The most accurate definition to describe the character of modern Western culture is the word consumerism. The thing that drives nearly every aspect of the way we live our lives and who we understand ourselves to be rests in the dynamics of consumerism.
We are what we buy. In fact, consumerism offers us the illusion of freedom: we believe that we can create who we are by what we purchase. If I can buy a BMW, I am one kind of person. If I can only buy a Ford or a Chevy, I am someone else, not quite as valuable in the society as the person who buys the BMW or the roomy mansion in a plush, gated community.
Though, there is a more specific subgroup in the scheme of consumerism that is even more definitive in making us who we are: entertainment.
Entertainment, and more specifically popular entertainment, overwhelmingly affects our character. Consumer products in general affect our external lives. The things we buy, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in and the vacations we take present us to the world as characterized by those things. Entertainment, rather than providing us with a façade that informs the world about who we are, informs our souls about who we become. Entertainment forms us from within.
To be entertained literally means to take something that is external to us and to hold it within among all the other things that make up our internal character. 'Entre', from the French for “among,” and 'tenir', to “hold,” is the etymological root for what we understand as “entertainment.”
We most often think of entertainment as a diversion or an escape from our day-in-day-out lives. We go to the movies, we turn on the TV, we play video games, we “play” with our gadgets texting or tweeting, and we listen to music through our ear-buds. All of it, on the surface, is seemingly so diversionary and harmless. But, unless we are conscious of its profound influence upon us, and within us, we become, little by little, what entertains us.
We are seldom mindful of what is held within as we are entertained. What’s held within forms us, and transforms us, and when we are not cognizant of what is taking place, we are its victims. We find ourselves in bondage to what the entertainment creates us to be, rather than free human beings.
We know texting is as dangerous as being drunk when behind the wheel of an automobile, but we are reluctant to pass laws that outlaw texting while driving. So many people are texting on our highways it is the norm, and what is normal is nearly impossible to outlaw. Texting entertains us. Obsessive texting offers the illusion we are in community. In reality, it is addictive. Synapses have been conditioned by the texting devices to need the constant stimulation. What entertains us changes who we are at a biological level.
As we approach another SuperBowl, we're reminded that football is, perhaps, America’s number one shared form of entertainment. More U.S. citizens will, at the very same time all over the world, experience together the match between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants Sunday. A news story describes how American Armed Forces personnel in Afghanistan will watch the game while being fed Chicago-style deep-dish pizza flown in just for the occasion.
Football, perhaps more than any other entertainment venue, affects not just the character of individuals, but of the nation as a whole. How the world characterizes us could be defined by the characterizations of American football. Football, maybe more than any other cultural activity, defines us.
American culture has become so addicted to the consumption of entertainment we apply the entertainment model to all areas of our corporate lives. Perhaps a reason our schools are failing our children is not because teachers are inept, but because we want our children to be entertained. We're afraid that if children are not entertained they will loose interest in learning. What we teach our children, though, is that being entertained is of utmost importance. Teachers that entertain are rewarded. Those that demand hard work (and learning is hard work) are dismissed as ineffective.
Religion, too, has succumbed to the lure of the entertainment model. Church, in order to compete in our world of entertainment, has chosen to try and be as entertaining as most other areas of our culture. Rather than being the vehicle that assists people in relating to the mystery of the sacred, too often it is designed to simply make people feel good about themselves.
The culture of entertainment is transforming the souls of individuals, and the soul of the society, into one of narcissism. The focus of life becomes always self-directed. Self-centeredness is ultimately antithetical to a life in healthy community. To value the well being of the whole is impossible for people whose only concern is their own individual wellness. In the end, the entertainment culture leaves us alienated from one another even as it holds us together in a superficial sense.
Entertainment has a very important role to play in the life of a society. Plays of ancient Greece or Elizabethan England entertained while at the same time exposing what needed to be transformed if a wholesome character was to come into being. Too often entertainment today focuses only on exposing the dark side of life for its own, titillating sake. In that sense, much of what entertains us is pornographic.
We must be entertained in the true sense of the word if we are to become fulfilled and – and this is most essential – if we are to be a fulfilling influence in our society. What entertains us must be chosen wisely and must be experienced critically. In this way, it can form us to be a free and integral people. Experienced blindly and without a critical eye, it leaves us enslaved to our own desires and bonded to those who profit off our self-indulgences.
