To TV or Not TV

How can somehow not have an opinion on the current state of television, vast waste land or entertainment buffet? Clearly with the way things are going with cable and satellite TV we as the viewer are offered more and more options for consumption. I may be a pseudo-writer of sorts and should have a preference for the written word over visual stimulation but I cannot lie that I love my TV. In fact recently when our house was hit by lightning and fried two TVs and numerous other electronic devices (no surge protectors), I had the opportunity to get a new TV. I decided that this was time, the age of HDTV and LCDs is on my horizon; I wanted to enhance my viewing, not bury my face in books. TV has to be the easiest escape available and yes it does connect us to the outside world. It seems as if every possible channel is available to stimulate your every mood or hankering. This is far from the overriding theme of the chapter but I just want to say that I love my 42 inches of eye candy. After work and school who wants to be a long thinker? Is long thinking an acquired trait through keen conditioning or are individuals born with it? I hope I am not eroding my creativity away with each episode of Deadwood or Entourage that I watch.
I certainly understand from a teachers or parents perspective that television does not foster as much thinking than say through experience or reading. Visual evidence tends to be easier than allowing your mind to figure it through. TV is certainly useful for its convenience, but it has a lot to be desired in its ability to fertilizing a young mind into a plentiful crop. And you know as I write this I feel a little intellectually shameful of my love of TV, I promise to redeem my sins through my children. More books, less TV, I will try. F the Wiggles bring on Dahl and Silverstein.
I do agree that discovery will cultivate reflective thinking due to the opinion that the greater amount of “things” that can be experienced will be like bullets in the gun of creative writing. Reflective thinking is much more profound and deep than what our brains do when we watch Grey’s Anatomy or just told how to do something. Reflection is powerful, think of all the times we drift off in boredom from what is presented in the forefront only to visiting incredible places in our mind. Good writers can harness that place in their mind and translate it onto paper and express so many “things” with words that their mind has discovered.
I would say that reflective thinking and imaginative thinking is probably fairly comparable. Smith discusses the importance of imagination in writing and I believe in its effectiveness to sometimes trump the blocks that come along. Imagination allows you the writer to consider different methods that allow the idea floodgate to open or at least produce some water to get by on. And despite the interesting factor of Chandler’s study, most writers, academic or beginning are not alike in their approach; to succeed one must be equipped with a healthy, imaginative mind.

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." - Edgar Allan Poe