Blow up your TV

Here is a chorus from an old song by John Prine (later recorded by John Denver):

Blow up your T.V. throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a homePlant a little garden, eat a lot of peachesTry an find Jesus on your own.


Well last month we spent 10 days on an electronic fast--no television, almost no radio, no internet, no newspapers. It wasn't as hard for me as I expected. In fact, it was rather wonderful.

The "electronic fast" was imposed by the wildernesses of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and Glacier National Park in Montana. There is only very spotty cell phone reception in these parks; the same with internet connectivity. We probably could have had some radio reception, but we left the radio off. And in the parks we had absolutely no access to television.

So we didn't exactly "blow up the tv," but we might as well have. I don't hate these electronic media. But i realize that they can hook you and hurt you. Human beings lived without these things for, say, 200,000 years. We don't need them; we shouldn't be slaves to them.