Addicted to Entertainment

[Fox12]

It depends on the kind of entertainment you fill your head with. If all you watch is Jersey Shore then you aren't really getting much out of it.

However, entertainment is a VERY important part of our society. We tell stories in order to express ideas, and in order to debate or argue about important subject matter. We use entertainment to raise awareness about social issues. We use entertainment to express our worldviews with one another, so that we can see the world through someone elses eyes, if for only a moment. We use entertainment to shape cultural identity, and in order to share that cultural identity with people from all other parts of the world. Entertainment brings us together, it allows us to break down barriers. I can listen to music from England, enjoy a movie from Russia, or read a manga from Japan, and relate to all of them, and realize that, deep down, we all really want the same things in life.

saying that we have too much entertainment is like saying that we have too much technology. Neither is good or bad, the only thing that's good or bad is how we use it. Everyone should play to their strengths. An artist shouldn't try to be a scientist any more than a scientist should try to be an artist. Both contribute to the vast store of human knowledge in their own way. So let the musicians sing, and writers write, and the painters paint, and the scientists learn, and the doctors heal, and the architects build, and lets support one another while we do it.

 

[Mr Fixit]

It'll never happen, but a man can dream.

Well, you keep saying that and it won't. You see, the people that made their dreams happen did just that. They MADE them happen.

You know, I don't think people try hard enough for their dreams sometimes. Me included.

Ah quite true, I am a bit of a pessimist at times, life has a way of breaking even the strongest of wills. It's one of those "so close yet so far away" things right now.

I really should rephrase what I said, I should have said "At the moment it is highly unlikely to happen, but it is a dream of mine that will one day be made reality".

 

[Zhukov]

I don't really see a problem with it.

I mean, what else am I going to do? Work every minute that I'm not eating, sleeping or shitting? That sounds like a miserable existence.

Well, I guess I could, y'know, work to improve myself in various ways, but man, that shit is haaaard.

I like to think that my choices in entertainment are at least somewhat enriching or imaginatively stimulating. Well, most of them. Can't really defend the Youtube cat videos.

 

[Avaholic03]

Addiction has a very negative connotation. Most entertainment isn't like some drug that will ruin your life and your health. It often times enriches your life (depending on the entertainment of course). So I don't really worry about it.

I mean, in my ideal society, we get to a point where there is 100% unemployment and people spend all their time consuming entertainment or enriching their own life in some way. So if anything, "addiction" to entertainment could be considered a step in the right direction.

I'd say you're somewhat over-optimistic regarding entertainment's possible positive effects. I wouldn't say that there aren't any but what I'm concerned about, more than people wasting away in front of tv's or computer screens, is what the endless barrage of fiction is doing to our expectations of reality.

A fair point (especially with regards to fiction affecting expectations in reality). Although part of my ideal 100% unemployment society would mean that entertainment is only made by those who are passionate about it. No more money-grabbing, dumbed-down, lowest common denominator stuff. So hopefully that would eliminate a lot of the really awful stuff that skews perceptions of reality (namely porn, although it would affect other entertainment as well).