Entertainment—Part 4 of 4

An individual’s entertainments are an indication of an individual’s character.

In the Autonomist’s Notebook, I wrote about Art:

“The kind of art any individual will enjoy is determined by the kind of person they are. The trite mediocre majority will enjoy trite mediocre art. The exceptional individual cannot enjoy the insipid fare that satisfies the average. He can only be bored or irritated by it. But the art that the exceptional enjoy cannot be enjoyed by the average, because it is too hard. One measure of art is the demand it places on those who enjoy it. The average person will despise great art because it is too difficult. The exceptional will despise the commonplace because it is too easy.”

Most entertainment is shallow, appealing to the lowest in human taste and value, requiring almost no intellectual effort to appreciate or knowledge to understand. Those who produce such entertainment, seeking the widest possible audience, always direct their product to satisfy the most common interests. In all forms of entertainment, the most popular will always be those forms that appeal mostly to the simplest, or lowest, of feelings, reflecting the popular culture, as well as feeding it.

A society’s entertainments are a reflection of the moral character of the individuals that make up that society. The state of entertainment in America today is appropriate for a people seeking to escape the consciousness of their bondage.

Entertainment Of The Free

The independent individualist who seeks “the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection, valuing nothing higher than itself,” [Atlas Shrugged, Part Three / Chapter VII, “This Is John Galt Speaking”], cannot be satisfied with trashy drivel that is called “entertainment” today. It is not uplifting, it is degrading; it is not inspiring, it is discouraging; and for the individual of integrity, it is disgusting.

For the independent individualist, entertainment is not a diversion, which means a diversion from life, but an addition to life. For the virtuous individual, entertainment is another way of enjoying the life he has earned the right to enjoy, and he seeks only that kind of entertainment that enhances that enjoyment—the kind of entertainment that exemplifies and upholds all that he values, all that makes life worth living.

The reason the independent individualist is so careful about the entertainment he chooses to enjoy is because he values his life and his mind, his soul, above all other things, and recognizes the biggest danger of entertainment is to his own freedom, which is first freedom of mind. He, therefore, refuses to submit to any other individual’s influence—he will not allow any form of entertainment to influence his thoughts or experiences in any way that would steal his time, subvert his values, or diminish his profound severance for the sacredness of life.