OPINION

Television generation

That most Greeks are less than «cultured» is fairly well known. We don’t go to the cinema that often, we’re not big theater-goers, and we don’t read books… Indeed, according to a recent report by the National Book Center, 44 percent of Greeks never read books – not necessarily heavy works by Sophocles, Ibsen or Foucault, but even light novels. Why is this? Because they don’t have time or they’re simply bored, as they freely admit. Because they don’t want to take the trouble to learn, they want to gain knowledge and information through leisure pursuits – by watching action movies, chat shows, advertisements and sensationalist «news» reporting. And so, spending several hours per day in front of the television – as 85.6 percent of Greeks admit to doing – is not regarded as a waste of time… It is actually only a minority who enjoy a broad range of interests. The majority, accustomed to watching light «informative» programs, «cannot be bothered» or «do not have the time» to read an essay or a work of literature, to follow a stimulating and subversive debate, to watch a film that awakens unexpressed feelings… This attitude is breeding a generation of youngsters who have difficulty filling out an official form or understanding the instructions for using a new device but also – which is worse – finding themselves stuck, bored, giving in to slothfulness and conventional thinking…

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