The Problem Is We're Desperate For Fun...

...Because fun, like work itself, has become an empty product; full of calories, so to speak, but not really containing the kind of full, organic involvement that would be truly satisfying to very real human needs. All we're given, though, is just more commoditized, brightly packaged, bits of various forms of a "sugar" rush. Sometimes exciting. Sometimes a direct connect to a singular, overly pumped, climax, but not very substantial overall. Hence the need to always have more.

What else would you expect from an absolutely mad form of productive-consumptive organization that requires nothing else from us but productive consumption so that others can reap greater flows of what is their primary addiction; ever more counters with which to work their will for getting even more power and influence. And all because entertainment works so well to move not only ever more product, but to keep us from minding, or even having the language to understand, that we are selling, and purchasing, ourselves to death.

Because entertainment is distraction and, most importantly, diversion of action; where diversion becomes a very subtle form of catharsis without action for actual change. Understandable because the action for actual change, as opposed to entertaining displays of dissatisfaction, require serious, long term, commitments to doing things quite differently. Courses of behavior that, in the whole, demand that we step out of our comfort zones and engage in the hard work of negotiating, cooperating and, again most importantly, owning the sacrifices that real change requires.

This is why we tend to go into most acts of demonstration as a kind of temporary volunteering; engaging in the comradery of our shared concern, enjoying the creative play of message, as much as it can be obtained, with the ultimate expectation that important "others" will actually do the hard work involved to bring change about.

What can you expect, though, when we've been brought up through generations of "specialist" mentality. The "that's not my job" kind of thinking that leads people to be quite content in demanding that the "experts" get busy and do what it is that we have so cleverly expressed our desired to have be done.

So we watch the satirists. We watch the comedians. We laugh. Sometimes we even give up a half day or two together and laugh communally, and shout, as one. And in this we take comfort in sort of identifying what is wrong with the current leadership, and what they are doing, whatever leadership it might be, but we end up not engaging in the one thing that would actually change things: All of us stopping what we have been doing, taking responsibility for what needs to be done, and then working full time to achieve those goals; knowing full well that in the interim, fun as we've known it, will have to be put on hold for a while. That's what you do when you agree to make a real sacrifice.

The real problem we're facing is not one of a particular injustice, or a singular despot, that needs removal. It is that we have a way of doing things overall that simply does not work right any more at all. It was rendered obsolete by the very technology that it served to create so abundantly. And unfortunately for us this obsolescence has been ongoing for so long, leaving the running of things to go off the tracks in spectacular fashion. So that we find ourselves in an ever more mutating form of organized insanity; making not only us, but everything around us crazier and crazier.

This is why everybody needs to stop doing business as usual. Because we literally have to do that very thing. Bring the old way to a full stop. Demand that our leadership accept that stoppage and then demand that they help us in going through the very hard work of creating a new way of doing things. That is just the way it is. And we all ignore it at our peril. And of course we'd know that a lot better if we'd just stop with the sugary distractions for a while.

Are We Having Too Much Fun?