ThinkBlog

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192833723/thinkblogorg-20

Briefly: I agree with Augustine in several senses, that the pursuit of entertainment for its own sake is or can easily become a vice. This was an off-the-cuff rant, and I haven’t revised it so please forgive the odd (lack of) flow.

Book I, §xvii.27

Augustine makes the point that the most honored individuals who engaged in recitation were those who identified most with the fictitious characters, which must have seemed to him a double sin: dedicating the mind to the memorization of vain fictions (wasting time) and then applying a false emotional state to those fictions (lying). This is really very similar to how I feel about movies and most books, though of course my peers would scoff at me for that, and have. It’s not that reading pop fiction for the distraction is *sinful* per se, not that watching movies for their own sake and for pure, basal entertainment isn’t morally upright; but this to me is a vice easily avoided. I spent years of my childhood watching TV, diving into the story as far as I could so that I could escape reality; then I jealously guarded my time with the Nintendo, and snapped ferociously at anyone who would interrupt that escape from reality (which had at that point become a kind of “literally virtual” reality), intentionally or un-. Then it was books, and movies. But somehow when I sobered & cleaned up after Clemson, the more foolish watching these things, playing these games, reading grocery-store fiction seemed not only superfluous but unacceptably suppressive of my personal growth. All I could equate it to was a mild, mind-altering drug or like unto sleeping or eating when the biological need wasn’t there: onanism, all of it.

Let us analyze this for a moment. Take literature on the level Augustine was (presumably) describing. Is it a worthy endeavor to memorize poetry or stories and repeat them with great feeling and interpretation? Yes, there is a sense in which this is uniquely efficacious to an end involving the entertainment of others. Or again, if by memorizing poetry/fiction I can calm myself (Jung’s mandala-drawing and other such ritualistic behavior) or provide catharsis through identification with a character whose experience can cause me to scour my own heart of all the repressed emotional scum, or draw on another’s experience to help another–then this is also ultimately helpful, though in a drastically reduced way. But reading for the sake of letting one’s eyes flit across a page and for generating an artificial emotional experience (likewise for movies, likely more so) seems unhelpful at best, desensitizing at worst. Just like a drug, the more an emotional response is stimulated by a medium, the more an individual desires and seeks that response through similar or identical media. What are these experiences but drugs native to the brain? An ex-girlfriend of mine would almost sneer at me for making it a point to analyze a movie to its core and being insufferably bored if it was as shallow as most of the movies out there, because her primary purpose in Consuming these pictures was for the escape in itself, for the socially-acceptable drugs of serotonin, norepinephrine, adrenaline, &c., and cocktails of each of these intermixed.

Now, this evaulation should be counterbalanced in three ways. First, by noting that there is a great volume of literature and media that can be understood as didactic or be forced into that role, even if the author meant for it to be a mindless drug-delivery device (e.g., “Terminator 3″, “Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels”, &al.). And furthermore the vast majority of literature, especially, is meant to be read closely but (here’s an irritation) is used as an escape only, no higher thinking involved. Like a locked pantry full of food in a dark house to which a vagabond has recently been invited; if only the poor fellow would search for the light switch or even bring his own flashlight and avail himself of the key lying on the counter with a note hidden only by the thin darkness, he would eat to near-surfeit and have plenteous leftovers to which to return. But mainly I’m concerned with the consumerist attitudes of pop fiction and cheap (content-wise, not monetarily) movies. Second, that I again stress that this doesn’t make such reading or partaking sinful, just—in my mind—almost unconscionably wasteful. Not so much of time—because everyone needs to take time for some things, recreation included—as cognition and memory, CPU cycles that draw dead-end Wattage and gigabytes of trivial data on a finite hard drive with a finite lifespan. As it were.

