Aerican society and even Christians, it seems, are surrendering to the insatiable desire to be entertained. Our quest for amusement has become not only a national pasttime, it has become an addiction.
There is little about life in the United States that is not tarnished by entertainment. GameBoys, Walkmans and iPods provide fun and diversion that is portable. Cell phones and PDAs now come with games as standard equipment.
Americans pursue electronic pastimes via television and computer. The Internet, which helped usher in the information age, now is used primarily for amusement. And movies are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year via cable.
All addiction has consequences. America's obsession with entertainment has produced a society that has become increasingly more passive toward life. It seems we would rather watch reality on television than experience it first-hand.
The attention span is the casualty of all addiction. The entertainment addict is not only easily bored and distracted, but also has difficulty retaining relevant information for a very long period of time. Those obsessed with amusement are unable to juxtapose contemporary happenings with history.
A society addicted to entertainment is comprised of individuals whose obsession is their own pleasure. Once a people lose the desire to pursue life and to think critically, once a society fails to recognize the substantive and cultivate a historical perspective, once these realities become the rule rather than the exception, a society is in real danger.
There are many things in life that taken in moderation are not necessarily negative. Entertainment is one of them. However, America has crossed the line of moderation and is plunging headlong into addiction. It seems we are, in the words of New York University's Neil Postman, “Amusing ourselves to death.”
Kelly Boggs is editor of Louisiana's Baptist Message.