In the thread about cutting out the Internet cold turkey, at least one poster talks about other activities (besides the Internet), such as reading and just walking around outside, as though they were inherently more valuable than surfing online. (Note that for obvious reasons, differing amounts of personal enjoyment shouldn’t come into play here — if you genuinely get more pleasure out of hiking than watching TV, that sort of distorts the question I’m getting at.)
This is obviously not a new phenomenon; TV was probably the biggest most recent technological innovation to get this treatment.
My question is: how (in all senses of the word) do you rank activities in this way? How do your judgments affect your interactions with other people who may not have the same priorities you do? Why do you think doing X is an inherently better thing than Y?
The inherently more valuable activities are the ones that, when you look back on them a day or a year or a few decades from now, you’re glad you did them, rather than regretting you wasted your time with them. They leave you with something: good memories, closer connections with people you care about, improved knowledge or wisdom or competence.
I’ve sometimes convinced myself to do something new, or go someplace I haven’t gone before, by arguing that, even if I don’t enjoy myself more than I would by staying home and engaging in some familiar activity that I know I enjoy, I’ll at least be building up my store of memories and experiences.
When it comes to reading, or watching TV, or spending time online, it’s not all created equal. Some of the things you could spend your time reading/watching could really enrich your life; others would be purely a waste of time.
Like Thudlow Boink said, they leave you with something. Anything that is healthy for your body is inherently more valuable than something that isn’t. (There may be some exceptions to this, but I can’t think of any.)
Similarly, mentally enriching activities, where you come out knowing more than you had before, are more valuable than ones for pure enjoyment. And by more valuable, I don’t mean that anything done for pure enjoyment is something to be ashamed of, but that people who make a commitment to better themselves tend to commit to doing things that enrich the mind or body.
What I’ve never really gotten is why reading is so much more highly regarded than watching TV or movies. I mean, I LIKE it more, but I don’t think it’s necessarily more worthwhile. There are good books and there are junk books, just like with TV and movies.
I think that poster in the other thread was me. I wouldn’t say I make a value judgement about my activities (any further than “this is me doing this, yay it must be the right thing to do!”. Which hasn’t always led to the best outcomes… but I digress). I mentioned those activities because they were what I did “instead”, and I enjoyed them. The point wasn’t that I was doing inherently better things, but that I didn’t miss the internet because there were other things to do. I also enjoyed staring into the fire and watching the sparks coruscate across the soot at the back of the hearth. If we were judging, I’d think I wasted those minutes or hours, but I know I didn’t.
To me, it’s the difference between eating filet mignon and grilled asparagus every day of the week, and eating different types of cuisine. You might be eating the same number of calories, but the experiences will be different. Your capacity to grow in those experiences will be different. Eating different foods may lead you to different restaurants, in different neighborhoods, with different cultures. You will listen to Brazilian music while eating at a Portuguese restaurant, and maybe learn a little French while eating at a French restaurant.
Someone who does the same thing over and over tends to know only about that one thing. Someone who has diverse interests tends to have a diverse knowledge base, which means that not only are they more interesting to talk to, but they are less likely fall to pieces if they ever find themselves in a restricted environment.