Turn off your TV and live!

K.C. Schofield

Turn on the TV and what do you see? Sex, violence, drugs, money and the glorification of power, material products, wealth and physical beauty.

Look inside your heart and what do you find? Love, family, friendship, spirituality, parenthood, nurturing relationships, and the desire to help and do good for others.

Look at what our nation is teaching us. Our nation is teaching us- the cultural-socio-ideological values of physical looks, material wealth, and power- control over others and resources - are the things which we desire the most/work hardest to attain in our lives.

Do you honestly feel like sex, money, drugs, violence, and owning the latest technology should be the most important things/goals in your life?

Or do you feel that love, family, friendships, parenthood, nurturing relationships, spirituality, giving back to the community and helping others should be the most important thing in our lives?

If you are a genuinely normal, good person, you should choose the latter as the most important, meaningful aspects of life.

Now turn off the TV and what do you see? Your family, your spouse, your children, your home, your pets. Perhaps you will even look out the window or go outside and see the trees, bushes, flowers, grass, insects, animals, the blue sky, clouds, rain, sunsets, the moon and stars.

If you could pick between looking at your new convertible for the rest of your life, or looking out over a lake with a beautiful mountain view for the rest of your life, what would you choose?

Certainly not that big hunk of inanimate metal.

If you could choose between staring at a single piece of furniture for 4.5 hours a day or doing fun activities with and having meaningful supportive relationships with your loved ones, what would you pick?

Certainly not that big hunk of inanimate metal.

The fact is we already make these choices every day. The piece of furniture you stare at is called a television, and it tells you what to do. It tells you to what you should want, and it tells us that we should want physical beauty, material wealth and power over others.

It does not tell us to turn it off, hug our sister, tell our husband we love him for who he is, and take our family for a picnic in the park. It doesn’t tell you that you are beautiful, that life is beautiful. It doesn’t tell you to be sustainable and think for good of all the earth and to care about the future beyond your own short life. It doesn’t tell us how to live meaningful lives. It does not tell us right from wrong, or distinguish good from evil; instead it obscures it. All it does is tell us how to make them more money by buying their products. All television is doing to our country is leading it astray from the values and ideas which give people real lives with real meaning, purpose, and direction.

If all of our children want to grow up to be just like Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg, and Hannah Montana, where will that lead our nation? What will a country of Parisis and Snoop Doggs look like, and what will they value? What will be the moral state of the nation then? Where will the humanity in us be, if all our children are going to care about is bitches, clothes, money, drugs, and guns?

We must ask ourselves where we are leading the youth. Where is the media leading our youth? Who is in control of the media? The government. Who is in control of the government? Corporations. What are the motivations of corporations, government, and media? To control all the wealth for themselves; not spread it around so everyone will benefit from the toil of our cut out, nine-to-five mediocre existence of subservient labor. They are the power-holding jackals of the nation who are corrupting the values of the youth from above to serve their selfish, meaningless, materialistic ends.

The values of Americans are at a crucial point.

We can either teach our children what is really valuable in life: love, family, friends, nurturing relationships, helping others, giving back to the community, and always doing the right thing, even when it hurts. We can teach our children to think for themselves, and to critically analyze the world around us instead of marching like sheep to the beat of a self-serving drum. We can teach our children that physical beauty and material possessions are temporary things which do not give us lasting happiness or health, and we can pull ourselves out of this trap of material confusion and consumption we have so tragically fallen into.

The bottom line is that the ultra-consumer life-style of Americans will eventually completely renounce or forget all values, morals, and ideas that give people real, meaningful, purposeful lives full of love and spiritual fulfillment. The choice is ours. Now let us turn off the TV and do the right thing for our future, even if it hurts.