Traveling tends to produce lots of ideas, but it doesn't necessarily offer much time to write about them. I'll be out until August 17th, but I'll still try to write posts (though they may be shorter than usual.)
In lew of a formal post, here's an adaptation of a reply in an email conversation I was having with one of my friends. We were discussing the merits of entertainment mediums (particularly movies and videogames.) I edited the email to make it more cohesive and smooth out grammar issues, but it's otherwise preserved in all its spontaneity. Although this is informal, I hope it is still thought provoking!
-----------------------------
I do feel like movies, games, and entertainment in general these days are getting very realistic. They have more power to affect our lives than ever before. That power can be used for great things, like lifting people's moods reliably, or bringing people together to share fond experiences. But it can also cause harm if one wants to... say, escape the real world and its problems. It's a tricky topic.
I always lose energy after watching movies. It doesn't matter how much I enjoy it or what kind of movie it is. I always don't feel like doing anything afterwards. If you ask my family, you'll find out I pretty much refuse to watch movies any time except for right before bed for this reason. I wouldn't call it depression, but I think I have an idea of what you mean.
I would say I've felt this way for videogames quite a lot actually. I try to reason myself out of it with something like this:
Games (and movies) are made by other humans to satisfy a need or craving in human minds. There's a lot of possible needs, but some include social connectivity, a feeling of achievement, an outlet for mental passion, and many more that I can't think about. If a game succeeds in engaging its user on that level, then it "sucks us into its world." Leaving that world can make reality seem like a lower, boring, less productive form of existence.
I think this is what causes the feeling you're describing. It's not necessarily that the game or movie world is so much more interesting than yours (although that is often the case.) It's that these entertainment mediums provide total engagement. Your mind experiences full activation and utilization, and I think this is what we humans love the most: working hard to the best of our potential. It's hard to find this in life, but I'm sure you've felt this when practicing piano/organ or doing other things. When work becomes a melody and not a chore, all of our positive emotions come out.
Videogames and movies are especially effective in immediately activating this feeling, leaving them can cause feelings like this. But we should remember that although that fictional world isn't real, the emotions it made us feel were real, and those emotions are what makes entertainment valuable.
Ultimately, it's a tricky subject to write something cohesive about. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that we should take those emotions from entertainment and use them to seek out their counterparts in real life. That doesn't mean that games and movies are useless. They help us recognize these feelings, and know how to find them, both for ourselves and others. For that there is nothing to be depressed about. Of course, anything in excess can be harmful, and entertainment is particularly vulnerable to this. It's a fine line to walk...
No comments:
Post a Comment