I wrote the following presentation to be a Wikipedia entry. Then I read the details of Wikipedia policy and found this to be a hopeless violation of the prohibition against original insights. Unfortunately the topic has been seriously taboo in the cultures I'm familiar with. I have not found any overview references and very few references to support subtopics. Though the subject of fun in human culture may be as complex as the variety of religious practice and belief, those who have the most intelligence to speak and write about it are apparently rarely inspired to exposition. Perhaps this attempt will be a seed for something. Fun (overview) Contents 1. Definitions a. Root concept b. Feminine model c. Masculine style d. Denial mode e. Legislative concept f. As a definition of childhood g. As the defining element of passion h. As the defining element of play 2. Generally recognized forms a. Play b. Recreation c. Verbal humor d. Policing of Crowds e. Control of children f. Commercial offerings g. Political seduction h. Social jousting and friendship expression i. Devils, witches, villains and predators j. Con artistry k. Vandalism l. Military use m. Fantasy 3. Moral issues a. Battle of the sexes b. Government limiters c. Conflict with religion d. Family disintegration e. Poisoning of friendship f. Social outcasting and suicide g. Inspiration to warfare h. Accidents 4. History a. Fun prior to civilization b. Fun prior to overt patriarchy c. Fun prior to industrial technology d. 21st century differences e. Potential directions of development 5. Significant cultural anomolies a. Third world cultures b. Internet c. Solitary fun d. Violent social traditions and sports e. Hunting f. Use of machines g. Anarchist fun h. Commercial development i. Utopian experiments j. Fun as medicine 6. Figures of speech a. Having fun b. Are we having fun yet? c. Did you enjoy that? d. Making fun of e. Funny feeling f. Poor sport 7. See also a. Leisure b. FUN (magazine) c. F.U.N. 8. References 9. External links 1. DEFINITIONS a. Root concept Loosely, fun is the engagement of an identity in any improvisational choreography intended to create life affirming or humorous emotion in oneself and one's social environment, as opposed to deliberate choreography to achieve a practical purpose. Due to the limits of maintaining an identity, it is always bounded by symbiotic familiarity or by a clearly defined technical pursuit, or both. A creature or person lacking either is refered to as feral or wild or savage. Symbiotic familiarity is the only anchor for fun for a newborn, but, with the discovery of fictitious technical pursuits (domestication), alienated fun becomes possible, and generally dominates, due to being far more robust. The emotional effect of a given pursuit is apparently achieved through mental echoes unique to each individual and not innate in the pursuit. A pursuit such as group musical improvisation can be abject misery for one person and heaven for another. A radical shift of identity can equally radically change what someone feels as fun and significantly broaden or narrow the term for them. Most people keep a very narrow idea of the word fun, refering only to what they pursue or refering only to what they dislike about other people's life interests. But, taking everyone into account, the actual range is huge. Nearly every human activity has someone that speaks of it as being fun, and most have someone else who says that having fun that way is twisted or evil. Fun is an antidote to the listless emotional condition common to any sentient creature in an overtly dependent or imprisoned condition. Many people consider fun to be morally dubious unless in such a context. Unchecked listlessness has resulted in the death of captured animals and babies of all sorts, apparently from a lack of spontaneous breathing. Thus the deliberate invention and arranging of fun has become essential to any concept of child raising and dog ownership, and often figures in success stories of large businesses, zoos and prisoner management. Grimness or the opposite of fun takes three forms in common conversational use: 1. any overt actual focus on achieving a technical result 2. creative liberty to a degree that emotional health becomes as unintentional and unconscious as one's heartbeat 3. any technical focus that consistantly results in the creation of life denying or grim emotion Since any socially linked technical pursuit creates emotion to some degree, and nearly all common technical focus is socially linked, the establishment of values about fun or grimness, and the management of fun, appear to preoccupy virtually everyone, even some toddlers. Unfortunately, direct verbal discussion of the topic is generally far too emotionally volitile to be reasoned, so those who carefully ponder the nature of fun nearly always do so privately and rarely produce any obvious verbal result. b. Feminine model (Note: What follows is a man's description) The term fun as expressed in conversation by women appears to always imply a self-absorbed sensory focus and no awareness of real danger or accountability to others. Thus fun becomes synonomous with enjoyment, such as sharing well rehearsed singing or dance, receiving a meal or massage from a formal stranger, riding a very reliable vehicle without emediate regard for destination, reading a story alone or not, random encyclopedic conversation, or watching someone struggle with something unimportant. Women also appear to refer to actual focus on a particular technical achievement as being the opposite of fun but a necessary part of life, and genuine creative liberty as being criminal or self-destructive. They also appear to assume that no one would ever independently choose to engage a non-essential technical focus that consistantly created life denying or grim emotion, or resulted in a complete absence of all emotion. c. Masculine