring Jeremy Brett), and many, many others. That is quality viewing and television comedy that makes the veiwer have to think a bit. If I have to waste my time in front of the television, at least I'll be watching good British television.

But as the humor is more sophisticated, you need a more sophisticated mind to appreciate it. American television usually appeals to a very base mind (Sorry, no offense to network executives out there. Although, I believe you people to be an overpaid bunch of useless jerks - And I mean that in the nicest possible way). One does have to ask, is the humor making people more base or are the people making the humor more base? What came first: The chicken or the egg?

Where do we compare the intelligence of our viewing? We have Star Trek. Ahhhhh, but they have Dr. Who! We have Seinfeld and Frasier, but they have Ab Fab and Monty Python. It may just be a matter of my personal preference and it probably is. What I can tell you, however, is that I don't feel like it's been real time wasted when I watch Jeeves and Wooster. I watch this show when the world has gotten too out of hand and complex and I start wishing to whatever benevolent deity out there that I could have a "Jeeves" to pull me out to the messes I've gotten into.

I've been on my TV fast for 12 days as of this writing and I have only broken my vow twice.

The first time it was quite unintentional and that is what scares me. I was walking into the company's cafeteria and President Pinhead was on. My mind focused directly to the television to see what's going on. What's going on with the war? Are we under attack? How badly is he screwing up again? I sat down and began to watch. I stopped watching when I got so ticked off at his policies on free trade that I had to leave. It had never occurred to me that I broke my vow. Television is so insidious that once you are hooked on this addiction, a TV broadcast can draw you in. It's such a natural part of today's environment that the watcher takes it for granted. I convinced myself that whatever I was watching at that point could have been important and lost no sleep over it.

The second time I broke my vow was done intentionally. Yesterday, I watched President Reagan's state funeral. This was history and I was not going to miss it by some self imposed vow. I wanted to see this as state funerals are few and far between.

Plus, I liked Reagan. I felt it was my duty as an American to pay some kind of respect.

And that's it. I really have not watched any TV since yesterday. I know that's not saying much but what I can say is that the amount of television I've watched over the last 12 days comes out to about 4 hours - and that's pretty damn good.

I want to continue a thread I started briefly a moment ago about the insidiousness of television. Its wide acceptance into modern life as a faux culture has been created not about what people have actually done but what writers have made for people to watch. I listen to my sisters and my parents talk about what they were watching and how they can't miss the "Thursday Night line up". When you think about it, what did they physically do? They sat and kept their eyes open. They let whatever broadcast on the television infiltrate their minds and their views. The viewer tries to make an evaluation on what they saw. This goes for everything - the news, PBS, the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet as well as the sludge people see on network television.

Now I understand the reasoning for television is to unwind after a long and complex day, but can't the same thing be done by just reading a book? How about going to the gym? Use the muscles that nature gave to create a body worth a god or goddess. Why not take up a hobby like bike riding or tennis? Or for people who are not so inclined to the physical spectrum, do a jigsaw puzzle or a logic problem. Learn a new language. How about this one for married people? How about talking to your spouse? Why not spend time with your significant other? Spend time with your kids doing something other than watching television. Work on a project together.

I know its a different world than it was when I grew up, but a philosophy of competition is always a good thing. I'm currently in the middle of reading Jack - Straight from the Gut, the autobiography of Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric. It is an excellent book on not only management theory but also many of the philosophies and building blocks that made him the man he is. Among which is the concept of competition. His mother kept him competitive at an early age and years later those fundemental practices kept him on track to get him to the top. The irony about this and my rant is that Jack helped start up MSNBC - all news TV, all the time.

Parents may wish to say that they played catch with their kids rather than say they watched Cheers together on a Thursday.

It's food for thought.

Now, I'm not a parent and I probably never will be. So, take this advice for what it's worth. Don't you think it would be better to help your child with their studies or to be around to answer a question or maybe throw some sage advice instead of just watching the tube? Isn't better for a child's development to have them think you, say, give a shit? Now my wife and I aren't the best uncle and aunt in the world, but, if any of my nieces ever needed help on a project or advice or information for a report they were writing, we'd both be happy to help. Why? Because helping someone contribute to be a better person, or at least a wiser one, is better than searching for what can be found while surfing the cable stations. Is your time better spent watching the tube or making a memory for someone who can take what you give them and apply it in real life?

I think your time is better spent sharing in the investment in ideas for people rather than burning a plasma screen or a cathode ray tube.

Progress Report - DAY 17