So what is the difference between this and any other type of recreation? Well, you don’t learn how to deal with emotional difficulties by smoking cigarettes; you don’t understand how to connect with your kids by drinking excessively, and alone; and you don’t learn how to do anything but develop a more precise idea of what gets you off emotionally by watching movies and reading books for the sake of escape, any more than sleep for its own sake helps you deal with anthrophobia. In each of these situations there is a more constructive, and only slightly more difficult, way of coping: emotional difficulties, over time, are life’s way of making us stronger and can be endured with prayer, deep breathing, and development of one’s interests and friendships; if you can’t connect with your kids you can take the time to do something recreational for the both of you while having a “bonding moment” (think fishing, museums, road-trip conversation, sports, whatever); if you’re developing a better idea of what is maximally emotionally stimulating and seeking that out, you’re on that short road to unfeeling burnout and existential bitterness; and the way to conquer any fear is to face it gradually and with patience.

Thirdly, my harsher evaluation and subsequent not-quite-counterpoints should be balanced with a level of common sense and leniency. I enjoy a relaxing evening reading some minimally intellectual things, the occasional round of beer or glass of wine, the meaningless web page I’ll never visit again and was only an enormous time-sink. But all of these, and the harder alternatives that are in their family (i.e., “drugs” or escapes be they professionally pharmaceutical, streetcore, or naturally-occurring) must not be abused, and our culture makes it a habit (so to speak) to do just that. We read fiction that abuses our native tongues and our very minds, watch R-rated sex-laden slasher flicks and attend dance and rock clubs, drink and smoke to dampen the stimulation, quaff coffee to wake back up and then some, and sleep when all else fails. What are we doing? Only escaping reality.

The point is, where I agree with Augustine here is the sense in which we can control or limit these stimuli, especially when it involves the wasted application of our minds. Schools dedicated to rhetoric like A describes, classes in which high marks are a function of popularity based on emotionality—well, they sound rather like high schools and emo shows around the country, and I’m not surprised his soul was scorched to the point of calling all the excess involved sinful.

References.
Augustine, St. Confessions. Henry Chadwick, trans. ISBN 0-19-283372-3 (Paperback).

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192833723/thinkblogorg-20

Briefly: I agree with Augustine in several senses, that the pursuit of entertainment for its own sake is or can easily become a vice. This was an off-the-cuff rant, and I haven’t revised it so please forgive the odd (lack of) flow.

Book I, §xvii.27

Augustine makes the point that the most honored individuals who engaged in recitation were those who identified most with the fictitious characters, which must have seemed to him a double sin: dedicating the mind to the memorization of vain fictions (wasting time) and then applying a false emotional state to those fictions (lying). This is really very similar to how I feel about movies and most books, though of course my peers would scoff at me for that, and have. It’s not that reading pop fiction for the distraction is *sinful* per se, not that watching movies for their own sake and for pure, basal entertainment isn’t morally upright; but this to me is a vice easily avoided. I spent years of my childhood watching TV, diving into the story as far as I could so that I could escape reality; then I jealously guarded my time with the Nintendo, and snapped ferociously at anyone who would interrupt that escape from reality (which had at that point become a kind of “literally virtual” reality), intentionally or un-. Then it was books, and movies. But somehow when I sobered & cleaned up after Clemson, the more foolish watching these things, playing these games, reading grocery-store fiction seemed not only superfluous but unacceptably suppressive of my personal growth. All I could equate it to was a mild, mind-altering drug or like unto sleeping or eating when the biological need wasn’t there: onanism, all of it.