style The term fun as expressed by men generally refers to deliberate action or technical control in a dangerous or unfamiliar context, with other people overtly involved in a mutually accountable way. Masculine fun always carries an element of divine awe, related to striving in some way or discovery of the astounding or unknown, such as driving too fast for conditions, viewing nude pictures, engaging high speed intellectual conversation, handling explosives or dangerous equipment, reading about bizarre inventions or political intrigues, building something never seen before, grandstanding in some way, looking for lost treasure, listening to intense entrancing sounds while drugged, speedy release of sensual passion, computer programming, or vanquishing of a legitimate scapegoat. Men relate to complete creative liberty as the opposite of fun, focusing on liberty as harmless but evocative of responsibility in a divine sense. Men are disheartened and horrorified by people with actual single-minded focus on a single technical result, as if they have become robots or insects. Most men in technological societies have some technical focuses they have independently taken interest in which overtly create life denying or grim emotion in everyone involved. The focuses are often hobbies or subjects of intellectual study. Significantly, men in poorer societies or subcultures tend to avoid focus that makes a grim vibe unless consistantly coached that way by someone else. Though men will recognize delight associated with certain activities, no man appears to notice emotion actually being created or destroyed. d. Denial mode Some people believe that life-affirming emotion occurs entirely without human initiative, and so they don't refer to the creation of it as fun but instead refer to the feelings as serious, in the same class as defecating. Some people also relate likewise to humor in non-verbal form, such as giddiness about a project. Deeply religious people and emotionally immature people often take this outlook on fun. Inevitably, uninvolved observers are still inclined to refer to the activity of those people as fun for them all the same. e. Legislative concept Governments tend to consistently outlaw or regulate what men call fun, tending to intensify the divine awe potential of their fun, and pay for infrastructure to support what women call fun, making it safer and easier to achieve. Governments appear open to anyone's use of the term fun as valid. f. As a definition of childhood Many women define the end of childhood as the end of fun, and consider that children are owed by society a period of unaccountable sensory fun. Men who give the idea any consideration have an opposite view, that the best fun begins with independence. Either way, childhood can be defined by fun. g. As the defining element of passion Any person, device, institution or location that appears to overty facilitate or destroy uncompromised fun for someone, becomes, for them, associated with life affirmation and light-heartedness, inspiring passionate devotional relationship or serious loathing. Facilitating or trashing fun for someone can be an unintended side effect, as with a kitten appearing cute to an unnoticed observer, or deliberate as with the United States declaration of independence. For many people this kind of interactive humorous life affirmation is the defining element of all love feelings. The article about love expands on this. Unfortunately, the spontaneous response to feeling passionate often comes out bizarrely inappropriate. Passion is frequently embarrassing or confusing for the passionate person, inspiring a brutal reaction to both delight and loathing. Even when passion feels fun it can inspire a person to launch a barrage of oppressive demands. Oddly, a lot of harsh responses to feeling passionate, such as scolding and whining, are traditional in a particular family or culture, those involved defining the response as positive interest even though they all feel rotten. Many people speak about this as a normal cost of having fun and of having relationships with other people at all, though modern intimacy appears to be tending towards briefer and politer association, often in hope of finding more friendly passion. There is no catch-all term in english for negative passion. It is a subject of exhaustive study even for otherwise mindless people. Loathing, hatred, anger, vengefulness, disgust, contempt, abhorance, fear, repugnance, vehemence and antipathy are all words used in conversation to describe it. Even the word passion generally means the negative. Few people show success at embracing love without losing kindness. The inspiration to deliberately help someone else in their pursuit of fun does arise, but quite often with a backlash of jealosy if the help succedes. To prevent this a lot of people avoid all deliberateness with other people's fun, prefering reliance on luck and private prayer to make a world that has love happening, speaking about it fatalistically if their life has been loveless for quite a while. Long term love appears to always be deliberate though. Talking with the few people who clearly have some measure of old love inevitablely includes stories of overtly making magic happen for the others. h. As the defining element of play Play is fun with a fictitious technical focus or a deliberate choreographic boundary. The first requires the allocation of energy without a genuine payoff and the second requires at least one sponsoring individual who remains left out, so play is a compromise that most people and all wild animals abandon at some point in their lives. Play is also the only form of fun that gets mainstream academic recognition and study, due to so many people being cast into the role of sponsoring it, forced to focus on it without being in it. 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. 