TV versus reading as self-imaginative activity. Is TV a ‘bad’ ?

So do you think that watching TV or reading is a better activity?

[being the type of blog posting where the author tries to work out his thoughts through writing things down. Apologies for the poorly structured 'argument' !]

An interesting context to this question comes from Robert Putnam’s ‘Bowling Alone’, which I’ve been reading recently. He talks about a decline of ’social capital’ in the USA since the 60s due to a decline in many ’social’ activities. He defines social capital in terms of:

• political engagement (e.g. at minimum, voting; having some knowledge of and interest in public affairs)
• civic engagement (being a member of a formal organisation whether PTA or Greenpeace)
• religious participation
• involvement in work-related organisations (e.g. unions, professional societies such as IEEE)
• informal social connections (going to the pub with friends, having people over for dinner)
• involvement in altruistic/philanthropic/voluntary work
• small group activities (e.g. reading groups), the Internet (e.g. Facebook).

There are a number of reasons why he thinks declining social capital a bad thing (he claims communities with higher social capital are amongst other things healthier, richer, safer. i.e. social capital is a ‘good’). But what is relevant here – what struck me- is that one of the major causes he attributes to a decline in people’s social activity is increased time spent watching TV. i.e., very crudely characterizing his argument, more time spent watching TV tends to correlate with less time engaged in social activities, which tends to go along with communities and societies being less healthy, less safe and less well-off. So (getting even cruder) TV is a ‘bad’.

(Interestingly in Richard Layard’s ‘Happiness: Lessons from a New Science’ book a similar TV = bad equation is made. TV being bad because it makes you less happy with your own life – you feel you and your friends/partner are less attractive with less interesting lives than you did before you watched glamorous actors doing their thang and you wish you had more money to buy the things you see depicted as necessary for the type of lifestyle you are being enculturated into believing you want).

But how does TV compare with reading? At one level, obviously, there is no direct visual or auditory element to reading. But beyond that, what are the differences?

• reading requires more effort (i.e. requires you be more active) than TV [true? so what?]
• reading time is more disrupted (you don’t tend to read a novel in one sitting) than TV (you do tend to watch a movie in one sitting) [is that a good thing or a bad thing?]
• both TV and radio stimulate imaginative and possibly identification activity (you encounter types of people, ways of being, activities that you perhaps wouldn’t in your everyday life) [so both are good things, right?]

You can encounter characters in books, just as much as in TV, that live glamorous lifestyles way beyond your means or station (Jane Austen to Clive Cussler). So we conclude – if we chuck out TV then books then have to follow: to take away one cause of us feeling bad about not being the people we’re not; to stop us feeling dissatisfied with who we are take away the energy that drives us, helps us imagine other ways of being.

I guess, of course, there is less advertising in books. But I don’t know if anyone has ever shown that watching BBC rather than commercial TV has a less deletricious effect on one’s sense of well-being. And there’s plenty of product placement in contemporary novels (e.g. Bret Easton Ellis, Perec) – though obviously this ignores the influence of TV on authors and the novels they write.

So is TV a bad?

I’m mixing things up here: TV may be a bad in terms of declining social capital and consequent effects. But this is only tangentially related to whether books might be as bad if people spent equivalent times reading them. And after all books tend to be much more solitary than TV – which is often watched with other people and discussed as a communal (or at least familial) activity.

So we’re left with: TV is much more appealing than reading (because lower effort, stimulating more senses?) and, apparently, more appealing than other types of social activity. So since TV has become available people have done much more of it and done less social activity. But possibly not less reading. The reading thing is a red herring. Putnam would, presumably, argue that instead of watching so much TV we should be doing more social activity. Not reading more books.

Life-narratives

I’ve been reading Richard Sennett’s ‘The culture of the New Capitalism’ over the past couple of days. It’s really good. Packed full of insightful ideas.

One of his ideas is that in the mid-C20th large multi-national corporations (e.g. IBM) and public-sector organisations (e.g. teaching profession, NHS) provided, for many middle-class professionals a compelling ‘life-narrative’. People working for these organisations identified their lives with the narratives provided by the organisations worked for. Despite the organisation being an ‘iron cage’ that was restrictive and bureaucratic you gained a structure to your life. The breakdown of these monolithic organisations in the 90s through its focus on the ‘new economy’ with outsourcing, flexible working, constant restructuring and emphasis on dynamism and change has left these professionals without a compelling life-narrative. So these people feel lost, at sea, adrift in their own lives.

I can see some of the sense of this. But I guess I have more sympathy with the critiques of ‘organisation man’ than I do with feeling a need to have my life-narrative provided by the organisation I work for. (Of course, this is just me – the people he is talking about may, clearly, feel quite differently).

But why should people need a life-narrative from the organisation they work for.?(Setting aside the benefits there may to the organisation of the people working for them feeling deeply committed to it). I buy the fact that people need a life-narrative to help make sense of the world and their place in it. But why can’t this come from other sources?

e.g. a few days ago I was in a bit of a melancholy mood, feeling a bit adrift. Coincidentally it happened at the same time as I was reading the Sennett book. Was I feeling adrift because I’m not in an organisation anymore? Because I’m over 30 and (according to Sennett) therefore more likely to be feeling useless and subject to age-descrimination?

I doubted it. And realised that I didn’t have a novel on the go. This is always a bad idea – not reading fiction is not healthy for me. So I picked up Auster’s Travels in the Scriptorium. Immediately I got that sense of calmness and rush of relaxation that comes when I’m off with a novel. That’s what I’d needed !

I think that, for me, I get some of my ‘life-narratives’ through reading fiction. Through living other peoples lives in my imagination and internalising these lives into my own. Presumably other people have other sources of life-narratives outside work. Surely ?

On Radio 1 a few weeks ago I heard a fashion commentator say that she thought the reason so many peopl (women) queued up for the launch of things like Kate Moss’s new collection was because people don’t have many hobbies anymore beyond shopping. Shopping is the most common hobby now. But is this satisfying as a life-narrative?

Maybe this is partly to do with it – we mostly need to get life-narratives from outside ourselves: from our interaction with bodies of thought and people. And if you don’t have much in your life beyond work, shopping and consuming entertainment then the loss of a life-narrative provided by work is going to be extremely disorientating.

So the conclusion – people need more interactive activities they choose to participate in beyond work? (As opposed to trying to go back to getting life-narratives from organisations – trying to promote more professionalism especially in the public-sector.)

Not sure.

Incidentally though, funny how reading novels doesn’t seem to me to be ‘consuming entertainment’. Of course it’s obvious why. It’s so much more sophisticated than watching Big Brother, 24 or American Idol, isn’t it. Requires the imagination so much more – you have to be much more active – engage the brain so much more. So much superior. Isn’t it?