Comments

A very sad person — 12 Comments

  1. I agree with your key sentence: “Go outside and see the real world.”

    The real world is our regular interaction with fellow humans, in our homes, at work, at recreation and when shopping.
    Everything else is voyeurism (or gawking if you don’t like French.) So many old and sick people rely on radio and television to comfort them in their loneliness; but so many others escape from real life by resorting indiscriminately to these media.

    The commercially driven preoccupation with rock concerts in Slane and elsewhere, or the launch of the latest Harry Potter book or film version is another example of distancing from real life.

    If all the world’s television networks were to be put out of action by a protracted surge of solar blackspot activity there would soon be riots on city streets around the globe by millions of people disorientated by the terror of not knowing what to do or think.

  2. Yoda?! Now I need to go see a therapist to get that image out of my mind. Thanks so much.

  3. Gerry – You have hit on one of my great irritations in life.

    I have always maintained that television is one of the greatest curses of the modern age. It robs people of the need to think or to use their imagination. It breeds discontent with its advertising. It gives people artificial worlds in which to inhabit, to the extent that some forget that there is a world outside television.

    We live in an incredibly shallow world, where ‘celebrity’ is the Golden Calf of our age. The modern icon is, in general, some talentless, brainless bimbo who’s contribution to society is less than zero.

    I could go on, but I’d better not. I would fill up too many pages.

    Paul – You’re welcome. Are you a Yoda fetishist?

  4. We know that the unplugged television is a babysitter for young children. We know that it is not switched off during evening meals, thus interfering with the ancient custom of the family evening meal, when parents talk to children or talk in an adult way to each other in front of the children.

    I am beginning to have a theory that this diminishing communication between parents and children is one thing contributing to the alarming rate of suicides in Ireland by young males aged 16-25.

  5. You could well be right, Gerry.

    Studies done in Holland have shown that families who eat together [without the television on] and who converse are more cohesive. There is less of a feeling then of isolation amongst the younger generation, which in turn leads to a much better society.

  6. It’s good to hear that ‘scientific’ studies done in Holland on the morale of families that eat regular meals with the TV set switched off have proved what many of us know from commonsense observation. Can we do anything about it, though?

  7. Absolutely nothing. Apart from teaching parents to switch the telly off. In most cases though, parents find that the telly is a very convenient babysitter, so the children are reared on it from infancy. And we wonder why the language here is so Americanised?

  8. I heard a six-year-old village girl on my street say out loud some years ago to a boy about her own age: “You’re an asshole, Paul.” She got that remark straight off one of the American cop series.

  9. Yes, Ewan visited the children’s hospice he has supported for years and was answering a child’s question about his favorite acting experience and least favorite. You can’t blame him for saying acting to a blue screen was his his least favorite!

    But the gossip press ran with that innocent answer to say that Ewan hated Star Wars. Pretty big difference between it being his least favorite acting experience having hated it.

    Ewan merchandise: Not much. He sells “Long Way Round” and “Long Way Down” books, DVDs, and scarves to benefit UNICEF and the children’s hospice.

  10. WB – Thanks for clearing that up. This is the first I have heard about it.

    So the essence of the story is that Ewan didn’t enjoy making Star Wars? And this is somehow showing disrespect to Jedi [who are fictional characters]?

    Wow! So these morons want to deprive UNICEF and a children’s hospice because of an imaginary insult to a character in a story?

    Infantile!

  11. My God there are some very strange people in this word with even stranger priorities:)

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