2. GENERALLY RECOGNIZED FORMS

 
                        a. Play
 
   Play is the form most commonly associated with the word fun in
conversation, though oddly not the most prevalent form. Play is a term
generally aplied to an improvisational event with generally one initiating
player and one or more others who express some sort of imaginary human
drama together. The motivation arises from a desire to explore the feelings
of a shared experience without having to deal with tiresome danger and
work. It has enormous potential benefit to children shaking down what sort
of life expressions and relationships to actualize as adults, so, left to
their own devices, children are very inspired to play.
   Because play always involves an overt and frequently mocking disregard
for the sponsoring people, motivation for sponsoring has to directly buck
hurt feelings and alienation. In a modern nontribal society the sponsor is
usually solitary, motivated by duty or money, and quite lonely and grim.
Where sponsorship can be established with emotionally insulating formality,
as with an online game or within a church hierarchy or with overt secrecy of
the activity, play can become a successful tradition. The modern development
of privacy appears to be entirely an adaptation to playing within a society
without emotionally supported (tribal) sponsors.
   The struggle to obtain license to play has also evolved a large scale
obsession with wanting to idealize it as a primary life focus. Secrecy has
been the most successful approach for sexual expression, religious ritual,
shared mealtime, improvisational music, and personal writing.
   The alienation that non-tribal play innately evokes has created a modern
struggle with choosing between being a kind friendly person or being able to
engage in any form of play. Nearly every adult succumbs eventually into
finding fun in other forms.
   

                        b. Recreation
   
   Recreation is the use of time in a manner designed for "therapeutic
refreshment" of one's body or mind. Generally the word is only used in
reference to domesticated fun that has no obvious technical usefulness,
such as a game of badminton, and occurs in a choreographed setting that
prohibits obvious creation of root life emotion so that perceptual conflict
can be avoided. It is popular especially for couples, people aspiring to
couple, and as a way to park children, because the emotional result is
rarely challenging. The word has a large separate article in wikipedia.
   
   
                        c. Verbal humor
 
   The invention of verbal humor appears to be largely a male obsession
driven by a hope of winning admiration and life affirmation from those
listening or reading as well as creating lively emotion for all. Most humor
inventors express idealism of some kind through their presentation, often
with overt intent for political effect or social education. Occasionally
someone will make the mistake of presenting verbal humor without any
idealism and create an embarrassing dud effect. The article about laughter
explores this topic quite a bit.
   
