With the exception of grocery ads, I usually don’t get store flyers in the mail – except during the week of Black Friday. Leafing through this year’s ads, I’m struck by the sheer number – and visual prominence – of “smart” TVs, smart phones, tablets, Orwellian listening stations from Google and Amazon, and other electronic media devices.

And I’ll be honest – the 2012 version of me would be salivating over this stuff. Back then, if I wasn’t an early adopter of a device, I was a “fast follower”, digging through to find the best deals on last year’s latest tech. So part of me understands the allure.

I can’t really pinpoint a particular time when my feelings about such things changed – it’s been a gradual diminishing of enthrallment, though that diminishing has accelerated during the past couple of years. I’ve already posted about my disenchantment with smart phones, and I’ve since gotten rid of them, as well as a few tablets I had. (I should admit that I did retain one smart phone, with a non-contract, pay-as-you-go 4G service plan, for email access in an emergency if my home internet service goes out for an extended period of time. But it’s in storage in the basement).

And I honestly don’t watch much TV these days. 2K? 4K? 8K? Meh. My 9-year-old Vizio 42-inch TV in the living room is chugging along just fine. It mostly serves as a media center monitor for a mini-PC running Linux Mint, but I do also have an older Roku device, and Hulu service which I mostly use to watch live sports on occasion (but probably not often enough to justify the monthly expense). Space-wise, the media console that the TV sits on can’t really accommodate a TV that’s much bigger. I’m also probably outside the norm in that I don’t have a TV in the bedroom.

But back to the Black Friday ads…Looking through them, I’m reminded of Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Ourselves To Death’. The divisions in our culture are a source of stress for most of us, which causes us to seek diversions in things like television and mobile devices/social media, which further isolates us and balkanizes us into tribes, which deepens the divisions, which…

Lord have mercy. If you’re a person of faith, pray for the discipline, and the courage, to unplug in a meaningful way.