To their detriment, adults are more complicated than children because they are aware of more. Their minds become more intricate and their bodies become larger. The faculty of imagination is surrounded by practical and theoretical reason and a greater ability for self-reflection. Greater awareness corresponds with greater abilities. Greater abilities do not come without a price. Adults are able to do more than children, and thus are expected to do more. Responsibilities bring pain in tow—the pain from the exercise required to meet them, the pain from not understanding how to meet them, or the pain from understanding one has failed to meet them.
Adults are most obviously responsible for their preservation. Once they leave their parents, they must work to sustain themselves. The responsibility for self-preservation is partially fulfilled by a job or career. Labor is traded for wages and wages are traded for goods and services, necessary or not. Labor is an expenditure of energy by the will, and the will does not always replenish quickly. When depleted, a person feels lethargic and lacks motivation.
There is another responsibility, hidden in interiority, to be autonomous. Autonomy is the capacity to choose one’s course of action without being determined to do so by exterior influences. Fully functioning adults can determine their course of action in the world more independently than before. Drawing from theoretical reason to establish their goals, self-reflection to establish their identity, and practical reason to set about accomplishing their goals, they can freely direct the course of their lives. Autonomy requires knowledge and a lack of knowledge leads to anxiety and despair.
While in childhood, we saw entertainment supplant the imagination, in adulthood we will see it supplant the will and suppress rationality, both theoretical and practical. Entertainment can be a supplement for the tired and a sedative for the anxious. Love of entertainment jeopardizes these faculties, and so we are right to explore the “whys,” “hows,” and “whens” of jeopardy.
To continue our examinations, our strategy must be even less systematic as we enter the thicket of maturity. Anxiety, despair, and lethargy are not temporally related. They do not unfold in a certain order. The roads between them are not one-way. As before, we will begin with the most obvious and work our way towards the obscure. I beg you patience once more at the outset. At times, I will need to do a great deal of prefacing in order to return to the disease under our microscope.
Lethargy
We observed earlier adults are weary. Reflect upon the lives of the adults you know to verify this observation. Self-preservation leads to lethargy. Maturation is the process of determining the indeterminate. In the professional context, many of the determinations are involuntary. Once practical concerns are met, we have time for leisure. Leisure is time that can be spent on other responsibilities or on what one fancies. Perhaps a person needs to take a nap. Perhaps a person wants to read a book. If the person is a contemporary of ours, he will likely turn to the television. This is all the more understandable considering he is tired from his day. Work has many ways of making us weary. Doing something we do not appreciate makes us tired. Doing something around people we do not like makes us tired. Doing something monotonous makes us tired. Doing something exciting makes us tired. In short, action is tiring. The whistle at the factory and the click of the office lights at the end of the day are the sounds of surrender. We have expended energy all day long and we retain just enough to click a button.
One of the consequences of a weak will is a predilection towards laziness. It requires much less effort to be entertained than to be, for instance, entertaining. Sloth, like all vices, is fertile. Left unchecked, it will reproduce viciousness elsewhere. Love of entertainment can be its progeny.
When an adult enters into the liberated atmosphere of the evening, far from work and mandatory tasks, one is confronted by the "what now?" of freedom. What a cruel master freedom is who asks us every time we raise our eyes to him, "What now?" How exhausting to take the question seriously each time, to treat each query afresh! The mind, like the body, travels frequently along the path of least resistance. Through sloth, we adopt the readymade response instead of forging a new one.
The strength of habit is a contributing factor to this widespread forfeiture of freedom. Repeated choosing of entertainment corrodes the will. To the "what now?" of freedom, one can quickly retort, "when then?" What was before? we wonder. What did I do before when I was free to do something? I remember spending the evening playing a game. I frittered away my time on the computer. How manageable this question becomes with the retort of “What then!” The question nearly answers itself. The solidity of the past conquers the fluidity of the future. One's life builds itself automatically as the cyclical invitations to living are answered by the circular repetitions of prior responses. What could be easier?
We have worked for another all day long. When we can work for ourselves for ends not required to live, we say, "Enough. I have worked enough today and don’t want to be bothered anymore. You choose." Who or what is there to choose for us? There is no boss inside the home. There is no manager in the living room. There may be a spouse or child, but we have listened enough to others today. There remain only the contents of one's abode. The bathroom can be no help here. It is too boring. The bedroom will be helpful eventually, but not yet. There are only the prefabricated voices from prefabricated devices to listen to—those conduits of entertainment pouring into our heads.
Children and adults live in the same world where entertainment is inescapable. Nothing attacks us more in our culture than entertainment. Because of the superabundance of entertainment, the option of what to do with oneself is nearly made for a person. Entertainment presents itself as the answer to the question of “What now?”
