The word “entertainment”
I have tended to define the word entertainment in morally disapproving terms, as something shallow and meaningless. But in fact there are higher ways of entertainment as well, even though these are overshadowed by the lower ones predominant in society (also in my personal life, but to a lesser extent). Stigmatizing the feeling of being entertained as reprehensible is unhealthy, because it attaches guilt even to higher forms of enjoyment. I need to adjust my definition of the word to channelize my stream of associations to bypass this moral feeling:
Entertainment: Having one’s attention focused by enjoyment and interest. The best possible normal state — that which is to be aimed for at most or all times — is being entertained by worthy activity.
Addendum: Children and others who are not yet accustomed to worthy activity should see it as their duty to invest themselves in education sufficiently for their further development to be self-driven, i.e. driven by enjoyment and interest rather than letting oneself being pushed around by duty. These to attitudes are natural enemies, and hard to reconcile in one soul.
Well spoken. A wise definition, and it sounds like something someone smart would say, in true quoting spirit.
Thank you. I think.
Actually I have to edit my comment: Even if it is well spoken and undoubtedly true, you are forgetting at least one aspect of entertainment (and if I see one, others might see more): Sadness. “Focused by enjoyment and interest” are both positive emotions, but I don’t think that a “negative” emotion will serve you less purposely here.
Just think about any documentary that made you realize for just a second or a minute or for the rest of your life that everything is going straight to hell, they are great. There has to be some of them. There has to be, especially when you are focused by interest, an aspect of horror and dread also being able to be present in good entertainment.
I think therefore that the wording should be “focused by interest and emotions”, unless of course you include the more negative emotions in the definition of “enjoyment” of course.
Yeah, there definitely is more emotional depth than simple pleasure involved, both in high and low forms of enjoyment. My aim here was not to give a full account of the concept, just to correct the unhealthy moral evaluation I’ve associated with the term.
I don’t know where I would start if I would try to analyze the concept more properly. It would no doubt be messy.
A piece of trivia on the subject: Kant tried to explain emotions pneumatically, as some sort of pressure first restricted, then released. And the feeling of pleasure associated with aesthetic apprehension of a beautiful object, he explained as a “quickening” of the interplay between two functions of the mind when in a harmonious relation to each other. Hardly good enough, but interesting.
Another approach could be to arrange feelings in levels, where first level feelings are feelings about some content of experience, and second level feelings are feelings about first level feelings. In this picture, we could have a second level enjoyment of or interest in the first level sadness we’re experiencing.
Philosophical entertainment (which I of course consider to be exemplary) is capable of producing a strong second level feeling of empowerment, which is very enjoyable, and some other second level feelings as well. While on the first level, the most predominant feeling, to me at least, is that of weirding out, which on it’s own is rather uncomfortable, but in the context of travels led by reason, it feels more like revelation.