   
                        d. Policing and creation of Crowds
   
   The use of mesmerizing or seductive spectacle, such as stadium events or
parades, to regulate crowds of people is older than recorded history, and
may have preceded organization of towns and cities as a social shakedown
method for creating collective traditions that could minimize cabin fever
in large settlements. With no major media, spectacle would be the only
venue for logical public debate about offenses or political ambitions, as
well as a context for allowing evolving shared symbolism and creating a
sensory basis for being glad to see other people.
   Spectacle seems to work especially well to coalesce particularly those
individuals who would otherwise have an interest to create emotion for
themselves using approaches, such as riotous playing or vandalism, that tend
to sabotage commercial effort. In more recent years the television and
computer have served that purpose more efficiently, both for seducing and
for dispersing crowds; the use of physical spectacle going entirely towards
creation of gigantic positive emotion based on tightly choreographed sensory
fun.
   Religious, political and commercial use of crowd creation appears to
have gone the same direction as policing effort, in letting the more
striking elements of genuine divine awe become more decentralized, and
embracing sensory fun more overtly. The result in more modern societies has
been a striking abandonment of simple logic in most large scale public
forums, in favor of convulsive sharing.
   Churches no longer choreograph spiritually developmental activities in
group services, becoming like a secret society about it with invitation
only very small scale genuine explorations, many explicitly excluding women
and children. Masculine religious fun has become apparently too shameful
for even associates to witness. One odd result has been homosexual
experimentation becoming a focus for some encounters. Nearly all large
scale services have become grossly contradictory displays of overt hedonism
framed in occasional vague references to spiritual accountability, what
would seem more fitting to a musical concert.
   Public political spectacle has similiarly released logical exploration
and debate to small private meetings and computerized exchanges. Public
speakers, even in the news media, are under no pressure to be sly about
politically significant matters. Overt public presentations remarking about
the 9/11 event can shamelessly carry as a premise that a jumbo jet crash and
fire can cause a 110 story steel tower to crumble completely to dust and
collapse at free-fall speed suddenly, an hour after impact, with never a
flicker of apology for how preposterous that seems. Public presentations
about AIDS routinely omit any suggestion that the utterly flat level of HIV
infection in the general population and absence of any exponential AIDS
events might point to non-infectious origins.
   In the past people would purchase food from specialists. Now they go to
gigantic indoor mechanistic sensory displays or drive up windows with few
genuine human presenters to purchase recreational drugs disguised as food;
resulting in widespread nutritional disaster even in children. In the
vacuum of genuine religious spectacle, some businesses have found a market
by redefining spiritual confusion as social immaturity and sold admission
to conceptual spectacle addressing that; promoting more effective and
active spiritually indifferent business ambition, perhaps successfully.
   Sporting and musical spectacles are often hugely successful financially
and appear to be beneficial in their impact, perhaps partly due to their
lack of intellectual pretense.
   The use of social spectacle may be evolving more that direction, of less
and less pretense of intelligence, and greater focus on inspiring people to
be glad to see a sea of faces and complex human expressions.
   
   
                        e. Control of children
  
   Controlling children rather than living with them inevitably becomes
necessary in a society that invents more and more activities that their
presense will threaten or embarrass. The invention of humiliating
choreography presented as friendly fun to seduce them has begun to replace
the straight intimidation of the past. Many parents and social theorists
have expressed grave objection to the use of this false fun, but coalescing
spiritually friendly real emotion is difficult even in crowds of adults.
With much smaller vocabulary and fewer recognizable images, children can
only be unified into emotive groups by very skilled people or someone who
personally knows all of them. Many children spend a lot of their day with an
overwhelmed volunteer adult outnumbered by the children, or by a service
worker who knows nothing of their personal life and dreamworld.
   False fun has proliferated on television and the new internet
equivalent, giving adults with access to it the easy option of using it
without having to deliver it. As long as the children accept the root
premise of their unworthiness to self direct they will endlessly chase the
promise of life giving meaningful emotion from completely spiritless
vicarious activity.
   Inevitably when released as teenagers, some will commit suicide, but
most shake their heads out of the fog of wasted time and begin to explore
actual emotion or settle into a life of endless entertainment.
   
   
                        f. Commercial offerings
 
   Fun for sale is jokingly considered by many to be the oldest profession
and given that most other professions are technological it's probably true.
To obtain actual life affirming emotion or actual laughter through a
commercial sharing is apparently possible for a lot of people.
   A salesperson or entertainer who can maintain totally unbroken fidelity
to the dreamworld they weave for the customer can actually carry the event
to a convulsive release that may be a genuine spiritual event for the
customer, even if not relevant to anyone's spiritual maturation. A customer
who leaves the store with a new item, that they truly hold as a symbolic
proof of their own human majesty, will greet their fellows with actual
infectious light-heartedness.
   Unfortunatly, success with this has reached the point of completely
trashing the biosphere, so there is considerable current debate about the
moral legitimacy of this way of obtaining money.

Vicarious play, commercial fun involving no product or other pretense of
rational significance, seems to be drawing less rhetoric of disgust
worldwide than in historical descriptions of the inquisitional past. The
spiritual or religious destitution or compromise that many people associate
with paid emotional leadership is still apparently as big an issue as ever,
but not one addressed as much by recognized governmental authorities, due
perhaps to the powerful multitude of conflicting viewpoints about it.
   Cheap computer systems have made possible a staggering array of
vicarious play offerrings at next to no cost, so that even someone with no
energy for imagining, and no friends who play, can focus most of their
spare time on exploring imaginary experiences without the emotional
complexity of improvisational play.
   