Our environment is another factor contributing to our choosing not to choose. The situation is like that of a woman who is hungry and looks into her pantry. If a salesman had snuck into her house, unbeknownst to her while she was away, and stocked her shelves with nothing but his products--what would she eat? She would be surprised at first to be sure. All she finds on every shelf, from top to bottom, are boxes of cereal. It is time for dinner; she has no interest in eating breakfast again. She might tip a few boxes over to see what else is available. In the end, her disappointment succumbs to her hunger. For all she knows, there may be a can of soup or a bunch of bananas shoved in the back, but that would be more work. She does not want more work. "Cereal it is," she decides. On her next trip to the store, our heroine recognizes the boxes and purchases it without a second thought. So it is with entertainment. How can a man look into his soul when all of this entertainment is heaped on top of his eyes? How can a woman consider her freedom when all of this entertainment is welded onto her mind? It takes great effort to resist these forces of exteriority. Worse still, how could a person be autonomous when he would rather not be free? Left unchecked, the environment will do the choosing for you.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Vital Signs: Boredom and Youth
Boredom
Entertainment can be the medicine for the sickness of boredom. What is boredom? Most succinctly, it is a sort of privation. It is the absence of an object of consciousness that retains one's interest. It is a vacancy in the house of the mind. It is a void which causes the structure of consciousness to collapse into itself in dejection and disappointment. If boredom gives rise to a desire for entertainment, what gives rise to boredom? Literally, nothing is boring. Boredom occurs when something is missing.
To be bored is a mode of consciousness. It is the feeling of emptiness. As the whole body aches during dehydration, so the whole mind aches during boredom. The emotion felt along with boredom, ennui, contains the revulsion of pain, but more generalized than localized. It is a manifestation of languishing. It is the nearest one comes to an awareness of the inner process of decay. Protracted boredom atrophies the will. One wants something more, but has been so long without something, one is unwilling to pursue more. The capacity for thought decreases. One sees nothing to draw upon. The emotions dull from the luster of ennui to the matte of apathy to the stain of depression.
For instance, a person feels bored while waiting twenty minutes for a doctor to enter the little white room where she has been deposited. There is no noise. There are no colors. Even the smell is notable for its absence. Her senses are not stimulated. She cannot abide in deprivation. Early in the process, perhaps she seeks something out. She searches the drawers for a magazine or for useful items to pilfer. She thinks about her shortage of bandages, or her need to go to the pharmacy, or her route to the nearest one, and so on. She has managed to fill her consciousness, thus avoiding boredom. Has the outer world offered anything new or additional? No. The room is as sparse as it was before. She has created material to occupy herself. As children, the acts of creation come from the playful imagination. As adults, the imagination is conscripted into practical concerns and is accustomed to thinking of plans and tasks. Either way, one may stave off boredom by taking mental leave of lackluster environments.
Youth
Boredom first and most simply afflicts the youth. Understanding their discontent is an appropriate starting point.
The explanation for boredom in youth is developmental. The mind and body grow in tandem. Consciousness complexifies as one becomes aware of the world, then aware of being aware, and then aware of the self. The mind's foundational faculties—perception and imagination—bloom most quickly.
To grow, one needs nourishment. It is fitting for the process of growth to begin by feeding upon low-hanging fruits. The body relies upon a mother’s milk for its first food. The mind relies upon sensory phenomena, which are the most abundant interior occupants. They are available nearly everywhere you turn. The process of perceiving takes little more than the process of digesting. Perception needs no enticement; it happens on its own.
The move from mother’s milk to solid food for the body is repeated in the mind by the inauguration of the imagination. It is the next step in the process of liberation. One is freed to perceive more than one’s immediate surroundings. Although digestion occurs naturally and thoughtlessly within the healthy body, the biting, tearing, chewing, and swallowing that provides the stomach with sustenance requires effort. The imagination, the grist mill of the young mind, requires more effort than digesting. Mercifully, exercise of the imagination is rewarding. The consumption and digestion of the sensorial is generally pleasant. The imagination’s first creations use material from the sensed world. It needs only to recall sensory phenomena, mix them up, or spin them around, and thereby a new outcome is made. Naturally, one seeks out aesthetic satiation and avoids its unpleasant counterpart, boredom.
Although blooming is good and necessary, it is taxing. Growth depletes resources, both those contained in one's surroundings and in one's self. One has to consume from without and then process within. One needs to take and then turn the taken into something. These requirements are pressing as long as one feels the need to be occupied.
The specter of boredom ever-encroaches upon us because every object of perceptual interest will soon be uninteresting. Not only do such objects keep one's interest only as long as they are being perceived, the repeated perception of them decreases their interest value. As soon as the sun falls below the horizon, one departs from the overlook. The most moving experience upon first witnessing is blasé upon the fiftieth. Few objects are impervious to human forgetfulness and fickleness. We see this constantly in the youth and their limited attention spans.
How does this discussion of something as old as humankind relate to our previous observations of contemporary culture? Our nature—our tendency to depreciate the same object over time and repetition—is nothing new. If our sickness—this love of entertainment—is as advanced as it seems to be, something must have multiplied its symptoms. What was the catalyst? Technological developments funded by economic developments together with enough political security in life's necessities to pursue and profit off life's frivolities.
Entrepreneurs seek to entertain our youth, prone to boredom as they are, and we—their guardians—pay for it. Now, the children are at liberty to develop more quickly and move on to higher pursuits faster. Children are relieved of the burden of having to imagine for themselves—so the guardians think. Creativity is a puerile stage that can be accelerated with flashing lights and loud noises—so the guardians think. The children can put away the childish things sooner and learn the skills necessary to make wealth—math and science. At the very least, they will stop struggling to find something worth occupying themselves and cease pestering us for our attention. Give a child an electronic game, sit her in front of a television, or hand him a controller, and imagination is made easy. There is no need for playful manipulation and demanding struggle. The environment is saturated with perceptual interest. A child needs only to stay awake to experience as much, if not more, pleasure from witnessing someone else's imagination than using her own. Once exposed, she will be quiet and contented. She will be entertained.
Do these provisions tend to retard growth or hasten it? If a person is systematically supplied a necessity, will he be more or less equipped to acquire it for himself? When a person is put on dialysis, do we expect her kidneys to mend? Is dialysis refreshing—rejuvenating? No. It is a recognition that the kidneys are beyond repair. It would be odd indeed to unhook a patient from the dialysis machine after a year and say, "There. You have seen how it is done. You do it for yourself now." "No! Stop!" the patient would protest. "I know nothing about how it is done. I see the blood whir around, but I cannot make it do so in my body. I cannot do it on my own! Nothing has changed inside of me." The same protest, translated into the language of youth, is the declaration of "I'm bored." It is a plea for help and an admission of inability. What entertainment damages most in children is creativity, the catalyst of the imagination. Without the willingness to self-start, a child searches for other ways to get to the finish.
Boredom is not a disease like kidney disease. A child can regain functionality, if only she is encouraged to reclaim it. When you take the training wheels off of a child's bike, recognize that she may fall. Prepare to soothe her. If you put the training wheels back on after she falls, you cannot expect her to have better balance the next time you take them off. The same holds true for the imagination. If a child cannot occupy herself and you give her something that imagines for her, you cannot expect her to better occupy herself in the future. Out of love, you must be firm in your reply: "You can do it."
The wound will not mend on its own. A child may be frustrated and confused by stern support. Overstimulation has diluted children's abilities. Their situation is like that of a man who has along the way indulged in spicy foods at every opportunity. In the nursing home, he heaps salt and pepper onto his meals by the spoonful, complaining all the while that he cannot taste anything. He has ruined his taste buds. The youth have ruined their receptivity through incessant, pre-processed perception. It is no wonder they tug on our clothes, throw tantrums, and beg for entertainment. For them, the world without entertainment is a desert—a hostile and foreign place. What they perceive in it is less enticing than what they remember and what they can do about it is less than they could the day before. There is no time to waste. Bored children often mature into bored adults.
Entertainment can be the medicine for the sickness of boredom. What is boredom? Most succinctly, it is a sort of privation. It is the absence of an object of consciousness that retains one's interest. It is a vacancy in the house of the mind. It is a void which causes the structure of consciousness to collapse into itself in dejection and disappointment. If boredom gives rise to a desire for entertainment, what gives rise to boredom? Literally, nothing is boring. Boredom occurs when something is missing.
To be bored is a mode of consciousness. It is the feeling of emptiness. As the whole body aches during dehydration, so the whole mind aches during boredom. The emotion felt along with boredom, ennui, contains the revulsion of pain, but more generalized than localized. It is a manifestation of languishing. It is the nearest one comes to an awareness of the inner process of decay. Protracted boredom atrophies the will. One wants something more, but has been so long without something, one is unwilling to pursue more. The capacity for thought decreases. One sees nothing to draw upon. The emotions dull from the luster of ennui to the matte of apathy to the stain of depression.
For instance, a person feels bored while waiting twenty minutes for a doctor to enter the little white room where she has been deposited. There is no noise. There are no colors. Even the smell is notable for its absence. Her senses are not stimulated. She cannot abide in deprivation. Early in the process, perhaps she seeks something out. She searches the drawers for a magazine or for useful items to pilfer. She thinks about her shortage of bandages, or her need to go to the pharmacy, or her route to the nearest one, and so on. She has managed to fill her consciousness, thus avoiding boredom. Has the outer world offered anything new or additional? No. The room is as sparse as it was before. She has created material to occupy herself. As children, the acts of creation come from the playful imagination. As adults, the imagination is conscripted into practical concerns and is accustomed to thinking of plans and tasks. Either way, one may stave off boredom by taking mental leave of lackluster environments.
Youth
Boredom first and most simply afflicts the youth. Understanding their discontent is an appropriate starting point.
The explanation for boredom in youth is developmental. The mind and body grow in tandem. Consciousness complexifies as one becomes aware of the world, then aware of being aware, and then aware of the self. The mind's foundational faculties—perception and imagination—bloom most quickly.
To grow, one needs nourishment. It is fitting for the process of growth to begin by feeding upon low-hanging fruits. The body relies upon a mother’s milk for its first food. The mind relies upon sensory phenomena, which are the most abundant interior occupants. They are available nearly everywhere you turn. The process of perceiving takes little more than the process of digesting. Perception needs no enticement; it happens on its own.
The move from mother’s milk to solid food for the body is repeated in the mind by the inauguration of the imagination. It is the next step in the process of liberation. One is freed to perceive more than one’s immediate surroundings. Although digestion occurs naturally and thoughtlessly within the healthy body, the biting, tearing, chewing, and swallowing that provides the stomach with sustenance requires effort. The imagination, the grist mill of the young mind, requires more effort than digesting. Mercifully, exercise of the imagination is rewarding. The consumption and digestion of the sensorial is generally pleasant. The imagination’s first creations use material from the sensed world. It needs only to recall sensory phenomena, mix them up, or spin them around, and thereby a new outcome is made. Naturally, one seeks out aesthetic satiation and avoids its unpleasant counterpart, boredom.
Although blooming is good and necessary, it is taxing. Growth depletes resources, both those contained in one's surroundings and in one's self. One has to consume from without and then process within. One needs to take and then turn the taken into something. These requirements are pressing as long as one feels the need to be occupied.
The specter of boredom ever-encroaches upon us because every object of perceptual interest will soon be uninteresting. Not only do such objects keep one's interest only as long as they are being perceived, the repeated perception of them decreases their interest value. As soon as the sun falls below the horizon, one departs from the overlook. The most moving experience upon first witnessing is blasé upon the fiftieth. Few objects are impervious to human forgetfulness and fickleness. We see this constantly in the youth and their limited attention spans.
How does this discussion of something as old as humankind relate to our previous observations of contemporary culture? Our nature—our tendency to depreciate the same object over time and repetition—is nothing new. If our sickness—this love of entertainment—is as advanced as it seems to be, something must have multiplied its symptoms. What was the catalyst? Technological developments funded by economic developments together with enough political security in life's necessities to pursue and profit off life's frivolities.
Entrepreneurs seek to entertain our youth, prone to boredom as they are, and we—their guardians—pay for it. Now, the children are at liberty to develop more quickly and move on to higher pursuits faster. Children are relieved of the burden of having to imagine for themselves—so the guardians think. Creativity is a puerile stage that can be accelerated with flashing lights and loud noises—so the guardians think. The children can put away the childish things sooner and learn the skills necessary to make wealth—math and science. At the very least, they will stop struggling to find something worth occupying themselves and cease pestering us for our attention. Give a child an electronic game, sit her in front of a television, or hand him a controller, and imagination is made easy. There is no need for playful manipulation and demanding struggle. The environment is saturated with perceptual interest. A child needs only to stay awake to experience as much, if not more, pleasure from witnessing someone else's imagination than using her own. Once exposed, she will be quiet and contented. She will be entertained.
Do these provisions tend to retard growth or hasten it? If a person is systematically supplied a necessity, will he be more or less equipped to acquire it for himself? When a person is put on dialysis, do we expect her kidneys to mend? Is dialysis refreshing—rejuvenating? No. It is a recognition that the kidneys are beyond repair. It would be odd indeed to unhook a patient from the dialysis machine after a year and say, "There. You have seen how it is done. You do it for yourself now." "No! Stop!" the patient would protest. "I know nothing about how it is done. I see the blood whir around, but I cannot make it do so in my body. I cannot do it on my own! Nothing has changed inside of me." The same protest, translated into the language of youth, is the declaration of "I'm bored." It is a plea for help and an admission of inability. What entertainment damages most in children is creativity, the catalyst of the imagination. Without the willingness to self-start, a child searches for other ways to get to the finish.
Boredom is not a disease like kidney disease. A child can regain functionality, if only she is encouraged to reclaim it. When you take the training wheels off of a child's bike, recognize that she may fall. Prepare to soothe her. If you put the training wheels back on after she falls, you cannot expect her to have better balance the next time you take them off. The same holds true for the imagination. If a child cannot occupy herself and you give her something that imagines for her, you cannot expect her to better occupy herself in the future. Out of love, you must be firm in your reply: "You can do it."
The wound will not mend on its own. A child may be frustrated and confused by stern support. Overstimulation has diluted children's abilities. Their situation is like that of a man who has along the way indulged in spicy foods at every opportunity. In the nursing home, he heaps salt and pepper onto his meals by the spoonful, complaining all the while that he cannot taste anything. He has ruined his taste buds. The youth have ruined their receptivity through incessant, pre-processed perception. It is no wonder they tug on our clothes, throw tantrums, and beg for entertainment. For them, the world without entertainment is a desert—a hostile and foreign place. What they perceive in it is less enticing than what they remember and what they can do about it is less than they could the day before. There is no time to waste. Bored children often mature into bored adults.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Vital Signs: Introduction
When a doctor enters the room, he surveys the patient. He checks the pulse, looks into the ears, eyes, nose, and throat. He checks the reflexes and listens to the person's lungs. "But doctor, I think I broke my finger,” the patient could protest. “Why are you doing all of this when the problem is with my finger?" The physician would respond, "You are my patient. There may be something else amiss, something just starting to be wrong or else wrong quietly, and I must take the opportunity to investigate. I am your doctor and am concerned with your overall health. I will examine your hand, of course, but I must always consider your vitals."
I admire this approach to medicine. It has its priorities rightly organized. Medicine does not properly seek diagnoses. It seeks wellness, which is a quality applicable to the whole person. In a like way, I do not seek merely clarification, but repair. I am not a doctor, although I share similar concerns. I see illness in myself and in others, so I inquire. Inquiry is a needful, if arduous, task. How many times do we misdiagnose ourselves? How many more times do we fail to detect a problem or underestimate its severity? How many ailments are the sort that we are unable to uncover on our own? I take a page from the book of healing and investigate generally as well as specifically.
When I enter the world, I survey the culture. I talk with people, listen to the radio, watch television, peruse the internet, and walk the streets. I observe passers-by and the signs posted on windows. What I find is that I am never far from a pair of phenomena. Are they symptoms, something caused by an ailment already in us? Are they sicknesses, things that can be cured? Or are they constituents of health, things we all share—as normal as a heartbeat?
Take the pulse of the youth. Ask them how they are. "I'm bored" is the most common response they offer. They offer it whiny voices begging to be helped. Boredom is an epidemic sapping children of their initiative. They are so tired of their surroundings! There are not enough stimuli present. They want more to be attentive to.
Test the reflexes of adults. Watch what they do. See how they come home, kick off their shoes, and place themselves in front of a screen. The day of earning has made them weary. Now, they want to be amused! Men and women work all day and most want nothing more than to be relieved before they go to bed. If only they could doze the evening away before they sleep.
Listen to the lungs of the society. With the rise or fall of the chest, a question repeats: business or pleasure? The horns of this dilemma pierce the heart of our culture. There is little else it would seem. Our culture is preoccupied with wealth and entertainment. Every adult feels the need to make money and everyone, young and old, is told how to spend it. Wealth is a limited concern, but entertainment is universal.
Wealth is recognized as problematic. We have mixed feelings about it. We are at once desirous and critical of money. We spend a great deal of time talking about it and how to become wealthy (since few consider themselves wealthy). Yet, many resent how the wealthy have become (since many of us think we are upstanding by comparison).We judge we can better use it than those who have more of it, if only to use it on ourselves.
Our greed and avarice is well-documented and frequently expounded upon. Speeches that rail against excess and essays that condemn conspicuous consumption are well-received. There have always been more 'have nots' than 'haves'. If a commentator wishes to increase his readership, he needs only criticize something unpopular--like the wealthy and their depravity.
Why are we so divided about wealth? As with other areas of interior tension, our moral judgment conflicts with our desires. We want wealth and at the same time know that our desire, if unchecked, becomes greed. Greed is a sickness. Greed is the depraved relationship to wealth. Greed turns people into beasts primed to lay waste to anyone and anything in the way of gain. Wherever people are used for illicit gain or when a person identifies with his possessions, there greed afflicts us. We remember being slighted by greedy people, and so we condemn improper use of wealth.
I sense no such division about entertainment. Does that mean it is a benign part of life? What is there to say about it, after all? There is no apparent conflict between morals and desires here. Who is harmed by entertainment? It does not seem possible to viciously relate to something so innocuous. Who would dare enter our homes and cast an unflattering light on a little source of fun? To criticize a favorite institution--that would be ill-received. But if the receivers are ill, could we expect anything else? Let us not be deterred. Let us pursue the topic further.
Entertainment is not simply evil. Entertainment can be simple-hearted fun. It is comforting, so we naturally welcome it. At times, it is the material for virtue and uplift. Art can be an ennobling form of entertainment. Moreover, entertainment has its proper place. Rest, relief, and leisure can be good. A person cannot function properly without sleep. The mind and body need time to recover. These are all indications of our limitations—limitations we should all recognize and abide by.
I think, though, there is something amiss here. I am suspicious of our infatuation with rest. It seems to me indulging our limitations abuses our possibilities and squelches our aspirations. The harm is not with entertainment per se any more than the harm is with money per se. Vice in all things is immoderation. See the nature of the depraved relationship: one is disproportionately devoted to an object. The harm is found in the reverberations of our relationships to objects when we are too devoted to them, spend too much time with them, and idolize them.
Why is the love of entertainment not condemned? To begin with, we lack the language to speak on the topic. Some of the most incipient, most common vices have names, but the list is not exhaustive. While we can use a specific word to critique the love of food (gluttony), the love of sex (lust), the love of self (pride), or the love of money (greed), to name a few, what could we say for the love of entertainment? There is no classification. Is it any wonder that we do not speak such a vice? How our feeble thoughts are constrained further by language! We do not talk about what we do not think about. We do not think about what is difficult to talk about and what is difficult to talk about is what we cannot state quickly. Thus, if there is no word to summarize the concept, it is likely not to be considered. What we do not consider, we soon will think does not exist. Tragedy of tragedy—that words constrain reality when it ought to be the other way around!
Aside from the linguistic difficulties, this vice is unlikely to be noticed because it is private. A word of caution: the most successful offensives are those that do not trip our defenses. (Remember the Trojan Horse?) While on guard for the malevolent behavior of others, we neglect the malignant traits in ourselves. Contrary to the painful products of greed, love of entertainment never causes suffering in others. One is not offended by the entertained. The entertained do not act out. They are nice, quiet, and pleased. They tend to be light-hearted and languid. Those sick with this particular vice never felt better, but we cannot always trust our feelings to tell the full story. A person living in the soft world of anesthesia feels no pain, but we cannot say he is well.
Oh that we would stop thinking that harm is only a public phenomenon! A house can have a beautiful façade and contain walls ready to crumble inside, riddled with a termite infestation or water damage. When one takes break after break after break, do we not call him lazy? When one wakes up in the morning only to turn over and try to sleep into midday, do we not call her slothful? These people have lost all sense of proportion. Associate enough imbalanced people and you will make a culture full of immoderation apt to be oblivious to lop-sidedness. All the same, we can hear the echoes of this vice, quiet though they may be.
Taking stock of our preliminary testing, we can conclude the abundance of entertainment is not indicative of health. The amount of it suggests an overestimation of its worth. We have begun to pull back the skin covering this infection, but we are far from a medical opinion. We need to understand what it is and why there is so much of it. We are farther still from a course of treatment. The prognosis is guarded. We must proceed, but before we do, I must ask for your patience. It is a doctor’s prerogative to shine his light upon all areas of the body. Like a good doctor, I will look wherever my intuition takes me—even if it seems far removed from entertainment. The specific disease is an opportunity for expansive inquiries into vitality. In order to explain a disease, a physician must have recourse to the fundamental study of the body. I will likewise need to draw upon foundational principles. There are patterns in the movements of the mind and motivations of the heart as surely as there are law in the laboratory and the environment. It is to these that we look.
Entertainment
Let us proceed with a biopsy of entertainment so that we may be clear about the ailment prior to examining the patient (i.e., ourselves). Entertainment is an object of consciousness. To be entertained is a mode of consciousness. It is to be aware of pleasing sensory stimulation. One who is aware of the stimulus wishes to continue the stimulation and enjoys it. Entertaining experience is akin to aesthetic experience. Both are pleasant sensorial states of consciousness and as such draw humans towards them. What is entertaining provides for greater passivity than what is aesthetic. The aesthetic activates the imagination. The imagination manipulates established ideas, one step removed from the perceptions that bore them, into weaker but still pleasant, new ideas. Thus art, an aesthetic product, invites its audience to play, to see and think—to imagine—freely, without greater purpose. The entertaining deactivates the imagination. Entertainment presents the finished product of the imagination for consumption, free from the burden of effortful manipulation. It is not an invitation, but a reply to the weakness in us. It feeds us with the purpose of sating our discomfort.
A conversation, an image, a sound, a motion, a group of words on a page, a game, a toy, a performance can all be entertaining. Natural phenomena, too, may be entertaining. To watch a leaf be swept up in the wind or to hear an elaborate birdsong can be captivating should a person enter the world and find them. The list of possible things or actions that can entertain is longer than we have time for here and is ever expanding. Entertainment, as we consider it here, is a human artifice that aims at pleasant deactivation. It is a product of intentional crafting. What unifies entertainment is its end. Entertainment wants to remove us from the ordinary, the blasé, the commonplace contexts and events. It does this often by introducing novelty into a situation. What was not there before is now present. Before it was quiet; now we hear a melody. Before it was bleak; now we see an exotic landscape.
Some objects are secondarily entertaining. A child may be captivated by the paper his gift is wrapped in or the box her gift came in rather than the gift. It was not the intention of the artificer to entertain, but the audience can take great liberty with works after they are made. Many works of art and performances are secondarily entertaining. They hold one's attention, keeping one occupied. The natural objects referenced above are additional examples.
Other objects are primarily entertaining. These objects, intentionally made to entertain, are the material of our discussion. They are sensational. They grab your attention and once they have it, you hesitate to leave. Our surroundings are rife with entertainment. It is in our hands, on our screens, around our homes, throughout our commutes, and under our noses. Movies, songs, video games, episodes, webisodes, advertisements, clips, podcasts, programs--all are kinds of entertainment.
Look no farther than economic principles to explain entertainment's relative omnipresence. A market facilitates transactions between those with something to give and those looking to receive. Our grand market indulges consumers' most common demands as the givers seek to take as much as they can in return. People want entertainment. What they want, they will pay for. What they will pay for, people will sell them for the sake of gaining wealth.
Effort, like that which is necessary to exercise ones capacities, is inconvenient. We abhor inconvenience. Tedium is frustrating and banal. Cue the entrepreneur. Wherever there is a possibility to increase convenience, an entrepreneur is never far off. With entertainment, the work has been done for you. The cunning entrepreneurs have created products that reach so far into your space you need only sit back to eat out of the one hand while putting a dollar in the other.
Convenience is a cornerstone of capitalism. When a device is made or a service rendered that mitigates our contributions, it is desirable. People pay for such a privilege. Why grow your own food, when someone else will grow it for you--for a price? Then, you could—for instance—spend your time developing your craft. (Note: the specialization of labor is inaugurated!) Why use your own imagination when someone else will process perceptions for you--for a price? Then, you could—for instance—spend your time being pleased rather than working towards something. (Note: the consumerization of life is inaugurated!) You could spend your time spending your money rather than…but I digress.
Proceed with caution in the land of convenience. Convenient products and services can release a person to focus on other considerations or to be distracted in the absence of considerations altogether. This comes as a consequence of neglecting priorities. When we only concern ourselves with what is useful and neglect consideration of what it is useful for, we are prone to make a means an end. We can then only assure ourselves that we have the most, not the best. This is the danger of searching for the answers alone rather than both the questions and then the answers.
With a greater understanding of what we are looking for in our patients, we can proceed with the examination. We have observed entertainment is frequently sought out of discontent. Discontent with the external is seen in boredom and most clearly demonstrated by youths. Discontent with the internal is seen in anxiety and most clearly demonstrated by adults. While any age can be tired, we will consider lethargy in adults alone since they are more likely to seek entertainment out of a sort of tiredness than children. Since investigating the internal and hidden requires more subtlety and skill, allow me to begin with the obvious and hold out hope that, thereafter, I may be dexterous enough to dissect the obscure.
I admire this approach to medicine. It has its priorities rightly organized. Medicine does not properly seek diagnoses. It seeks wellness, which is a quality applicable to the whole person. In a like way, I do not seek merely clarification, but repair. I am not a doctor, although I share similar concerns. I see illness in myself and in others, so I inquire. Inquiry is a needful, if arduous, task. How many times do we misdiagnose ourselves? How many more times do we fail to detect a problem or underestimate its severity? How many ailments are the sort that we are unable to uncover on our own? I take a page from the book of healing and investigate generally as well as specifically.
