Is Entertainment Bad?

A question that arose in my mind this morning:

Is entertainment ‘bad’?

Furthermore:

When we say ‘entertainment’ — what do we really mean?

“Entertain” (En+tenere)

If we study the etymology of the word ‘entertain’, it literally means “to hold”. So my definition of entertainment is something which can hold your attention.

Your attention is one of your most valuable assets. Your attention is limited (you only have so much of it in a certain day), and you only have a certain limited number of “attention units” you can devote in a lifetime.

A lot of us trade our attention for money, for visual-audio stimuli, etc. But is this a good strategy?

Is there such thing as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ entertainment?

All entertainment is ‘amoral’ (non-moral). Which means:

Don’t categorize certain entertainments as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ — they’re all just different.

For example, who is to say that watching a play, theater, or reading a book is “good” entertainment, while reading celebrity gossip, watching bodybuilding documentaries on Netflix, or playing virtual reality games is “bad” entertainment?

Certain media holds our attention in different ways. But the question I’m interested in:

Are there certain forms of media which empower us, and other forms of media which dis-empower us?

Entertainment and media is the same thing.

So this is the tricky thing:

We generally think of ‘entertainment’ as a noun-concept, instead of an active verb (to hold your attention).

Thus, perhaps we should replace the word ‘entertainment’ with ‘media’. I prefer this, because whenever we refer to something as ‘entertainment’ we are painting it with a negative moral judgement, whereas ‘media’ is more neutral.

How does the media/entertainment change you?

A simple question:

After interacting with a certain media (TV, book, play, dance, video game, etc) — how does it change you?

Does it make you more energetic, vigorous, or more optimistic towards life? Is the media a positive stimulus which motivates you to create more of your own stuff, to create more of your own artwork, and to think more, dream more, imagine more, and aspire for more? Or does the media stupefy us, pacify us, and distract us from what we truly want to achieve in life?

Let us ponder this question much– and let this be a guide for our lives.

ERIC