  
 
   
                        g. Political seduction

  
   Success as a leader often hangs on an ability to create fun emotion for
large groups of adults through soul stirring images and calls to validate
competitive comraderie about various forms of government stewardship. A
tiny touch of deliberate verbal humor seems helpful too. There is often
much grim mudslinging in political commentary and advertising though, to
the point that a leader who is merely has a nice voice can elicit a huge
sigh of hopeful relief in a crowd.
 
 
                        h. Social jousting and friendship expression
 
   Playing the field socially, creating emotional fun, is a big part of
cultures that aren't too mingled with potentially confusing other cultures.
Incredible majesty, such as samba music, linux programming and passionate
love affairs, can arise if a social context can maximize exchange while
minimizing unintended hurt feelings. Within the emotional safety of a
stable tradition, the prolific and relentless event invention by groups of
women, with it's attendant unpredictable matters of importance, creates an
emotional sea of familiarity for all manner of shared dreaming to occur in.
Even the clumsiest child can be a genuine participant in fun origination
and expression, as long as tradition is left intact.
   In a melting pot cultural scene unintended hurt feelings are relentlessly
destructive of initiative, so the study of interpersonal clumsiness tends
to replace invention of fun. Most people settle in the long run into
conversational and commercial contact only with people who at least appear
culturally similiar and who they can relate to in a context normal to that
culture, so that at least a minimal degree of natural fun can evolve.
   The english speaking world is a composite of cultures that strikingly
buck all tradition; minimizing hurt feelings through an adaptation to living
without genuine intimacy; maintaining societal cohesion entirely through
business arrangements and engaging physical sharing solely in tightly
choreographed business environments.
   Since the planning and invention of fun only occurs in dreamworlds, and
a solitary dreamworld is far too psychically feeble to originate much of
significance unless channeled through an anonomous mechanism, the english
speaking cultures have evolved a huge and complex business of dreamworld
leadership using highly intense recorded music and extremely high budget
exotic movies. People are encouraged to remain alone, or with friends who
are sharing a current fad dreamworld. Even restaurants have gotten into the
business, offering ready to eat food delivered right to someone's car or
house, with small plastic or paper toys for kids based on current movie
themes.
   The internet and the low cost recording and computer equipment made in
poorer countries have facilitated a new non-monetary form of impersonal
sharing using remixed commercial material and ideas like this encyclopedia,
producing totally effective fun between complete strangers who remain
strangers, with no pressure on anyone to emotionally mature. Even children
no longer innately represent a relationship, but are often related to as a
product in a technological nest, to be booted out rudely after 18 years in
a somewhat prisonlike setting. A majority of english speaking people skip
any child involvement at all and their population has stabilized or begun to
decline.
   
   
                        i. Devils, witches, villains and predators
 
   The concept of evil appears to originate entirely from fun origination.
A starving person who steals food doesn't get labeled evil. The term is
reserved for people or creatures that appear to deliberately step entirely
outside of need in the trouble they cause, pursuing fun through causing
trouble.
   The common theory appears to be that causing grimness and ill-humor in
others can be emotionally uplifting and humorous. The model of conventional
competitive sports makes that entirely believable, though no record has ever
surfaced of someone who agreed to that assessment of their nature. Men who
appear to find delight that way are labeled devils, villains or predators.
Women who appear likewise are called bitches or sometimes witches.
   The idea of the hero appears to be similiarly misconceived, likewise
from competitve sports. An apparent hero in the real world inevitably has
an entirely human self-image when asked directly, and describes their
antagonist in inanimate terms; they're not fighting evil.
   Stories often include heros and villians who cheerfully accept their
label, and some people are inclined to use the demonizing or idolizing of
someone or some group as a basis for solidarity with associates. Thus a lot
of fun requires at least temporary belief in heros and villians for
emotional effect. Belief can in some sense create reality. Certainly to
many of the victoms of war or smaller crime, evil intent appears to exist,
and does sabotage fun, and heroes do exist and thwart the apparent evil;
regardless of the outlook of those being labeled.
   
