Unexamined or Examined

The New Yorker cartoon presented in class illustrated a couple sitting on the couch with a remote control changing channels on their television. The television has “the unexamined life on demand” written on the screen. This phrase relates to Socrates saying "The unexamined life is not worth living". Also, there’s a cat lying on the rug in the living room with a frowned face.

The cartoon depicts the typical life of what most families live today. Many people these days spend more time watching television than they do cleaning, learning, reading, and so forth. The term “couch potato” fits this cartoon, but it’s missing a bag of potato chips. Entertainment on television captivates attention from countless numbers of people. Demand is a popular cable company for television, and it’s what most households have these days. The phrase “the unexamined life on demand” may portray how the couple on the couch is spending their time watching shows on demand rather than examining their own life and doing other important things. What does it mean to examine? According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, examine means to inspect closely, to test the condition of, and to inquire into carefully.

Examining life isn’t a common thing that everyone does daily in his or her life. People don’t take the time to carefully examine their life, but they watch television instead. Maybe it’s because they find watching television more entertaining than examining life. It seems as if sitting on the couch and watching television has become a natural tendency to people. They are accustomed to watching television, and it may or may not occur that they’re examining life that’s broadcasted on television. That is, they’re inspecting what’s happening on television. Now it would make sense if the phrase was “the examined life on demand” rather than “unexamined”. As for the cat with a frowned face, he or she looks frightened or scared in the cartoon. Why might the cat look so terrified? It may be that the cat is worried for his or her owner that they’re wasting so much time watching television. Or maybe the cat isn’t getting much attention from the owners since they’re so sucked into the entertainment on demand.

It’s amazing how much television people actually watch these days. Since people spend so much time watching television, does it mean that their lives are boring? Rather than “examining” their life, they leave their life “unexamined” by watching demand. So how much examining should people do, and how much time should they spend watching television to counterbalance between the two?