Foreword
This is a topic where research is not yet conducted. However if you know it beforehand, you need not wait till research agrees with what I am going to say, and act now, than biting tongue many decades later, for the blunders we had done in the past, both with ourselves and with our children.
Imagine you planted a tree under the external stair case of your building, as the plant grows, it thinks it is in control. As it grows further, it hits the stair case, and takes a different contour perhaps along the inclined stair case path, slowly to see the sun finally. Yes or no? Haven’t you seen cube shaped watermelons and pumpkins? The watermelon when it starts to take first shape, thinks it is in full control, but when it meets the cube shaped glass enclosure , it finally sets itself in that shape.
So we thinking, we are in full control of situation, when feeding the mind with variety of information, is absurd. We can’t. If you think otherwise, just sit for 1 minute, without a single thought in mind, and tell me you succeeded. That is our rate of success with mind.
If you succeeded to calm your mind for 1 minute, you don’t need to read this any further. You are impressive with your mind control.
Now Entertainment
Entertainment could be any piece of audio visual, or a mind engagement that erases our current cache of stressed memory, with some laughter/emotion/pleasantness! Isn’t it? If you are a busy social studies teacher, and I explain you a mathematical problem, it is not entertainment, though it is different from your current job. It needs to give you pleasant experience. If I just talk about your childhood memories, and you vicariously experience them now, suddenly you get a break, you brushed off your cache with fresh pleasantness. You had an entertainment.
Today
Entertainment has become an industry, because we stopped entertaining ourselves.
We became too mechanical, logical, skeptical. The lighter part of our life, being Aesthete, appreciating aesthetics, beauty, art, sensitivity, softness, laughter are slowly fading off. We stopped our right brain forcefully in the quest of material benefits, assuming that brings happiness. But in fact,
Happiness is in those lighter glowing aesthetic moments in life, sewn together with the mainstream life.
Is Entertainment Wrong?
No, that is not the point. Is drinking water wrong? No, but if I drink more than six liters in three hours, I may die… The drop of water that can create life, that we are searching on every planet through telescopes, explorers, space ships, the sip of water that will save us from thirst, dehydration, and death, will kill us if we just overdo it. In the case of water and food, physical body is created with checks that you cannot usually over drink, or over eat. If you do, it will tell you that it can’t take more. But mind can’t, unless it goes against its fundamental beliefs and values. And when mind gobbles down more and more “nonsense”, it starts navigating you into that, because, remember that I told in “Arogya Chaturasra”. Entertainment is also one of those traps I talked about here
Mind is the navigator, if you don’t have control over it, it will make you dance to its tune
Mind is like the squeeze toy,the squeaking sound it makes when you put pressure on it, makes the same sound when you release it also. Mind throws back what you gave it, but amplified
We need entertainment in life, as a part of life’s aesthetics, as a healing mechanism for the trauma we went through, as a break during stressful situations. But as a vitamin, it is not recommended or as a constant sipping beverage. If you do, understand you are addicted and becoming the watermelon in the cube or stepping into three dangers of life, which may not just affect you, but your children and society adversely
How does entertainment dictate our lives
One can make you agree to one’s point in any of four ways. (LOFE)
- By Logic
- By Offer
- By Force
- By Entertainment
Danger 1: Creating an acceptable narrative
Leaving aside the first three, consider the fourth one. Entertainment touches our emotion. When something touches our emotion, according to our state of mind at that point, we may sway along with it or totally go against it. When entertainment is meticulously planned by professionals, they try to make the audience sway and agree to their point of view, by touching their emotion. That way a narrative is induced in public. We are here talking about entertainment offered by story telling via Audio Visuals (Movies, TV Serials etc), not your kid dancing, or you painting, or singing or travelling. Take for example the aspect of “Love” in Indian movies, it was overdone in the 1970s till 2000. Now everybody seems so connected! Don’t we? Even laws are made! Right or wrong, I leave it to your own discretion. Similarly the “Saans-Bahu” stories are not just shown, but surfaced in reality too after watching them. Crime has been repeated after intensely watching it on movies. Similarly taking alcohol, in India is getting considered normal, by the college goers. Who set the tempo?
Danger 2: Fanatics everywhere!
You stopped your right brain, can’t entertain yourself, you are deprived of entertainment, in dire need of it, and if I can entertain you, and induce my narrative into you. You will agree with me, because I relaxed you, I fulfilled your thirst and reached your heart. This is from where fans are born.
Do you know that fan is a short form of the word “Fan”atic?
And most of you know the word fanatic. A man who has no sense while doing actions, crazy, irresponsible. Now, just think, are you a fan of someone? Movie star or otherwise? We have seen how fanatics create havoc when their favorite actor passes away, or movie is rated low, or just like that without a reason. Fanaticism is a fearful state of people, and in crowds, it becomes mass hysteria.
Never be a fan of anybody. If they are truly valuable, be inspired by them, be motivated, but don’t lose your mind for them, otherwise you blindly believe what they say, and act without sense
Danger 3: Losing the ability to Imagine
Again, I mention, nobody is doing research on these subjects, because it is not a short term impact to mankind, and people are interested in results within a year or two. Let me narrate few examples
Case 1: A few years back, I talked to a village school topper, who is “Chiranjeevi”. The immediate answer is, “Megastar”. Didn’t you also remember the same? The right answer is actually “Hanuman”. I did not set context, so the answer is supposed to be base context, but it shifted to contemporary times. He doesn’t even know that Hanuman is Chiranjeevi.
Case 2: Most children can’t listen to stories now, because some interesting vocabulary related to adjectives, nouns, common nouns, adverbs, even in our mother tongues is long forgotten by us, and the children cant connect. Even if they connect, when we say Chiranjeevi flying in air, he imagines Megastar flying in air, and not Hanuman. So imagination is crippled, and the ability to imagine is curtailed by ready made media. This will soon take genetic corrections, reducing humans ability to imagine, because we have ready made items to view.
Many of you cant write a paragraph now, because you stopped using your fingers to write. So is your brain, for imagination, it is only a matter of time
Case 3: During my university years, we had a colleague, who was so obsessed with the then contemporary famous actor. His personality and body was different. However he smiled like him, walked like him, drank and ate like him, even brushed his teeth like him. He became a object of ridicule. He desperately wanted to get rid of that fake personality of his, but in vain. So this obsessive disorder might engulf our children, if they become “Fans” of any entertainer. Beware.
Obsession is nothing but liking something too much, and unable to let it go from mind, so it constantly drives us in crazy ways
Conclusion
I am not against entertainment, but I am concerned the dangers it offers due to various reasons, and it affects society at large in the long run. We need to firmly establish ourselves in mind, and then we can do feats with life and mind, because we stay untouched by the dangers. Our awareness is playing a bigger role than the mind itself.
One has to limit one’s entertainment, or become self entertaining, if one wants to do something significant in life. If not one becomes entertainment for others or go into containment, if it crosses limits.