Fun

2011.04.09   prev     next

When human society was young, technology was low. The population size was low. Wars were more common. Survival was a greatly more pressing concern than it is today. So the desire of people to have fun had to be suppressed. Social rules and norms were centered around survival and seriousness. Fun was discouraged, and persons who wanted to have fun were automatically suspect. They were viewed as a threat to the system, a threat to national survival.

But expecting people to abstain from fun all the time was just unrealistic. So these ancient rule-makers invented festivals and holidays, just so people could get the desire for fun out of their system every now and then, in a socially controlled way, and with the celebration superficially tied back to a serious subject to remind the people that this fun isn’t what life is about.

Also, back then, getting married and having lots of kids was seen as practically a moral responsibility. That’s why contraception was disallowed, and only ordinary intercourse was considered a non-abominable form of having sex.

The Purpose of Survival

And what’s happened is that now, as we’ve entered the era of modern technology, humans’ desire for fun can really be realized — not just for occasional fun, but for a fun life in general. What’s happening is that the traditions are sort-of surviving under the guide of people who for one reason or another can’t have fun: Maybe they aren’t pretty enough. Maybe they’re too socially awkward. Maybe they’re too uncoordinated. Who knows. But for one reason or another, they can’t have fun; they can’t have a fun life, and so they grasp onto these traditions as a vision of humanity’s purpose in which they are — if not having fun — at least somebody important. And viewing those who are having a fun life as beneath them.

As technology gets better and better, as it becomes less and less important to encourage people to do what used to be vital to human continuity (rather than admit the truth), so it will become clearer and clearer that our purpose here is to have fun. And everything that isn’t fun is just a temporary, necessary, interference with that fun.

To do anything, humans must survive. When survival wasn’t such a sure thing, the ancients invented stories about how the creator(s) of humanity are pleased with humans working diligently to survive and create more humans. The purpose of survival, these stories implied, was just to survive. Today, as we see what our advancing technology has already done for us, and glimpse how much more it eventually will, and as we stare out at the vastness of our universe and realize how early we are in the history of humanity, then it becomes readily apparent: The purpose of survival is not survival. It’s to have fun.