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.