I will be happy when schools have all the money they need to educate our children and the military has to hold fetes and garage sales to buy bombs.

Why, as a society, do we get our priorities so completely backwards?

Every day is ride to work day for me

I had my last carnivorous meal on the 12th of September. I’ve been reading a lot over the past few years about the impact on the planet of our western obsession with meat: most forest clearing is for cattle grazing land or for crops to feed cattle; the sheer inefficiency of feeding an animal 7-10 kilograms of grain and soy protein to produce 1 kilogram of meat, not to mention the thousands of litres of water that go into both; the cruelty that is unnecessary but commonplace, particularly with chicken and pigs; even the simple fact that we actually don’t need to eat meat.

The time comes when the weight of that knowledge pushes me to say to myself “So what am I going to do about this?” I can spend time taking in all this information, but if I don’t actually do something about it, I’ve just wasted my time. And inaction is not an option: inaction is too generous a word, because not changing means choosing to continue. It means continuing active financial support of the very industries that are destroying the planet, and leading too many people down the road to obesity, ill health and misery. I won’t participate in that any more.

The most interesting revelation on becoming a vegetarian is that it’s pretty easy. I’ve learned a lot about healthy eating over the past few years, which has meant that I haven’t been eating much meat. So it’s not really a big jump to substitute something that amounts to only 5% or less of my existing diet. I love cooking and trying new things, so this is now a new area of culinary exploration to enjoy.

Some people do tend to find it difficult to adjust, though. I guess it can be uncomfortable to process change at such a basic level in someone you know. I found a similar reaction when I’d lost a lot of weight, and mentioned that I still needed to lose a lot more. My appearance had changed enough to cause them to update their mental picture of me – the brain essentially stores our images of people in the form of caricatures – and suggesting that there was more change to come was quite unsettling for them.

I deleted television almost four years ago. Now I’ve deleted meat. What’s next? That’s what I worry about…

If you’re interested in what being a vegetarian is all about, there is a wealth of information on the web and veggie123 is a great place to start.

“Debates” like this would suit Andrew Bolt down to the gound. While he likes to try to create the impression that he’s a brave conservative boldly stepping into the bearpit, he would love this sort of situation. Look at the terms: he gets to argue in favour of a vague assertion: that most staff and many students of universities are engaged in a left-wing “group think” that sees them all believing and saying the same things about the same issues. Quite a nebulous proposition, and of course he can cite various anecdotes to support this assertion. More on anecdotes later.

Of course, when it comes to his opponent, Rob Watts, if he attempts to make any generalisations about conservative columnists, we find that Bolt does not identify with those columnists. He will only engage over specific things he has written. So Watts has to defend all academia, but Bolt only has to defend specific things he’s written.

Looks like a pretty lopsided debate.

The “citing of anecdotes” I mentioned above is the core technique of many conservatives. One or more experiences are taken and a view formed that is then applied to all members of any specific group. This is garden-variety bigotry. For example, recently I read that John Howard still believes he was in the right over the children overboard saga because “they irresponsibly sank the damn boat, which put their children in the water”. I still recall his lemon-mouthed comment that “these people” were the sort of people that would throw their children overboard. He lumps every asylum seeker into a basket of “these people”, based on the alleged (and subseqently proven to be false) actions of a few of them.

This is a favourite technique of Bolt and many other conservative columnists: you don’t need statistics, studies or other scientific facts when you have anecdotes and/or personal experiences that can be extrapolated into sweeping generalisations. After all, things that happened to you or your friends are facts. You can’t question the validity of what someone experienced. Some conservatives seem to like anecdotes more than personal experiences – you don’t have to defend or justify anecdotes. But the real fact is that the experiences of an individual have nothing to do with the characteristics of a population.

Now it’s time for a game of Andrew Bolt Bingo.

“What?”

That’s often the reaction I get when I tell people that I don’t watch TV. Usually followed by “But what about the news?”¹ and “Well, actually I don’t watch much TV either”².

It started in November of 2002. I had found myself whining about the fact that I never seemed to have the time to do all the things that I wanted to do. But somehow I seemed to have the time to watch 5, 10, 15 hours of TV each week. 15 hours seems like a lot, doesn’t it? A couple of hours a night (news + current affairs program + one one-hour show) and a few more on the weekend and wham, there’s 15-16 hours a week. Easier than you thought.

