"Experience through the activities of other people, rather than by doing something yourself".
I am always intrigued by the universal popularity of cookery, gardening & wildlife programmes on TV.
Wikipedia has an astonishing list of British TV cookery programmes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:British_cooking_television_shows Yet many people are so time poor & financially poor that sales of ultra processed food has grown exponentially. Alongside that the cost of good fresh food is now unaffordable for many. Use of food banks in the UK has rocketed, even among the working poor. https://www.trusselltrust.org/news-and-blog/latest-stats/
There are an equally astonishing number of gardeners who have TV programmes. https://www.hortweek.com/top-50-tv-garden-presenters/retail/article/1697051 Gardening is a quintessentially British leisure activity. Allotments have their origins in the late Anglo Saxon early medieval period. Yet just under one in ten (8%) of people said they did not have access to any form of garden or other listed outdoor spaces according to a study. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/the-people-and-nature-survey-for-england-data-and-publications-from-adults-survey-year-1-april-2020-march-2021-official-statistics/the-people-and-nature-survey-for-england-data-and-publications-from-adults-survey-year-1-april-2020-march-2021-official-statistics-main-finding
We probably produce some of the best wildlife TV programmes in the world. Sir David Attenborough alone has been in a massive 100+ documentaries (and counting!) His first documentary aired way back in 1954 and was called Zoo Quest. He has single handedly shown us both the wonder of the world we live in with it's other inhabitants & warned us, in the simplest terms, about the damage we have done & the consequences of that. Yet many watch the amazing photography simply as entertainment & don't relate what they are seeing to their own actions.
We aspire to be good cooks, to have wonderful green spaces, to see the world in all it's glory. We get vicarious enjoyment watching films and TV showing us good food, beautiful gardens & our wonderful, unique world. What we don't do is translate lifestyle TV into the necessary change. Attenborough's "Wild Isles" episode 6 was not broadcast by the BBC https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/mar/10/david-attenborough-bbc-wild-isles-episode-rightwing-backlash-fears Are we being censored? You can watch here https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0fd45w7/wild-isles-saving-our-wild-isles
We need to eat good food, exercise & get out into the fresh air regularly. We need to connect with the natural world. We need to live in balance with nature, our environment & other people. We need to be doers not passive watchers. We have plenty of information, we just need to do something about what we know.
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