Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: COHOUSING & TV

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

Tom Nelson Scott wrote:

> well now let me relate this to the coho list: if i have anything to
> say about it, there won't be a tv in the common house of any
> coho/ecovillage i live in. tv sucks. i mean that: it sucks brains in
> like a vacuum. a person's consciousness goes right down the tube as he
> sits there and watches the awful thing. worse than drugs because it
> seems like such a nice thing.
>

It may seem strange, but I'm now going to turn around and argue that Tom  
should not take this position (particularly not in the context of a  
consensus based cohousing group - you have to live with people who will  
feel very differently about it than you).  I have personally been there  
and done that - feeling as I do about television, I initially was very  
concerned when people in N St wanted to put a TV in the common house.

However, after it was there, it turned out that the uses of it were  
pretty unproblematic.  The common house TV does not get watched  
excessively, and when people do watch it, it tends to be movies or  
particular events of interest (eg elections) and the TV watching is in  
part a social occasion.  Nobody ever tried to watch it during community  
dinner or anything like that.

In my experience, TV watching in cohousing is not a major problem.  It  
is, for the most part, moderate, targeted at particular favorite  
programs, and social.  This is in sharp distinction to TV watching for  
most people in the U.S. which is immoderate, indiscriminate, and  
isolating.  That's one of the reasons cohousing is so cool.

Stuart.

[I'll try and shut up about this now.:-)]