Some close friends of ours had made a conscious choice not to have a TV when they first had kids. And seven or so years later, somehow they had managed to not only survive, but had remained interesting, well-informed people and wonderful parents.

I didn’t like the look on my son’s face when he was watching TV. Next time you see someone watching TV, look at their face. Have a good look. Adjectives that will come to mind may include slack, unresponsive, dull, and glazed. It’s not an attractive sight. I suspected that the same look was on my face when I was watching TV.

This thinking was happening while we were living in a small apartment while our house was being renovated. The TV reception was poor, so the kids tended to choose to watch videos rather than TV shows. So my wife and I decided that when we moved back home, it would be without TV. The kids could watch videos when they were having their afternoon rest and we would still watch films when we liked, but no broadcast television. Scary stuff. So I de-tuned all the channels from the TV and the VCR and we returned home.

The first week or two was a bit strange. But not quite the type of “strange” that I expected. For starters, the kids didn’t even ask for the TV. We hadn’t actually told them yet that we were deleting television from our lives, so we were expecting some sort of protest (Daniel was 4 and a half and Laura was almost 3 at the time). But nothing! And almost two years later, Daniel has only asked once: Dad, can I watch kids shows on TV? No Daniel, we don’t watch TV – but you can watch a video at rest time. Oh, all right Dad. Hey, do you want to play footy?

I started wondering what exactly I’d got from literally years of watching TV. Oh sure, I’ve reminisced plenty of times with friends over the TV shows we watched as kids or talked about current shows. And they are pretty good memories. But having spend thousands of hours watching TV to come up with a bunch of “X was a really good show”, “Hey, Y was a really good show”, “Yeah man, Y was really excellent” is a bit tragic, don’t you think? And the advertising! How many thousands of hours of our lives do we waste watching advertising? Which, by the way, has a crap/usefulness ratio that is orders of magnitude higher than TV, who’s C/U ratio is already pretty huge.

I’d spent a lot of time in my 20s regretting not learning how to play a musical instrument. I’d always kicked myself about not having read enough literary classics. Not having learned another language. Not spending enough time with my wife and kids. Not having seen enough classic films. But now I’ve deleted TV. I’ve learned how to play the guitar, have read more in the past two years than I did in the preceding ten, have seen most of the films on my ‘must see’ list, have started to learn modern Greek, and am more than happy with the amount of time I get to spend with my family. And I’ve started a blog

My lesson? Delete TV, create your life.

¹ TV news is the equivalent of going through a tabloid newspaper in about 10 minutes, only reading the headlines and the first paragraph of each story. Because you read a lot faster than having someone read to you, you would save 20 minutes a day by scanning a tabloid over watching the evening news. So I don’t need TV to keep up-to-date with current events. Our household has The Age delivered, and there is more news and opinion on the web than anyone could ever digest, and the vast majority has far more depth and quality than anything you’ll find on TV. And the rare quality stuff that you find on TV usually has a transcript published on the web.

² The “I don’t watch much TV” club is a very large one, with a simple requirement for membership: knowing of someone – anyone – that watches more TV than you. The “I don’t watch TV” club appears to be much smaller (but it would be great if it were considerably larger!).

Interesting Reading
Why reading is more fun than TV.
Report slams TV ‘damage’ to young.
Flow: What’s worth living for? You won’t experience any watching TV.

* My characterisation rather than his. I’ll leave it to him to tell you what he really thinks.

Me? I like Christmas. The family, friends, fun part. Not the shopping part.

It’s not about the lies.

And it’s not about what he knew and when he knew it.

It’s about the fact that he believed without hesitation that parents would actually throw their children into the ocean.

That he would want to believe such a thing speaks volumes about his character.

That he didn’t seek any real proof is classic lawyer behaviour. Rely on the ‘advice’ or ‘reports’ that you’ve been given. Don’t ask a question when you don’t already know the answer. Especially when the answer might be one you don’t want to hear. This is not the behaviour of a leader. It’s the behaviour of someone who thinks it is a big game and what’s important is to win the game.

It’s not a game, John. It’s about people’s lives.

Perhaps you should learn the second verse of our national anthem, John.

ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FAIR
Australians all let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil;
Our home is girt by sea;
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts
Of beauty rich and rare;
In history’s page, let every stage
Advance Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair.

Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We’ll toil with hearts and hands;
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands;
For those who’ve come across the seas
We’ve boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine
To Advance Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair.