What my TV breaking did to me
I was alone this Christmas since Jeremiah headed to Connecticut to visit family. I stayed home with the dog and had all sorts of big plans. I was going to watch Stranger Things, maybe find a couple of good movies, make some chili, and if the weather was acceptable head out to the park with Ares.
After dropping him off at the airport I came home, sat down on the couch and turned the TV on to…a sort of milky green static. No amount of wiggling cords or smashing buttons could do anything. Like most TVs, this one had reached its end of life. I bought it so long ago I can only place it by which house I lived in at the time, around 2009, I think? It was 52” of dumb TV. No “smart” features. It was never connected to cable in its life.
And now it is e-waste. The kind of garbage that can neither be “profitably broken down” for parts or reused for much. I imagine even if I took it to be “properly disposed of”, it would, like most American e-waste, end up jammed into a landfill either here in Michigan where I live, in Kentucky where a lot of America’s garbage ends up, or, worst-case, the shores of some far-away place like Turkey or West Africa where small children will poke around on top of it for pennies for all eternity on its never-ending edge-to-edge plastic.
Standing there staring at the mostly-useless screen I mumbled to myself, “Well. I guess I’ll do something else.”
My job notwithstanding, I really don’t care about phones. My phone has never been that entertaining to me. My most-used functions for diversion there are my RSS reader. And since everyone’s slowing down for the holiday, almost nothing is published.
I picked up a couple of books I had been working on. After a few hours reading, I made dinner. And because I had finished my queue of podcasts, I put on some music. It had been a while since I listened to music in the house (I’m almost always wearing my headphones to reduce distraction for Jeremiah. And usually listening to a book or podcast.)
This was when I realized, “Who even are these people?” I have no idea what I’m even listening to.
After dinner I opened my notebook and started jotting down a list of things I did instead of watching TV. Now it is Christmas night and this is my list after three days:
- Journaled
- Planned much of my 2026 spring classes
- Setup dev sites for two sites (for class)
- Charged all the batteries in the house
- Watched a documentary-style YouTube video by Morten Himler
- Read (and since finished two books)
- Made cookies for some local friends and delivered them
- Sent several back-and-forth messages with a former student
- Took Ares to the park and captured some photos
- Read several magazines (The New Yorker, Audubon, National Geographic)
- Wrote several posts here on my site
Photos I took today with a Canon EOS-R5. The last photo was with my phone.
And this is just in the time I would have been watching TV. Much of this was always going to happen. I was always going to reply to my student. But 8 times in a single day? I was always going to go to the park with Ares. But for 3 hours? I probably never would have managed to write here on this site as much as I have this week. Or journaled half as much.
I told myself many years ago if and when my TV failed I was going to face a serious question about whether it was worth it to replace it. I am not the only person in this house, so perhaps final resolution will differ, but, I don’t think I want to.
A huge amount of space is consumed by the TV in our living room. Writers I admire and enjoy like Wendell Berry have long derided what TV does to people. This has been studied breathlessly by people like Robert Putnam and I’m inclined to agree — TV isn’t great.
I have my iPad and a laptop, of course. I could watch anything anytime on those. There are shows I genuinely enjoy. I’d have sought out Ken Burns’ latest documentary. The Simpsons still make me laugh (and almost nothing on TV makes me laugh). Pluribus is great.
For nearly 35 years, the notion and meaning of what is a ‘home’ has basically crumbled. We now orient our architecture — sometimes in each room — around where to place the screen in lieu of a fireplace or hearth. What is ‘home’ is now little more than a word that roughly means the same as a dormitory. This has distressed me for years. In my entire lifetime, ‘home’ has been a place where we worked, grew food, and raised children. Now ‘home’ is a place people sleep at night as food is ordered in, screens glow constantly, and where we shower before we leave to go work somewhere else, study somewhere else, and spend time away somewhere else until we gather back to crash.
Back in 1980, Berry recognized the home had become an ‘ideal’ rather than a practical reality. “For most people now do seem to think that family life and family work are unnecessary, and this thought has been institutionalized in our economy and in our public values,” he wrote. “Never before has private life been so preyed upon by public life.”
In Berry’s view, and mine, three things have murdered the home: cars, mass media, and to some extent public education. Cars and “cheap” fuel pushed people further apart and away. TV was piped in non-stop, all to tell us and children — including me in my youth — that it is better to consume than produce. Then education became a topic too complex, or, to some, a place to get their kids out of their hair so they can go to work. These values are fine, but it’s obvious schools exist to train children in systematic ways under systematic controls to fit into a society organized by … media?
Since Berry wrote that in 1980, you can now order from Amazon while standing in the Amazon and everything is available almost year-round despite the season or geography. We could add the constant focus on careers and “professional development” to this. (Since when did corporations get to tell people to improve themselves for their benefit? Why no “personal development”?)
This is what I’ve been pondering on since the TV died.
That, and why the hell I don’t have any real hobbies? I exercise, I take photos, and I read. These all count as useful hobbies, but I’d argue exercise is like eating. It’s just a thing we have and should do. No one considers “eating” a hobby. And reading seems no more a hobby to me than “watching movies”.
We can quibble about other “lesser” consumption, like social media or doom scrolling.
The point is: I don’t even know anyone who seems to have real, genuine hobbies. Is this what a world is like when it lacks a culture? If someone had to pinpoint what America or any given state’s culture is, what would they say? Sports? Entertainment? Money? Cause that’s what it seems like.
A hobby would be woodworking, music, writing, fishing, or any number of other active things. It creates something. This is why up until about the 17th century, merchants and salesmen were the lowest rungs of the social ladder. They didn’t make anything Artisans, craftspeople, blacksmiths, clergy — these people were much higher up the chain of respect. Not until waves around monied interests did this invert on itself.
All this to say it has been a thoughtful, solitary few days here without a TV to gawk at. I initially thought I’d reject a new TV simply because all the “smart” TVs absolutely suck and are vessels for ads. Like a drug dealer, I know enough about my own product to know what goes into that and to not touch it. But now? Add all this to my list of reasons, too.
