Thinking about dropping out?

CNN reports in a piece called "Christians Unplugged" about those who are separating themselves from our culture. The piece is not completely flattering. Afterall, CNN is for people who want to know what is "new" 24 hours a day.

As someone who did not have a television set for more than a decade, owns only one television set, and disconnected Dish Network a year ago (and missed most of a Crimson Tide championship), I do not believe the price of keeping up with current whims, tastes, and obsessions as televised is worth much time or money. I connect to the world on the web and choose my own filters. I avoid many sources because they are too predictable. I like it when someone expresses a conservative thought in The Boston Globe or a concession to liberalism in The National Review. I like my blogging friends. I also like a well-edited magazine, though such has become an endangered species.

We do not embrace modern culture. I don't like seeing people show up to Mass dressed for the beach, even if beachwear is supposedly acceptable to your mother's funeral these days. I don't want my daughter to see movies I enjoyed such as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and Animal House. I don't want her to like the bands I liked. I don't pretend that my late baby-boomer tastes are worth preserving.

We steer her away from the main fear of the American middle class, which is best defined as the fear of falling. Fortunately, she seems largely indifferent to popular sensations. She picks out many of her clothes, though my wife helps with the selections. She plays the piano more than she listens to recorded music at home (though we listen to XM Radio in the car). She creates much of what she uses to decorate. She loves doing art.

We live in this world, but we do not want to be "of it." It is hard, so hard that I can understand why a person would move his family to an isolated place, plant a garden, raise chickens, and barter his way to independence. We live on a 1/4 acre lot, and I owe too much money to try to make it as a subsistence farmer. But moving on and moving out is as American as Daniel Boone.

UPDATE: Dennis Hopper was not an icon for me, though he was a good actor. Here is the "Ballad of Easy Rider," which expresses a longing older than the movie.