3. MORAL ISSUES a. Battle of the sexes Some masculine traditions, such as the taliban and the American puritans, have advocated a near elimination of sensuous fun, calling it a ridiculous offense, and answering the issue of listlessness by offering artificial anxiety, and horrorifying or highly challenging technical pursuit; still often referred to as fun. Women in those kind of traditions apparently engage in secret parallel traditions involving overtly crazy colorful costumes and ridiculous shared fun. Many organizations lead by women press for the opposite, a near elimination of ugly or dangerous fun, calling it entirely unnecessary; replacing it with relentless mechanistic interaction and activity; and this likewise inspires secret artificial anxiety or actual combativeness on the part of males involved. Oddly, even those men who profess and appear to engage in sensous fun, and encourage their feminine associates likewise, will still run afoul the same way; and engage in private ugly activity, courting and often meeting technical disaster, as with drunks at a bar; and will get into life changing strife with spouses and feminine neighbors through pressing for some element of divine awe, greater laxity about traditional security, and more psychic dependence. Likewise women who embrace danger and initiate cutting edge discussion are not seeking divine awe; their emotionally based identity keeps them bathed continually in the experience the men are seeking; they are acting out of unusual spiritual faith. The hazards do not exist for them. The actually seek new sensuous and triumphant possibilities in environments they were shy of in the past. In the sense that a man would perceive them, they are heartless and idiotic monsters who may be technically supportive but are spiritually saboteurs. Thus women volunteering into a male dominated world fare no better than the men who encourage sensuous focus. The world of traditional recreation has shown some meager success at peaceful if formal sharing with both sexes, at a public library, a bird watching class or sitting on a bus. But the kind of focus that either sex enthusiastically calls real fun leaves the other sex frowning. Massive effort to shake this down has proved futile; those who understand the details of the dilemma brilliantly feel no different. The problem originates in the identity split that every person must do in order to be able to function socially. A pure consciousness has no functional, let alone emotional, separation from it's physical environment. There is no way to create the illusion of being a separate individual except through a compartmentalization of awareness into an observer and a background. Neither a person's emotional awareness nor their technical awareness is an actual independent observer of the general environment, but it is functionally possible for one half to observe the other half and create a pretense of independent observation that way. As long as the person remains in a social environment validating the illusion, once they get the appropriate self-image fantasy going, they can sustain it. But three days without backup and it fades, and must be resurrected in order to re-enter human relating. The best anyone can do is be aware emotionally as undifferentiated awareness and aware of technical functionality as a unique player in spiritual society; or else to track the structure of the environment without a boundary awareness and engage continuous portrayal of a ficticious character. There is no way to maintain both illusions at the same time. Some people have established a life successfully hopscotching back and forth between two fully functioning opposite sex identities. Some have got so skilled at the shift that only a few minutes suffices to complete it. In the movie called "Brother Sun, Sister Moon", the actor playing Francis of Assisi successfully portrays this shift. But even in a world in which everyone could do that, the same conflict would remain because it is actually a clash of illusions; each sex is fighting to maintain it's part in holding the social fabric intact, against the simple intelligence of the other sex. Even a baboon troup has to maintain this dual illusion at a primitive level in order to stay a functional group. Dogs and cats have to join it in order to function as pets. The best we can do is forgive; to say to oneself, "I am not crazy, I have decided to be crazy, that's not the same thing(!)". b. Government limiters From appearances, governments seem inclined to be responsive solely to women's views of fun. Undoubtedly that is a result of men tending to ignore practical communication matters until their temper blows. Women delight in agitating about possible new venues to promenade or play in, and undoubtedly that inspires them to send carefully thought out letters or phone calls to people who influence legislation or administer recreational offerings. Women's interest in speaking kindly in public and with a pretty voice probably helps too. Thus over time the governments volunteer into paying for more education, entertainment and travel facilities. Programs get more complex or get morphed into novel possibilities, and hazards shakedown into tighter oversight. Governments have financial assistance programs too for food, education, house buying or repair and the like, for people who don't mind presenting a tame predictable life. Regulation strangles more cool and exciting possibilities every year, as they're discovered, and only retracts somewhat on issues that get self-righteous tempers going for awhile. For someone too proud to take assistance, too strange to be welcome at public facilities, too creative to benefit from conventional education, fascinated by unregulated hazards and dangerous experiments, and inclined towards a bizarre lifestyle, the governments are an evil enemy to be dodged and thwarted or