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When I was very young, I can remember that most boys (and men) knew how to dance and went willingly. There was a dance hall near my house and I used to love to see the couples arriving - ladies in pretty dresses and men in suits. Married couples usually invited other couples over on Fri or Sat nights to play cards. Families went for a drive on Sunday afternoons. People went to the movies. Or they walked to the ice cream shop for a dish. Of course, there was no TV.
Recently, our local library announced a Family Game Night and invited moms and dads to bring the kids and partner up for team play. My youngest son took his older daughter, hoping to have some fun. They were the only ones who showed up. Now, they have their own Family Game Night - mom, dad, two daughters - and play Boggle, or Scattergories, or some other board game. It happens once a week, and everybody plays. No phones, no TV, no iPads. This is a house that has hundreds of books and all the people read. Nobody professes boredom. One girl made a penguin out of an empty toilet tissue roll! The kids made and sold rubber band bracelets to support cancer patients and donated the money to the local oncology prescription fund.
If you want to make a change, suggest that there is something you'd like to do and ask the family to help. Suggest a game. Make it competitive. Offer a small prize for the winners. Call some friends and invite them over for dessert and coffee. Try to find another group and go bowling, or roller skating, or a scavenger hunt. All they can do is say "no" and you're no worse off than your were before. Get creative. And if you have no takers at home, take to the streets. Well, not literally, but find other like-minded folks and at least get your own ball rolling.
Start by hiding the remote.
Last edited by Oldhag1; 02-17-2015 at 05:06 PM..
Reason: Removed icons
When I grew up almost very parent sent their children to ballroom dancing class here. Even if not its not hard to find family dancing restaurants to go to that entire families go to all the time. Its also true in Louisiana where they bring children to make sure they learn how to dance. My wife family come from Louisiana is perhaps the strongest family places to dance and socialize of any I have visited. So much there revolves around family on all occasions really.
Personal experience: This household went from grilling outside, enjoying a few beers and hanging out to everyone in a different room sitting in front of the tv for hours. On the occasion that tv is watched together, no one is talking. This place has turned into everyone being ghosts. Living but not really existing.
Think about it... will they be near death one day and say "man, I sure am glad I watched that season of 'insert popular show here'!!!" Or will they say "wow, life really passed me by and I didn't even get to enjoy simple human interaction.."
This kind of depresses me. I long for a decent conversation, and when approaching them all they can mutter is a couple of words before focusing back to the television. This goes on from about 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. until they fall asleep. Think about how significant that amount of time equates to over a year.
This isn't about being an introvert or an extrovert, it is about the most popular addiction in American history, and possibly globally.
Your thoughts? Are you guilty of this as well? What can we do to change it, if anything?
It always amuses me when people fail to mention the decline in social skills attributable to people being perched on the computer all day.
I record and watch a few TV dramas a week as well as spend early mornings watching national weather on the Weather Channel and local weather on NECN. Our neighbors do not seem interested in talking let alone conversing. Wife and I participate in Local politics where there is a lot of discussion.
Seeing all the kids hooked into their electronic society makes we wonder if a Smart Phone is a aid to narcissism or just another device to hide behind. Lots of people are too shy for direct conversation so they electronics to distance themselves.
Watching television together provides my wife and I with conversational fodder. When I meet my brother and we converse on our childhood we invariably mention our television watching. It adds to communication between adults instead of detracting.
Even in an older era I recall reading Roots, Holocaust, etc mini-series viewing in the mid-1970s made for considerable conversation the next business day after a segment aired.
Television is a media to entertain and inform and so provide a device for exchanging information.
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Any television watching I do is usually the news. I think the bigger threat would be smartphones. Smartphones can be carried virtually anywhere and viewed. Before smartphones, it encouraged us to interact more with the people around us.
Before TV people did entertain themselves by reading and reading to others or by playing an instrument or games or doing some hobby or craft. I don't think parents heard the words "I'm bored" whined by their kids until the late 80's.
I remember the days at family gatherings when the eating was done that we would play games today just last night as a matter of fact we were watching a movie and we were all on our laptops including my 80 year old mother in law.
The only thing we can do to change the TV addiction is to turn it off but I fear we would all just sit and stare at each other until someone muttered "I'm Bored"..
Add to that before TV people used to sit out on their stoop on a summer night and talk to their neighbors. Those days are gone. Many people don't even know their neighbors.
The "freedom of speach" clause in the constitution was authored when moral standards were not even needed to be qualified as it was taken for granted . Unfortunately due to the moral character at this point in time any attempt to create censorship (oh my!). So we are relegated as viewers to boycot TV programing as individuals and family as the demons will find increasimg ways to spin sex, homosexuality,murder, greed, inappropriate cartoons ( a magnet for unstable mental patients), cursing, adultery, and music lyrics. I feel blessed beyond words to be able to recognize the demise and eventual outcomes of this fallen society being too old to fear yet finding my observations exciting and excuse the arrogance making me smarter than seculars left clueless.left in liberal hell.
