Passionate Living

Plenty has been said about how TV is bad for you. In the modern Web 2.0 era, several digital media experts even say that broadcast is obsolete. With the advent of online programs, now you can choose what to watch, when to watch, and where to watch it.

Fatty watching himself on TV by Cloudzilla

The generation that grew up sharing a culture – everyone watching Happy Days or The Brady Bunch – doesn’t apply any longer in the digital era. Each person tailors her own consumption of entertainment, everyone having their own versions of top hit singles and favorite TV shows. The possibility of us all going “Hey, I haven’t heard that in a long time!” in the future is a small possibility.

Yet, in the middle of this rapid digital distribution, TV can be good for you. The uncontrollable aspect of major broadcasting can sometimes lead to serendipitious discoveries. The things you discover while watching uncurated programs or mindless browsing through the channels just might inspire you with something new.

Here are 3 ways that we can all do to make watching TV in an internet era be good for us:

1. Keep an open mind

The basis of this is for us to be open to new possibilities. TV programs are less specific than niche websites, but they are diverse enough to display several topics within one hour of programming. Simply tuning into several different channels for 30 minutes or 1 hour and interpreting it with our own minds can lead to some interesting discoveries of our own.

2. Don’t watch the news

The programs produced on TV can open our eyes towards new things and new information we might else not discover in our curated internet world. Yet, the danger of uncurated information is that it can be negative and affect how we feel throughout the day. Therefore, it’s better to avoid definite sources of negative information, such as news channels, and spend time on the positive information channels, such as:

3. Watch community programs

This is the most important aspect of watching TV: if you have a local channel, or at least one that is broadcasted by your city for your city, community programs are an excellent way to learn about what’s happening in your neighborhood. You can learn much about your environment, what is the primary concern of the moment, what kind of hobby groups and activities are going on at the moment, and whether you are interested enough to join in the activity or not. Also, plenty of entrepreneurs can make a comfortable living establishing a community based business: a small business that caters to the need of a limited community. Therefore, knowing about the needs of a community is important if you are interested in developing a business.

Serendipity is the name of the game. You can do this also with magazines and radio. Just because the internet is there, doesn’t mean we should abandon all other media channels, even though we could. The curated nature of broadcast programming subjects us to the personal flavor of the program producer, music director, and magazine editor and can expose us to new information that can be good for us.

So, start exploring today: watch a little more TV, buy one or two local magazines, and listen to the radio on your mobile – you’ll never know what you’ll discover.

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THE BLACK SWAN theory is based on the previous English belief that all swans are white; this was accepted as unquestionable truth by the British from “thousands of years of observations”, until they landed upon the shores of Australia where, lo and behold, they found a black swan. In modern terms, the Black Swan is a term used to describe an event that is very unlikely to happen (in the magnitude of almost impossible in statistical terms), yet happens anyway and has a significant impact in human history and society, whether politically and/or culturally. The Black Swan, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb puts it, is “the impact of the highly improbable”.

THE BLACK SWAN book became a Black Swan experience as I read it; I didn’t expect to learn so much from a field of study that I rarely read about. Originally, I was considering buying one of Malcolm Gladwell’s book (particularly Outliers), but I felt I already knew what Gladwell talks about – so I decided to take a chance and see what would happen with the Black Swan. True to the Black Swan theory, this unexpected event became a positive experience for me, because I learned much about philosophy through the eyes of the empirical skeptic Nassim Taleb (or NNT as he abbreviates himself), and also learned a beautiful term for something that has been on my mind for some time: DOMAIN DEPENDENCE.

The meat of The Black Swan talks about “how not to be a turkey”, where NNT emphasizes the importance of the things we don’t know yet let this unknowledge take control of the most important decisions in our lives. But for me the greatest lesson was hidden in a two word term, mentioned only once throughout the whole book; a term that gave me a eureka moment where pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fell into place and the light to the answer became brighter. Domain dependence, is the lesson for this month.

I used to call it COMPLIANCE; and to better illustrate the point, let’s take an example of a story. There are many personal development and motivational seminars nowadays, ranging from FREE to full-fledged limited-gala-dinner VIP packages, and many people interested in participating in these events. A person may come to a seminar, obtain a new paradigm, experience good change within him – change that gives him more strength to strive for his dreams – and get a boost of positive energy for days maybe weeks to come. Yet, after some time, that energy dissipates and he returns to his previous condition, where he is without the focus and courage he felt during the seminar. He then goes to another seminar, repeats the process, experiences the same emotions, gains the same confidence, and returns to normal life with a new found energy again. But the cycle repeats, and after some time, he runs out of energy, again.