When I enter the world, I survey the culture. I talk with people, listen to the radio, watch television, peruse the internet, and walk the streets. I observe passers-by and the signs posted on windows. What I find is that I am never far from a pair of phenomena. Are they symptoms, something caused by an ailment already in us? Are they sicknesses, things that can be cured? Or are they constituents of health, things we all share—as normal as a heartbeat?
Take the pulse of the youth. Ask them how they are. "I'm bored" is the most common response they offer. They offer it whiny voices begging to be helped. Boredom is an epidemic sapping children of their initiative. They are so tired of their surroundings! There are not enough stimuli present. They want more to be attentive to.
Test the reflexes of adults. Watch what they do. See how they come home, kick off their shoes, and place themselves in front of a screen. The day of earning has made them weary. Now, they want to be amused! Men and women work all day and most want nothing more than to be relieved before they go to bed. If only they could doze the evening away before they sleep.
Listen to the lungs of the society. With the rise or fall of the chest, a question repeats: business or pleasure? The horns of this dilemma pierce the heart of our culture. There is little else it would seem. Our culture is preoccupied with wealth and entertainment. Every adult feels the need to make money and everyone, young and old, is told how to spend it. Wealth is a limited concern, but entertainment is universal.
Wealth is recognized as problematic. We have mixed feelings about it. We are at once desirous and critical of money. We spend a great deal of time talking about it and how to become wealthy (since few consider themselves wealthy). Yet, many resent how the wealthy have become (since many of us think we are upstanding by comparison).We judge we can better use it than those who have more of it, if only to use it on ourselves.
Our greed and avarice is well-documented and frequently expounded upon. Speeches that rail against excess and essays that condemn conspicuous consumption are well-received. There have always been more 'have nots' than 'haves'. If a commentator wishes to increase his readership, he needs only criticize something unpopular--like the wealthy and their depravity.
Why are we so divided about wealth? As with other areas of interior tension, our moral judgment conflicts with our desires. We want wealth and at the same time know that our desire, if unchecked, becomes greed. Greed is a sickness. Greed is the depraved relationship to wealth. Greed turns people into beasts primed to lay waste to anyone and anything in the way of gain. Wherever people are used for illicit gain or when a person identifies with his possessions, there greed afflicts us. We remember being slighted by greedy people, and so we condemn improper use of wealth.
I sense no such division about entertainment. Does that mean it is a benign part of life? What is there to say about it, after all? There is no apparent conflict between morals and desires here. Who is harmed by entertainment? It does not seem possible to viciously relate to something so innocuous. Who would dare enter our homes and cast an unflattering light on a little source of fun? To criticize a favorite institution--that would be ill-received. But if the receivers are ill, could we expect anything else? Let us not be deterred. Let us pursue the topic further.
Entertainment is not simply evil. Entertainment can be simple-hearted fun. It is comforting, so we naturally welcome it. At times, it is the material for virtue and uplift. Art can be an ennobling form of entertainment. Moreover, entertainment has its proper place. Rest, relief, and leisure can be good. A person cannot function properly without sleep. The mind and body need time to recover. These are all indications of our limitations—limitations we should all recognize and abide by.
I think, though, there is something amiss here. I am suspicious of our infatuation with rest. It seems to me indulging our limitations abuses our possibilities and squelches our aspirations. The harm is not with entertainment per se any more than the harm is with money per se. Vice in all things is immoderation. See the nature of the depraved relationship: one is disproportionately devoted to an object. The harm is found in the reverberations of our relationships to objects when we are too devoted to them, spend too much time with them, and idolize them.
Why is the love of entertainment not condemned? To begin with, we lack the language to speak on the topic. Some of the most incipient, most common vices have names, but the list is not exhaustive. While we can use a specific word to critique the love of food (gluttony), the love of sex (lust), the love of self (pride), or the love of money (greed), to name a few, what could we say for the love of entertainment? There is no classification. Is it any wonder that we do not speak such a vice? How our feeble thoughts are constrained further by language! We do not talk about what we do not think about. We do not think about what is difficult to talk about and what is difficult to talk about is what we cannot state quickly. Thus, if there is no word to summarize the concept, it is likely not to be considered. What we do not consider, we soon will think does not exist. Tragedy of tragedy—that words constrain reality when it ought to be the other way around!
Aside from the linguistic difficulties, this vice is unlikely to be noticed because it is private. A word of caution: the most successful offensives are those that do not trip our defenses. (Remember the Trojan Horse?) While on guard for the malevolent behavior of others, we neglect the malignant traits in ourselves. Contrary to the painful products of greed, love of entertainment never causes suffering in others. One is not offended by the entertained. The entertained do not act out. They are nice, quiet, and pleased. They tend to be light-hearted and languid. Those sick with this particular vice never felt better, but we cannot always trust our feelings to tell the full story. A person living in the soft world of anesthesia feels no pain, but we cannot say he is well.
Oh that we would stop thinking that harm is only a public phenomenon! A house can have a beautiful façade and contain walls ready to crumble inside, riddled with a termite infestation or water damage. When one takes break after break after break, do we not call him lazy? When one wakes up in the morning only to turn over and try to sleep into midday, do we not call her slothful? These people have lost all sense of proportion. Associate enough imbalanced people and you will make a culture full of immoderation apt to be oblivious to lop-sidedness. All the same, we can hear the echoes of this vice, quiet though they may be.