maybe bullied. Most men evolve into being covert and small scale with their weirdness, and many spiritually rot inside from the lack of environmental feedback. An upheaval like the american revolution radically expands liberty and masculine hopefulness for awhile but eventually bucking the government system through heartless trickery becomes the only way for many men to stay hopeful about life. In the united states now, roughly one man in eighty is in jail and a whole lot of the others are merely successful at staying under the radar. The inspiration to entirely abandon morality takes a lot of men, whether or not they're ever apprehended. Social arrangements of continuous dependence contribute to fun becoming amoral or evil by letting people get way out of touch with what kinds of caring are necessary for maintenance. Civil service institutions and schools are so prone to this that almost any discussion about them will include examples of overt indifference to technical tragedy. The term "going postal" has come to refer to psychotic violence on the part of any angry person, as if the post office environment creates that as naturally as a farm grows thistles. Large scale society has this practical liability. Most national or highly controversial leaders become amoral in the approach they take towards emotion creation because they inevitably cannot avoid becoming virtually imprisoned by handlers, body guards and regular servants, due to the unavoidable murderous danger they face and the need to present a sophisticated lifestyle in order to obtain their position. Due to this intense dependence, many people theorize that political or economic power innately corrupts a person. c. Conflict with religion Fun and religion seem like total opposites in nearly every published religious writing; but actually a quirk of conceptual language creates that appearance. Like the opposition of the sex identities, language cannot convey technical precision and an image of experience at the same time without seriously compromising genuine communication about either. For example, the book of Revelation in the christian bible is a major attempt to convey both, and the main result has been endless speculation about what the writer is expressing. The Kama Sutra of the hindu tradition at least manages a presentation of technical perfection without scolding the reader or implying they were born corrupt or deficient. The idea of sin, expressed in many religions, seems to suggest that emotional spontaneity of a natural person is harmful in some sense; and an event that sabotages someone's illusion of identity, compromising societal cohesion, could be described that way. Women call it getting one's feelings hurt and men call it being a victom of indecency or offensiveness or evil. In the hindu tradition the dilemma is supposed to be handled through embracing the shattering of identity and then deliberately re-establishing one while fully aware. Though the hindu religious practice apparently achors identity quite as firmly as any other religion, through an enormously complex and immobilizing tradition, at least the words aren't a source of grimness. All the religious traditions address this issue of one person's fun shattering an unprepared other person's identifying anchors, and cooperation with that effort is essential to success with having fun in an area strongly influenced by that religion. The hindu world encourages the social presense of beggary and unmanaged large animals, so highly complex capitalizing wonders have to be secret and guarded slyly there. The christian world encourages competitive solitude involving mockery and scolding, so sexuality and any attempts at new sensory based skills such as music must be kept secret and guarded slyly. Realistically, having a feeble grip on identity and confusion about the other forms it takes is going to spoil having fun, so allocating a part of one's life to a thorough study of the matter proves necessary for virtually everybody sooner or later, often taking an apparently religious form. d. Family disintegration In parts of the world that have well established beautiful and friendly traditions like Indonesia, India and Brazil, family disintegration doesn't figure as a threat to having fun. In effect, with a whole society playing together in an easily comprehendable way, it matters little whether or not a family plays together. In a society in which the basic framework of expectations keeps changing every week for one reason or another, a family that has no clear pattern of cooperative fun will splinter in confusion eventually from random identity threats. Many societies in which this is common have adapted to it completely, even requiring by law that everyone between six and twelve years of age spend a minimum of 30 hours a week in opposition to family influence, and assuming that every 19 year old person who doesn't splinter from family intimacy must be seriously infantile. e. Poisoning of friendship Fun is nearly always the social dynamic that originates a friendship, one person's presense becoming a symbol of life affirmation or light-hearted humor for another. Unfortunately, fun always evolves, and belief is a conviction built on sand. Novelty is the soul of fun, so unless a large scale traditional pattern maintains a belief in each others divinity and humanness, a friend can just as easily become a symbol of evil or a symbol of emotional vacancy. There is no clear remedy for this. Even people who make a point of interlocking all their friendships, with each friend known personally by several others, a poisoning of belief in someone can still happen, and can even split an entire network into two. f. Social outcasting and suicide The psychology of suicide appears to vary quite a bit, but defining suicidal interest as a life denying, humorless outlook, one could say that fun is critical to