Television Programming

 When I was a kid, my family watched television together in the evenings.  After school, I'd come home and watch cartoons.  My mom would watch soap operas while the kids were at school.  TV was something we did as a family.  I don't remember us talking much about the programs we watched but it was a common experience we shared while I was growing up.

As an adult I shun television.  The television programming, the news, all of it.  We have a TV but no service.  It primarily serves as a movie theatre screen for watching movies.  I don't watch many movies anymore either...  Primarily due to the woke agenda.  I don't want to expose myself nor my family to the liberal ideology.  I view liberalism as fundamentally flawed contributing to the moral decay of our society.  But what do I know?

Now that my kids are older, I wonder if we should have watched tv together as a family.  At least we could talk about what we experienced.  Everyone in my house is on their own screen watching who knows what.  Everyone but me.  You tube, Facebook videos, Netflix and whatever else they watch on their own screens.  No one moderates the media consumed in my family.  I choose not to participate in any media with a video component. Have I harmed my family?  Are members of my family being harmed by what the consume and the ideas that are being put in their heads?  Are trans people soliciting my kids and planting seeds that mental illness of that type should be accepted and celebrated?  God I hope not.

What experiences do we share a as a family?  I don't know.  We eat together and go on vacation together.  Go to the occasional movie together.  Aside from that?  IDK.

We don't go to church.  Both my wife and I went to church as children.  When we got married we were regular attendees at church.  We both volunteered in the nursery for the early service and attended the late service.  When I got hired with the company, going to church stopped.  I worked a rotten schedule for 17 years.  They say it's true that the man sets the spiritual tone of the household.  My wife could have taken the kids to church.  I could have worked a friendlier schedule that allowed for better work-life balance.  But I didn't.  I could go back to church now that my schedule is normal.  But I haven't.  Why not?  What a loser.

There are times I wonder if I have been a good husband/parent.  I don't know.  I went to work.  I provided for my family.  Was I engaged and present in their lives?  My oldest is in college and doing well.  I try to call him for days on end every couple weeks.  He doesn't answer.  Maybe he's busy.  Maybe he doesn't want to talk to his conservative nut job father.  Maybe I should be proud of the fact that he is independent and doesn't need me.  Whatever.

I wrote about extrinsic and intrinsic ways of looking at the world.  As a young adult I bought into the intrinsic view of the world.  When Ross Perot ran for president I jumped off the intrinsic view of the world and realized, in my mind, the superiority of extrinsic view of the world.  

I guess now I'm conflicted.  Nice.