   
                        j. Con artistry
 
   Some people find life meaning in the circus and many do a similiar sort
of society autonomously. Social engineering is a term invented more
recently and used in conversation by con artists to express better their
self-image. In discussion or stories, the con artists all describe the
world around them as made up entirely of con artists and mindless
uncreative sheep, with prolific resources and no fixed or essential purpose
for any of it. That view is not entirely contradicted by evidence. The con
artist sees all of life as an arbitrary competitive game with nothing else
to focus on for fun except short term tiny victories against other players,
as in an endless soccer match.
   In the speeches of big scale players like David Rockefeller it sounds to
many listeners like the rationalizing of ghastly unnecessary horror, but he
speaks with a calm and friendly very human voice of one who seeks a world
with more fun for everybody, through encouragement of people riling up the
american public to finance killing 3/4 million middle east people. He
sounds totally sure that the alternative is the lifeless tedium of a bunch
of sheep eating grass all day.
   So the con artists are a major force in the world, for fun.
   
   
                        k. Vandalism
 
   Delight in straight distruction or defacing of what someone else cares
about gets rationalized in conversation with the same words as con artistry.
And it's equally compelling. Ownership certainly appears to be quite random
and arbitrarily enforced, with little concern for the influence on societal
fun; so the vandals are taking responsibility in their own minds, for a
world in need of rescue from stagnating tedium. Like the con artists, their
discussion indicates very little direct comprehension of the actual feelings
their actions generate in everybody, as well as actual shattered liveliness
for the owners. Would life be more fun without vandalism? No way to know
. 
   
                        l. Military use
 
   The tradition of competitive sports is apparently a modern evolution of
what originated as small scale warfare, and still exists that way in some
parts of south america and africa. Even in modern society the fun seeking
armed robber, such as the Sundance Kid or Pirates of the Carribean, makes a
very successful movie and a character style that many boys delight in
portraying, encouraged by their parents. A vigilante policeman enforcing
arbitrary commercial regulations on drugs and weapons, such as Batman, is
also very popular. Many men delight in handling guns and other weaponry, and
many delight in hunting.
   Its hard for some people to imagine looking forward to seriously injuring
or killing someone else in an arbitrary game of posturing, but countless men
do, and some women also. Only a minority has trouble finding delight in a
movie depicting it. Some modern sports involve similiarly brutal encounter.
Thus the modern military can appeal to a very real constituency of
participants to play both sides of a senseless and deadly game of arbitrary
posturing about location and ownership of a pipeline or oil field, or
whether a certain kind of commerce should be taxed and by who.
   Like the other people who do apparent evil, war veterans speak quite
grimly about the horrible injury their work required, and even more grimly
about injury to their associates. The fun that drove them and kept them
breathing and lively in pursuit of the activity was in spite of all that
tragedy, not assisted by it.
   Some people will continue to try to invent more seductive games of all
sorts to try to draw more of those with the tendency to become monsters out
of the killing inclination. Quite possibly the prolific variety of military
like video games will tend towards that result, rather than the escalation
of war as some have suggested. Either way murderous competition will
probably always play a major part in the designing of fun.
   
   
                        m. Fantasy
 
   The one person dreamworld may be the ultimate originator of all other
fun, even in genuinely social societies. Everyone goes there every night
and perhaps a majority during part of the day as well. As an opportunity
for fun it is clearly the best. Many people are able to fly and morph and
experience all six senses while alone in fantasy, and much emotional
maturing results from senarios tried out beforehand in brutal or
embarrassing fantasy, replayed over and over til it comes off sanely. The
renewal of sleep vitally depends on fantasy. Research in experimentally
depriving people of it has been quite conclusive of that.