Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Consuming Fun
I find myself for some inexplicable reason once again musing on fun: the nature and nurture thereof. Musing on, I am similarly drawn towards my experiences at the Esalen Institute, specifically towards the transformation that occurs in the five days of frolic and contemplation.
Oddly enough, I wind up thinking about America. Specifically, about our great gift to the world. Even more specifically, about how pervasively successful we've been in packaging and merchandising fun. Movies and TV, sports and fast food. OK. It's not just America. It's also all the other Westernized (Americanized) cultures. So successful that we have all become, almost to an extreme, consumers of fun. Fun, being our most profitable product, has become something we buy - for ourselves, for each other, for our children. And though much of the fun stuff we buy is fun in deed, there's a down side to all this fun. A very down side.
What happens to people in their 5 days at Esalen is this: they rediscover their abilities to create fun, for themselves, for each other. In doing so, they become producers, as much as consumers of fun. Pretty much like they were when they were kids. Only better now that they have all those grown-up fun-producing powers.
This may not seem like a big insight. But it is the first time I've been able to verbalize why the experience at Esalen is so powerfully empowering. As consumers of fun, we become dependent on the vast, impersonal market forces that create it for us. As producers of our own fun, we become free.
Oddly enough, I wind up thinking about America. Specifically, about our great gift to the world. Even more specifically, about how pervasively successful we've been in packaging and merchandising fun. Movies and TV, sports and fast food. OK. It's not just America. It's also all the other Westernized (Americanized) cultures. So successful that we have all become, almost to an extreme, consumers of fun. Fun, being our most profitable product, has become something we buy - for ourselves, for each other, for our children. And though much of the fun stuff we buy is fun in deed, there's a down side to all this fun. A very down side.
What happens to people in their 5 days at Esalen is this: they rediscover their abilities to create fun, for themselves, for each other. In doing so, they become producers, as much as consumers of fun. Pretty much like they were when they were kids. Only better now that they have all those grown-up fun-producing powers.
This may not seem like a big insight. But it is the first time I've been able to verbalize why the experience at Esalen is so powerfully empowering. As consumers of fun, we become dependent on the vast, impersonal market forces that create it for us. As producers of our own fun, we become free.