life, and that convincing someone to forsake pursuit of fun can be construed as the same as killing them. So from the view of many people who directly knew a person who killed theirself, or volunteered into front line combat, the event was murder. The rhetoric that creates the disaster rarely originates maliciously though. Words can so easily convey double meanings taken out of context, and often conversation can mix words about one focus and intense feelings about something secret and unrelated. The simple question "how are you", asked as encouragement to converse, can be taken as an implied mockery and rejection of spiritually exact discussion, without the speaker even noticing. Several years of experience with similiar encounters can easily drive a person to suicide with no one at fault and everybody upset. Social outcasting is thus a very inexact phenomenon. Someone being rejected as a job applicant could take it as validation of their greater suitability for another context that is less legitimate but much more fun, with the employer seeing only a fool. Logically there is no way to deliberately take the pressure off someone who has a seriously rejected identity. A stuttering teenager is actually horrible to a majority of their associates even if most try to keep a good face on it, particularly if the teenager seeks fun related to conversation. An ilformed or unadapted identity often must die even if it means the death of the person. Making a new identity is always theoretically possible but the people who suggest everyone can do it tend to be like Scatman John, not mere mortals. g. Inspiration to warfare Understanding how life affirmation can result from politically motivated group violence has baffled a lot of people, but the feeling is undeniably widespread among men and boys. Many will express overt delight in imagery of maiming and killing arbitrary political opponents, perhaps seeding the real thing to some degree. Many people also view beligerent political conflict like dirty dishes, a civic necessity that only an idiot would see as optional, a perhaps poorly defined but genuine crisis, something that men are able to turn into fun in order to make the best of it. h. Accidents Whether or not a particular sort of accident is preventable or not can illicit quite a debate, and people having fun certainly seem more careless than somber people. People generally focus on fun while within a social cocoon, contributing to a loss or absence of practical awareness that results from a long period of being dependent, and a tendency to be indifferent to some kinds of significant technical tragedy. Masculine fun is often deliberately courting disaster, even if generally matched by skill. Some people have remarked that they quit skateboarding not from social condemnation but from too many bruises. Courting disaster may be great fun, but meeting it usually isn't. Drunk drivers appear to be the only class of people who create accidents, that fair better than their unintended victoms. Accidents appear to be self correcting unavoidable cost of a social network established by each person maintaining a form of deliberate insanity. Most accidents are minor and are an effective warning to all but the most commited. 4. HISTORY a. Fun prior to civilization The nature of primitive society gets some people quite argumentitive, partly due to complete lack of evidence. One can really only guess about it. Some basic factors are known though, based on looking at current primitive societies. Memory and physical activity play a bigger part in their fun than for modern people. Some can remember past details astoundingly well and repeat with precision after hearing something once. They also engage in carrying unbelievable loads balanced on their heads, or run 15 miles on a minor errand. Pretty things seem quite appealing to them, inspiring weeks of tedious hand work with colored dirt and animal parts and other base level materials. Valuable items all get associated with known people who made them, generic wealth being generally a foreign idea. Music and personal expression generally are likewise unprostituted, motivating everyone to participate and develop some skill. Autonomous activity is fairly rare, though it does happen. Most everyone spends their entire life, including sleeping, in direct association with several others. Segregation occurs but generally between groups. Fun takes the same basic forms as are familiar, with usually the same basic form of sex identities as modern people. Leadership without personal involvement, as in a modern institutions, doesn't happen much. Some rare societies have men wearing makeup or women engaging in violent physical battle. Sexual tradition runs the whole range from complete license to serious inhibition. Spiritual exploration among primitives involves overt relations with apparently real ancestral spirits and conversational trance with the voice that appears to speak out of rocks and plants during periods of feral solitude. The ancestor contact is often facilitated by an intense intellect compromising drug or a ritual event intended to compromise intellect. The inanimate voice is apparently a psychic split similiar to the sex identity phenomenon, but involving the physical intellectual part of the hearer's brain speaking through the actual ear nerve channel without control of normal consciousness. Both forms of experience are primarily autonomous, sometimes with a little coaching about what signs to look for. For some groups a passage into adulthood is established through one or both forms. The effect are quite reliable to reproduce and offer profound and entertaining novelty that keeps many participants returning for more. Genuine government ritual appears to be mostly absent for primitive groups, though some have traditions of grim meeting rituals that are similiar. b. Fun prior to overt patriarchy