Why do YOU feel it is important for the human mind to be entertained?

Question

I am in two mass communication classes right now and both seem to be saying almost that it is bad to be entertained, that we as a people need to stop putting so much focus on being entertained and more on... well honestly I don't even know what. However I feel it is very important for the human mind to stay entertained at all times, that we as human beings should constantly be thinking about things that interest us or drive us, and if we find something boring but we had to know/do this thing anyway that we should find a way to make it more interesting and we as a general population should work until we get some kind of pleasure out of as many things as we can thus being entertained. Even our brain seems to do it on our own while we sleep, hence dreaming. What do u think?

Answer 1

My personal pet theory is that the purpose of our drive to find entertainment is that it drives learning and exploration.

However, as I have learned through many years in school, not everything you learn is worth learning.  And this applies to obscure parts of history and molecular biology as well as celebrity gossip and sports statistics (unless your job requires it).

But at the least, even these things stretch our minds and keep us sharp.

Answer 2

There's different kinds of entertaining. There's the active productive kind that you get when reading a book, doing a puzzle, and playing music compared to passive ones like watching TV and listening to music. You're being entertained but you're not working your mind out, and eventually you'll get some sort of mental atrophy if you don't keep your wits sharp.

We need the active entertainment to improve ourselves and to function, since without it, we kind of go insane (see isolation experiments).

The passive sitting and watching TV all day, we can definitely do without.

Answer 3

I don't know if "entertained" would be the right word but I definitely get what you're driving at -  the IMAGINATION!!!!!!!!!  We, as human beings, have a mind so complex it is truly astounding (plus we don't even use the whole thing, unknowing of our full potential!)  Therefore, we (except for the super-dull pessimistic people out there) need to be motivated by aspects of life that intrigue us!  We need to create things and dream about the impossible and wish on stars and make plans and daydream and .............    Obviously I can go on forever with all that the human mind combined with human emotion can enable us to do.  We are not robots who can take in information and just stay with it forever.  We like learning about what we like to learn about and we dislike learning what we don't.  And the truly AMAZING thing is that everyone has different interests and likes to learn about different things, thereby contributing to our diverse and unique species!

So to answer your question, you are 100% right!  We need to be motivated by entertaining ourselves by the use of our imagination!  We were given this totally fabulous brain, we might as well use it!!!  (By the way, professors don't always get ordinary life and have no clue what they are talking about.  They can get so wrapped up in their own beliefs that they forget (or don't want to hear) other people's opinion.)

Answer 4

The difference is being actively engaged in life, versus the passivity that goes with the North American culture passed off as "entertainment". It a miracle that we don't develop dementia or an atrophied mind at a much younger age. Won't be long now...

Answer 5

well the opposite of being entertained is being bored, and noone likes to be willingly bored. With that in  mind people work hard to strive towards their goals. Working and studying to realize your dreams is not always going to entertain your mind, but in the long run your mind won't be entertained out in the streets begging for cash.  

Answer 6

Entertainment:

"Something diverting or engaging".

You should ask the teachers in both classes to be more specific about what they mean by "it is bad to be entertained". Entertainment is many different things to people. People who lived in the Middle Ages used to go to the town square and watch criminals get hanged for entertainment. I guess it depends on how you define the word for yourself.

I don't feel entertainment is "important" to me, however I do enjoy doing things that give my brain a workout such as puzzles, quizzes, surveys, or games that require thinking and using your smarts. Trivia is a good example.

Entertainment to me is NOT sitting and watching TV or playing video/computer games all day. That's just a waste of time.