Let us analyze this for a moment. Take literature on the level Augustine was (presumably) describing. Is it a worthy endeavor to memorize poetry or stories and repeat them with great feeling and interpretation? Yes, there is a sense in which this is uniquely efficacious to an end involving the entertainment of others. Or again, if by memorizing poetry/fiction I can calm myself (Jung’s mandala-drawing and other such ritualistic behavior) or provide catharsis through identification with a character whose experience can cause me to scour my own heart of all the repressed emotional scum, or draw on another’s experience to help another–then this is also ultimately helpful, though in a drastically reduced way. But reading for the sake of letting one’s eyes flit across a page and for generating an artificial emotional experience (likewise for movies, likely more so) seems unhelpful at best, desensitizing at worst. Just like a drug, the more an emotional response is stimulated by a medium, the more an individual desires and seeks that response through similar or identical media. What are these experiences but drugs native to the brain? An ex-girlfriend of mine would almost sneer at me for making it a point to analyze a movie to its core and being insufferably bored if it was as shallow as most of the movies out there, because her primary purpose in Consuming these pictures was for the escape in itself, for the socially-acceptable drugs of serotonin, norepinephrine, adrenaline, &c., and cocktails of each of these intermixed.

Now, this evaulation should be counterbalanced in three ways. First, by noting that there is a great volume of literature and media that can be understood as didactic or be forced into that role, even if the author meant for it to be a mindless drug-delivery device (e.g., “Terminator 3″, “Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels”, &al.). And furthermore the vast majority of literature, especially, is meant to be read closely but (here’s an irritation) is used as an escape only, no higher thinking involved. Like a locked pantry full of food in a dark house to which a vagabond has recently been invited; if only the poor fellow would search for the light switch or even bring his own flashlight and avail himself of the key lying on the counter with a note hidden only by the thin darkness, he would eat to near-surfeit and have plenteous leftovers to which to return. But mainly I’m concerned with the consumerist attitudes of pop fiction and cheap (content-wise, not monetarily) movies. Second, that I again stress that this doesn’t make such reading or partaking sinful, just—in my mind—almost unconscionably wasteful. Not so much of time—because everyone needs to take time for some things, recreation included—as cognition and memory, CPU cycles that draw dead-end Wattage and gigabytes of trivial data on a finite hard drive with a finite lifespan. As it were.

So what is the difference between this and any other type of recreation? Well, you don’t learn how to deal with emotional difficulties by smoking cigarettes; you don’t understand how to connect with your kids by drinking excessively, and alone; and you don’t learn how to do anything but develop a more precise idea of what gets you off emotionally by watching movies and reading books for the sake of escape, any more than sleep for its own sake helps you deal with anthrophobia. In each of these situations there is a more constructive, and only slightly more difficult, way of coping: emotional difficulties, over time, are life’s way of making us stronger and can be endured with prayer, deep breathing, and development of one’s interests and friendships; if you can’t connect with your kids you can take the time to do something recreational for the both of you while having a “bonding moment” (think fishing, museums, road-trip conversation, sports, whatever); if you’re developing a better idea of what is maximally emotionally stimulating and seeking that out, you’re on that short road to unfeeling burnout and existential bitterness; and the way to conquer any fear is to face it gradually and with patience.

Thirdly, my harsher evaluation and subsequent not-quite-counterpoints should be balanced with a level of common sense and leniency. I enjoy a relaxing evening reading some minimally intellectual things, the occasional round of beer or glass of wine, the meaningless web page I’ll never visit again and was only an enormous time-sink. But all of these, and the harder alternatives that are in their family (i.e., “drugs” or escapes be they professionally pharmaceutical, streetcore, or naturally-occurring) must not be abused, and our culture makes it a habit (so to speak) to do just that. We read fiction that abuses our native tongues and our very minds, watch R-rated sex-laden slasher flicks and attend dance and rock clubs, drink and smoke to dampen the stimulation, quaff coffee to wake back up and then some, and sleep when all else fails. What are we doing? Only escaping reality.

The point is, where I agree with Augustine here is the sense in which we can control or limit these stimuli, especially when it involves the wasted application of our minds. Schools dedicated to rhetoric like A describes, classes in which high marks are a function of popularity based on emotionality—well, they sound rather like high schools and emo shows around the country, and I’m not surprised his soul was scorched to the point of calling all the excess involved sinful.

References.
Augustine, St. Confessions. Henry Chadwick, trans. ISBN 0-19-283372-3 (Paperback).