Waste of Time
Man watching television
G. Boersma
acrylics on masonite
15" x 20" or 38 x 51 cm
2005
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The invisible tyranny of too much entertainment
If you’re anything like me you probably know exactly what you don’t want. We do our best to avoid that and once we get there we feel comfortable and secure. We do just that what is neccessary and fill the rest of our time with entertainment. That’s what we call the good life.
As long as it a choice, you actually want to lead your life that way, there is of course nothing wrong with that. But if you find yourself complaining a little and want to achieve something more in your life too much entertainment doesn’t get you there.
People often say: 'Well that’s not me, maybe other people, I work darn hard and still not getting ahead.' Well that may be so, but let’s define entertainment so we know what we’re talking about.
Entertainment are all the tension relieving activities a person engages in. It’s getting up in the morning, turning on the television, drinking coffee, reading the newspapers, surfing the internet.
In your car to work you listen to music. At work you chit chat with coworkers, drink some more coffee, speak to your friends on the phone. You do your work while listening to music and finally go home and what do you do?
Chat some more with your family, phone a couple of friends, turning on the television, surf the internet some more, listening to music or play videogames. It’s entertainment, entertainment, entertainment.
So there’s a fat chance that your life is filled with more entertainment than you initially think it is. We almost have an infinite appetite for distractions, it’s fun and easy.
We love it so much that I sometimes wonder if we aren’t controlled by it. I think most of us are, I do believe entertainment is dictating a lot of lives. It's the one thing we all want as soon as we possibly can, we’re all addicted to it in some way. I'm afraid entertainment has become a tyranny.
But it’s almost invisible, hard to recgonize at first, since most tyrannies are the ones we hate, not the ones we love. But we love our oppression, we love our technologies that bring us entertainmaint day and night.
Of course it’s hard to complain about people having a good time. How can you be against that? What’s wrong with it? Not much if you’re the one in control, but if it’s the other way around I fear too much amusements will ruin us.
Too much laughter deprives us from our autonomy, maturity and history and that’s a huge problem. It gave birth to the adult child and the child adult.
With a sea of amusements everywhere around us, I fear we became a trivial culture. Preoccupied with what the latest popsinger is wearing or what the dog’s name of the next president will be.
We get so much information that most of it is irrelevant. Too much of it reduces us to passivity and egoism, it reduces our capabilities to think. That’s what’s wrong with it, it doesn’t get us anywhere.
The problem isn’t that we’re laughing instead of thinking, it’s that we don’t know what we’re laughing about and why we stopped thinking in the first place. That’s what people like Aldous Huxley and Neil Postman warned us about and I think they’re right. It’s a pretty black picture, I know, but there’s an antidote.
Setting goals, that’s the only antidote I see for a culture being drained with pleasure. Decide upon what it is you want most in life, what price you’re willing to pay to get there. Then make a plan and get busy making your plan a reality. Get up, get out and do something. Learn all the skills necessary, get educated, set deadlines and work all the time you work.
Do the things that are hard and necessary, rather than the things that are fun and easy. Dissolve to never give up and I’m sure you don’t want to swim in the sea of amusements no more. Ironically, that's when the real fun begins.
kind regards, Gerard
