Lent and Television
Ash Wednesday is next week. What's your plan for Lent? If somebody asks "what are you giving up for Lent," do you have an answer yet? And are we all clear on what we're trying to achieve by giving something up?
In Sunday's homily, I mentioned in passing that when we give something up, it is for the sake of cultivating new interior freedom and spiritual capacity. In today's email, I'd like to explore this idea in more depth.
To begin with one common example, consider fasting from a particular food or from all food for a period of time. There are many reasons to fast, but one of the best is that when we fast, we master our appetites. When we fast, we may get hungry and tired. It hurts. But if we're fasting well, we nevertheless persevere cheerfully anyway.
Fasting is often training in life for when we face temptation. We all know what it's like to be tired and tempted to be treat others irritably, or to feel angry and tempted to act selfishly. It's also common in our day and age to face sexual temptations online. In these moments, training in fasting can prepare us to transcend and master volatile and negative feelings. Fasting is to the spiritual life what practice is for an athlete or musician: it's the training that makes you capable (free) to perform in the main event.
Fasting doesn't have to be food-related. Fasting could also mean abstaining from something electronic, like tv, movies, online news, anime, YouTube, or social media. Have you ever wondered: if you gave up something electronic or online for Lent, what would be the goal? What new interior freedom or spiritual capacity would you be hoping to cultivate?
Below is the best short essay I've ever read about abstaining from electronics. It was written by Villanova professor Mark Shiffman a few years ago, and focuses on television, but the idea translates to any screen or viewing. Professor Shiffman's essay is long-ish for an email, but it's actually short as substantive spiritual essays go. I highly recommend reading it slowly and carefully, and considering this essay as you make your plans for Lent. There are many reasons why Martin Saints is a low-tech school, but this essay explains the heart of the matter: what's at stake is the quality of our love and attention.
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Why my family does not own a television by Mark Shiffman
When Cristina and I met as graduate students, neither of us kept a television around. We always had reading to do, lectures to attend, friends to hang out with. When we married, she brought along her ancient black and white TV from her childhood home, and we would regularly watch the News Hour on PBS and then (to recover from news) “The Simpsons” before dinner. When our first son was born, we put it away in a closet. We took it out on 9/11/01, and returned it to the closet three days later. It did not get packed when we moved to Philadelphia, and we have not replaced it.
Originally, we did not have televisions because we always had something better to do. This to me is the first question to ask yourself with regard to watching television: Is there something better I could be doing – something better for me, for my family and household, for my community? As it turns out, the answer to that question is always yes. Even when we need to relax, there is always a better way to do it than in front of a screen of moving images.
But clearly, that was not enough for us. For a while, we kept the TV around, and benefited in a way from programs offering thoughtful perspective on the news and providing a good laugh. The final decision against it was made on the basis of what kind of family life we wanted to have and what living environment we wanted to shape for our children.
Obviously, the content is nearly always bad. Even sporting events are saturated with the loudest and most wretched commercials. There is really nothing happening on television that we can’t afford to miss. In an odd way, I am glad I saw the Twin Towers collapse and shared dramatically in the national horror of that day. But upon reflection, I can’t say that my life would really be worse in any way if I had missed seeing it. Again, that can be said about everything that is on (especially now that we can often get access to what we’ve missed online).
But our objection is just as much to the medium itself. The most thorough examination of the harm it does us is a book called Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander (a former advertiser who gradually realized that his job was to undermine viewers’ power to make free and sensible choices). In my own effort to make sense of my reservations about the medium, however, it has helped me to turn to one of my favorite writers: Simone Weil, a 20th century French philosopher and social activist. One important thing she points out is the vital connection between love and attention.
The quality of our life depends to a great extent on the quality of our love. The quality of our love depends on the attention we give to other human beings and to our natural surroundings. Attention is not only a sign or expression of love. In an important way, it is the very substance of love, a central part of the very practice of loving. By receptive attention, we make space in ourselves for the presence of something or someone else. If we do not do this, we do not love.
What does television do to our habits of attention? It habituates us to see less, to see it less completely, and to engage it less actively and imaginatively. Our attention is strung along moment by moment, from one thing to the next. What we pay attention to is managed, packaged, enclosed in a frame according to someone else’s priorities for what we should see. We are encouraged to be passive and impatient at the same time.
The attention that constitutes love – love of others and love of the beauty of nature – requires patience and a kind of active receptivity. While a person, or a plant, animal, stream or valley is in front of us, we cannot take it all in at once. There is looking and listening to do, and this involves a real effort on our part, both to direct our attention and to quiet our distractions. We have to let it sink in, and reflect along the way on what is actually there before us and how it all fits together.
By habituating us to follow along impatiently and passively, to filter and frame the world before we’ve had the chance to see anything, television damages our capacity to love well, to love others and the natural world for what they are rather than for what they can do for us. Television is, after all, one of the great tools and purveyors of consumer culture. The culture of consumption and exploitation has every interest in encouraging our self-centered and unreflective egoism and our oblivion to the loveliness of the natural world. Why should we be surprised if the medium that is its most powerful tool encourages the same vices?
Ultimately the question is this: Does the presence of a television in a home ever increase the happiness of those who live together there? My suspicion is that, on the contrary, it mostly decreases their happiness by increasing their self-enclosure and alienation. Loving what is beautiful and good requires patient attention and receptivity, as well as imaginative and creative engagement, and this is the foundation of happiness. That, it seems to me, is what education at its best allows to grow in our children and in our households, and we should encourage it every way we can.