This person may attend enough personal seminars that he knows the material off by heart and may even be able to become a speaker himself. Yet he keeps needing to come back to the same seminars, the same experience, the same keywords, the same charts and explanations, the same homework to do when the seminar ends, and the same motivation to do what needs to be done. He can’t keep the energy he grew at the seminar, and keep it also at the place where he needs to make a change. This is called DOMAIN DEPENDENCE; the inability to transfer our powers in one domain of our lives (for example, confidence during motivational seminars), to another domain in our lives that need work (for example, a broken or stagnant family relationship).

I used to call it COMPLIANCE, because this is my belief: after attending a motivational seminar, our minds think we have done enough, our energy feels used and satisfied, so we are compliant when we return to our natural habitats. We are compliant, because we think we have already become part of the change and part of the solution. The truth is; developing our paradigm is only the first step – after, action needs to be done, and that can’t be done if we are still COMPLIANT or DOMAIN DEPENDENT.

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Photograph by Magdalena

TECHNOLOGY is the tools we use to help us achieve our goals. The purpose is to help us be able to manage our priorities and become efficient in working towards our goals. Proper understanding and use of technology is a highly positive value in a person’s life.

OUR MINDS work the way we order them to; if we don’t keep our minds neat and structured, then our thoughts will be dirty and unkept. If we let our inspirational well run dry, our minds will be prone to negative information and perception shaped by the bombardment of propaganda in the form of negative news and advertisements. It’s the responsibility of a person to keep his mind clear from clutter and focused on priorities.

HUMILITY is a character that has to be learned first hand. You cannot develop humility without first experiencing adversity; and not everyone wants to experience it. Only the persons who manage to overcome their obstacles, learn the key to life is being patient and understanding there are purposes bigger than our individual parts.

Several weeks ago as I was with my parents eating out, my mother commented on a woman her age on the table behind us. She (the woman) was busy fidgeting with her Blackberry, which made my mother comment that that is the new activity of people today – they fidget with their Blackberrys. No one in my family own a Blackberry; we have never been “victims” of “technology fashion”. Therefore, seeing a person busy playing with their BB’s, while in the middle of a family dinner, made me think about the way we use technology to enhance our lives.

“What do I want from life? Well, I want to be happy.”

In the digital era of instant gratification and 3G internet speeds, patience is a rare commodity. Our minds and our collective culture is growing up with the mind frame that we can get mostly anything we want at any time we want – leaving the previously usual work and waiting out of the equation. For some purposes, this may be good, but in the long term of human growth, the work and waiting that we used to have to go through are vital in forming the character of a person.

Gretchen Rubin shares her experience on how she was able to find the inspiration to write her Happiness Project; she was sitting on a bus one day while looking outside the window and asked herself, “What do I want from life?”. Her answer was, “Well, I want to be happy” [1]; and it was that answer that made her write the Happiness Project book – a #1 New York Times Bestseller. Gretchen says if she was busy fidgeting with her Blackberry, she wouldn’t have found the inspiration to write the book that has influenced the lives of tens of thousands of people today.

Some people have trouble sitting down on a bus without anything to do. They have to fidget around with something, because maybe they can’t stand being alone with their thoughts. This is the sign of an unhealthy mind, because a healthy mind is constantly curious about itself and always exercises examinations upon its own characters, observations, beliefs, and mechanisms. It is the power and uniqueness of man to be able to view himself from third person to gain a perspective on his life purpose. This is how the great figures of our society found their calling, explored their minds deeper, and consequently changed the world we live in.

Technology we own is rarely technology we need

Humility is therefore a primary character before all characters, because without humility you can not have the patience to sit down on a bus without anything to do. Without humility, your mind will always think you are bored, and seek out brain dead information through mindless gaming and social networking to entertain yourself. Humility is key to keeping a mind that is brave enough to spend some time alone with itself.

At the end of the day, the technology we own is rarely technology we need. Most of the technology in our hands are results of us just satisfying our carnal desires to possess and perhaps even show off that we can afford to buy these things. How do we know that is true? Because even with so called “better” technology, we still experience the same social problems we face since the history of mankind.

Therefore a healthy mind realizes, it’s not about what the technology we have is; it’s about how we use the technology we have. It’s not about owning a Blackberry so you can stay on always; it’s about having that correct portable device that becomes an extension of yourself and truly helps you be efficient in reaching your life goals, instead of eating away at your mental health. It’s about the change we make, through the resources we are given; because the easy choice is always to live life for yourself and eat up all the resources you feel like eating up.

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[1] Gretchen relates this story in the first chapters of her book: Happiness Project