Any television watching I do is usually the news. I think the bigger threat would be smartphones. Smartphones can be carried virtually anywhere and viewed. Before smartphones, it encouraged us to interact more with the people around us.
I totally agree about smartphones. Last week I had lunch at a Red Lobster. While there I noticed many other customers giving their server their smartphone. I asked my server about this and she told me that many of their customers nowadays rather than telling them their order they just type it on their phones and when its time to order they give the phone to the server for them to write it down. Yesterday at McDonalds I notice more/less the same thing. The customer beside me had wanted a Big Mac. Rather than telling the cashier "I want a Big Mac" without saying a single word they just whipped out their phone showing a pic of a Big Mac and gave the phone to the cashier.
Why is it that I am thinking of that Cliff Richard tune from the late 70's "We Don't Talk Anymore".
Location: In Thy presence is fulness of joy... Psa 16:11
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I think the modern (since 1900) media in general has stripped people's attention away from personal communication to technological interaction.
The telephone (wonderful device!) has opened up the opportunity to talk with loved ones hundreds, even thousands of miles away. It helps to save lives, and spared many an embarrassing moment by checking with someone else from work or school, etc. Even so...who hasn't had unwanted, unsolicited calls at the worst moment? I'm glad for caller ID, 'cause sometimes we just let them leave a message. Then there are others dear to us don't know when to hang up! That can rob family time too. But, overall, the traditional use of the phone (no Internet hookup, etc...just phone calls) have a real place in our lives that is important to society.
The radio came in, and all of a sudden family "norms" were interrupted and sometimes destroyed. For as charming as those old radio shows could be, they could take away from the time a family would normally be singing together, working in the garden after supper, or reading a book aloud together or even the Bible. Suddenly, someone else was dictating what was funny, or true, or worthwhile...and sometimes it came between the young people and their parents; or the young people and their church. (Yes, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller were radical for their day, and caused generational splits at times. Not just because of the style of music, but because of the morals that often went with the words and lifestyles.)
Movies are even more competitive for the heart of the viewer. The feminists of Hollywood decided they wanted to change the look and structure of the American family...and they did. Donning pants when most in society felt that was masculine wear, they also pushed feminist agenda and thought in "humorous" ways. Kathryn Hepburn was an expert at it; but sweet Mary Tyler Moore did her share too. John Wayne (and others) made violence the right solution...whether he was fighting a war, shooting at an Indian, or whopping Maureen O'Hara on the behind for her smart remarks.
Television coming into the home was a further invader of the family. All of a sudden, anyone who has traditional family values is cast as an Archie or Edith Bunker. Cartoons teach children that violence is funny; and not a threat to the person it is "happened" upon (after all...didn't the Coyote bounce back after the ACME dynamite exploded on him? Didn't the Three Stooges practically yank each other's noses and ears off...and they were back the very next show--good as new!). Star Trek not only took us to places "where no man has gone before" -- it also introduced existential thought and New Age philosophy into the home before most in the U.S. could identify what those things meant.
Profanity became acceptable as more and more was allowed on TV and the radio. Rock and roll was laced throughout movie and TV shows; it's become the anthem of the US. Nudity is nearly blase, because TV and movies made it "normal."
All the while, it mocked family singing...oh, that was for old people and religious nuts, right??
Gardening? Oh, that was for Victory gardens during WW2, I think. And for those 'health nuts'; mustn't forget them.
Games like horse shoes, Scrabble and croquet were things to blush at by the 1960's as even "family shows" like Petticoat Junction made them seem trite, old-fashioned--the nursing home set.
Computers, computer games, Internet addiction...er, connection...made people's minds quickly wrap around it. It's hard to "share" most of the things on it as a family; unless done very deliberately. And need I add the occult influence, violence and lust that fill nearly all computer games--and the fact that elementary aged children are playing them? (Remember Columbine and other youth-related violent actions? Many of these young murderers were highly influenced by such things.)
All of these things have had an influence on society, where everyone lives the rat-race lifestyle.
Reading? Family games? Singing together? Family discussions? You must deliberately choose to break off of the "normal" way of American life to do this. We have, but we have to fight to maintain our better normal.
It's too easy to get sucked into the techno vacuum, and lose your relationships, and the ability to communicate your love and interest in them.
I could support all this with Scripture, but as this is the Great Debate group, I'll offer only one Bible verse and 3 news articles, instead:
Psalm 101 http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Psalms-Chapter-101/ BBC News - Violent video games leave teens 'morally immature' The Impact of Video Games | Media Information for Parents Parental Involvement and Children's Well-Being
Last edited by NT Fellowship; 02-19-2015 at 09:43 AM..
Reason: add reference
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