Taking stock of our preliminary testing, we can conclude the abundance of entertainment is not indicative of health. The amount of it suggests an overestimation of its worth. We have begun to pull back the skin covering this infection, but we are far from a medical opinion. We need to understand what it is and why there is so much of it. We are farther still from a course of treatment. The prognosis is guarded. We must proceed, but before we do, I must ask for your patience. It is a doctor’s prerogative to shine his light upon all areas of the body. Like a good doctor, I will look wherever my intuition takes me—even if it seems far removed from entertainment. The specific disease is an opportunity for expansive inquiries into vitality. In order to explain a disease, a physician must have recourse to the fundamental study of the body. I will likewise need to draw upon foundational principles. There are patterns in the movements of the mind and motivations of the heart as surely as there are law in the laboratory and the environment. It is to these that we look.
Entertainment
Let us proceed with a biopsy of entertainment so that we may be clear about the ailment prior to examining the patient (i.e., ourselves). Entertainment is an object of consciousness. To be entertained is a mode of consciousness. It is to be aware of pleasing sensory stimulation. One who is aware of the stimulus wishes to continue the stimulation and enjoys it. Entertaining experience is akin to aesthetic experience. Both are pleasant sensorial states of consciousness and as such draw humans towards them. What is entertaining provides for greater passivity than what is aesthetic. The aesthetic activates the imagination. The imagination manipulates established ideas, one step removed from the perceptions that bore them, into weaker but still pleasant, new ideas. Thus art, an aesthetic product, invites its audience to play, to see and think—to imagine—freely, without greater purpose. The entertaining deactivates the imagination. Entertainment presents the finished product of the imagination for consumption, free from the burden of effortful manipulation. It is not an invitation, but a reply to the weakness in us. It feeds us with the purpose of sating our discomfort.
A conversation, an image, a sound, a motion, a group of words on a page, a game, a toy, a performance can all be entertaining. Natural phenomena, too, may be entertaining. To watch a leaf be swept up in the wind or to hear an elaborate birdsong can be captivating should a person enter the world and find them. The list of possible things or actions that can entertain is longer than we have time for here and is ever expanding. Entertainment, as we consider it here, is a human artifice that aims at pleasant deactivation. It is a product of intentional crafting. What unifies entertainment is its end. Entertainment wants to remove us from the ordinary, the blasé, the commonplace contexts and events. It does this often by introducing novelty into a situation. What was not there before is now present. Before it was quiet; now we hear a melody. Before it was bleak; now we see an exotic landscape.
Some objects are secondarily entertaining. A child may be captivated by the paper his gift is wrapped in or the box her gift came in rather than the gift. It was not the intention of the artificer to entertain, but the audience can take great liberty with works after they are made. Many works of art and performances are secondarily entertaining. They hold one's attention, keeping one occupied. The natural objects referenced above are additional examples.
Other objects are primarily entertaining. These objects, intentionally made to entertain, are the material of our discussion. They are sensational. They grab your attention and once they have it, you hesitate to leave. Our surroundings are rife with entertainment. It is in our hands, on our screens, around our homes, throughout our commutes, and under our noses. Movies, songs, video games, episodes, webisodes, advertisements, clips, podcasts, programs--all are kinds of entertainment.
Look no farther than economic principles to explain entertainment's relative omnipresence. A market facilitates transactions between those with something to give and those looking to receive. Our grand market indulges consumers' most common demands as the givers seek to take as much as they can in return. People want entertainment. What they want, they will pay for. What they will pay for, people will sell them for the sake of gaining wealth.
Effort, like that which is necessary to exercise ones capacities, is inconvenient. We abhor inconvenience. Tedium is frustrating and banal. Cue the entrepreneur. Wherever there is a possibility to increase convenience, an entrepreneur is never far off. With entertainment, the work has been done for you. The cunning entrepreneurs have created products that reach so far into your space you need only sit back to eat out of the one hand while putting a dollar in the other.
Convenience is a cornerstone of capitalism. When a device is made or a service rendered that mitigates our contributions, it is desirable. People pay for such a privilege. Why grow your own food, when someone else will grow it for you--for a price? Then, you could—for instance—spend your time developing your craft. (Note: the specialization of labor is inaugurated!) Why use your own imagination when someone else will process perceptions for you--for a price? Then, you could—for instance—spend your time being pleased rather than working towards something. (Note: the consumerization of life is inaugurated!) You could spend your time spending your money rather than…but I digress.
Proceed with caution in the land of convenience. Convenient products and services can release a person to focus on other considerations or to be distracted in the absence of considerations altogether. This comes as a consequence of neglecting priorities. When we only concern ourselves with what is useful and neglect consideration of what it is useful for, we are prone to make a means an end. We can then only assure ourselves that we have the most, not the best. This is the danger of searching for the answers alone rather than both the questions and then the answers.
With a greater understanding of what we are looking for in our patients, we can proceed with the examination. We have observed entertainment is frequently sought out of discontent. Discontent with the external is seen in boredom and most clearly demonstrated by youths. Discontent with the internal is seen in anxiety and most clearly demonstrated by adults. While any age can be tired, we will consider lethargy in adults alone since they are more likely to seek entertainment out of a sort of tiredness than children. Since investigating the internal and hidden requires more subtlety and skill, allow me to begin with the obvious and hold out hope that, thereafter, I may be dexterous enough to dissect the obscure.
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