Brief Thoughts on Entertainment (Test Post)

Here is a short test post that kind of rambles about what we talked about on Friday:

Our book says that our culture is becoming more childlike and more concerned with play rather than work. I would disagree with this to some degree. I believe that our cultural consciousness has always been more concerned with play rather than work. Since humans can perceive time they have to spend it. Optimally, every human would try to spend all of his time pursuing happiness. Of course this is isn't possible in reality because we have to expend time to maintain our health and meet basic needs. Humans generally do this by working at jobs, earning money, and spending it on food, water, housing, and other essentials. For most of history, humans have balanced work and play, so they were able to meet their essential needs and also spend their free time pursuing happiness. In our time, however, there seem to be two fundamental changes. One, it is taking less time to meet basic needs. For example, a person can gain enough money to live by mooching off of parents, the government, and ex-lovers via child support. There is no work involved so the person is able to spend all of his free time pursuing happiness or playing. The second fundamental change is the availability of entertainment. Technology and the internet permeate our society making entertainment only a click away. So essentially I don't think that humans have become more concerned with play. Meeting basic needs has simply gotten easier, and entertainment is closer than ever no matter where we are in the world.