To me its sad that for you motion picture is synonymous with "life" to you. To me interacting with real people is "life". There are a lot of ways to gain education and have fun besides for the medium that is TV and movies. There's actually an entire world outside the box!!!
I'm an avid skier, logging 30-35 days a year, belong to a running club, belong to the Green Mountain Club and go hiking almost every weekend in the summer in Vermont, belong to a workout program called CrossFit that combines a social atmosphere with advanced physical fitness, and my wife and I have a lot of friends and family that we hang out with socially all the time. I read about a book a month, volunteer my time a few times a year to various charities, and work a 10 hour day to earn a living.
From 8:00-10:00 most weeknights I relax with some television, and maybe I watch two movies a month. I hardly think that's "equating a motion picture with life." I completely agree with you about the world outside the box and all the wonderful non-TV things there are to do. I spend the vast majority of my time doing non-TV things.
My position is balance. I would never advocate a life of only watching television and refusing to go outside even once. Nor would I advocate your life where you refuse to watch even one movie or television show. I believe we can have some balance in life.
I understand that you see this as vilifying TV and movies, but I'm not telling you to not do these things. They are just incompatible with my way of life.
I know, and of course it's you're right to live however you want. This is just one of those sad things about religion to me. Driving people away from things that aren't really bad based on some doctrine they may not even fully understand.
It happens to be that I actually don't work with women. Nor for the most part do I look at women (outside my immediate family). I have no idea what my neighbors wives look like, and they are as unlikely to greet me as I them. Separation between genders is taken very seriously in my sect.
Again, super sad to me. You talk about being social in the beginning of your post...the importance of interacting with other people. And yet you won't even look at a woman. I'm sorry, I don't understand how you can place importance on human interaction when you refuse to interact with half the human race.
It's weird. I mean you must know on some level this kind of behavior creeps people out right? You're neighbors, unless they are in your sect, likely think of you as the creepy dude who won't look at women. From an outsiders view it seems like a person who is very poorly adjusted socially.