The first institutional forms were apparently invented and dominated by women, presumably as an extention of their domestic ideas. There are stories of religious places that offered deliberate classes in personal relations, particularly coaching about menstruation, childbirth and sexuality and encouraging astounding athletic endurance in intercourse. Athletic sexuality was apparently presented as a spectacle event in Sumer and India. Men invented organized sports apparently involving teams and a ball of some kind. Gang warfare was common, mainly by men, deliberately mistreating and robbing nearby communities. Ritual involving bigger and bigger groups evolved, often in association with celestial events. The practice of ritual idolization of individuals began as a result of groups getting large enough to have unfamiliarity between members. People would identify a striking or unusual individual and initiate a chanting or riotous focus on them in an encouraging manner. Most people undoubtedly were horrified at being an object of that, but some fed the game and took on choreographic leadership. Significantly, women idolized this way generally find the effect to be evidence of embarrassing emotional idiocy on the part of those in the crowd, diffusiing the effect considerably. Idolized men on the other hand often perceive the effect as a call to their apparent superiority, and revel in the feelings. Thus men rose as choregraphic leaders, in spite of having little real savy in the role, and inevitably having to anchor at least one reliable female coach. This pattern may have been the origination of the concept of marriage, to prevent an idolized man from making a complete fool of himself. Many men got inclined to encourage the development of multilevel idolization, delighting in the huge wash of emotion that could thus be created, at least in groups of men. Some societies retained the ancestor and "inanimate voice" rites of passage or exploritory traditions, but most incorporated those forms of ritual into huge spectacles that made a complete mockery of the original explorations. Certain legendary ancestors became the object of idolization and others became marginalized or forgotten. The inanimate voices became formalized and named Devas or nature spirits. Coaching children about the phenomena became highly complex and involved chastising those whose experiences were outside the traditional image. Government evolved as a dominant sub-group involving little or no citizenship or leader accountablity in the modern sense. Leaders made despotic demands for their own fun, generally without feedback. Most governing leaders made reference in their writings to another sub-group to which they were subject. While some may have merely been using that image as a ruse to intimidate, there is considerable consistancy in the various tales, suggesting intelligent alien visitors with some kind of governing or exploitive intent. Leaders discovered fairly quickly that their position could be made much safer and more fun if they facilitated bickering and battles between rival groups in their area of dominance, drawing attention away from the offenses of the leader. A foreign war could serve, but a local one carried no risk of losing territory. Thus warfare became a huge and continuous focus, nearly always about very minor political offenses or to demonstrate ability. The Hindu book called Bagavad Gita exhaustively examines the rhetoric and logic used by leaders in the clearly senseless and ghastly battles. Women apparently became more domestically dreamy and ambitious, inventing or pressing a husband to invent labor saving and trading methods for creating wealth of all sorts. Harvesting became deliberate and involved destroying unwanted plants. Animals to butcher were tamed as pets to make them easy to kill. Building construction of all kinds became a very significant hobby. Many societies evolved towards many people being productively engaged most of day, with any idea of having enough being completely forgotten. Quite a few societies completely burned out the carrying capacity of their area having fun this way, with catastrophic result. Traditions of seeking emotional wonder through meanness and arbitrary heartless dominance became common in all relationships between people and in relation to natural phenomena, even in childcare and enlisting of work assistance. People also discovered a huge potential wonder in establishing a unique group identity through a story that all held in common. This made possible large groups that were no longer anchored to an area of land to maintain social cohesion. A group that wore out it's welcome or destroyed it's resources could relocate. c. Fun prior to industrial technology A splinter group in Sumer, led by a fellow named Abraham, originated an idea that the subgroup that the government leaders claimed ruled them was actually ruled by the inanimate voice, and that that voice was from a single entity that had originated all others and all other forms of matter, and had established a direct verbal link with him. His "creation and leadership by supreme being" story solidified his group so well that he was able to propose and carry out a mass relocation towards the west of Sumer, with an economy based on mobile livestock. This charismatic religious story as a basis for group identity proved to be a huge boon to military effectiveness. The story apparently involves death being a rejoining with the supreme being, and not something to be particularly avoided. Thus men could be rallied to fight much more ruthlessly, and the tradition spread by conquest, spliting into three highly successful forms that eventually dominated two thirds of the world. With the invention of single entity religion in defense of group illusory identity, women were evicted quite rudely from any part in spiritual development of anyone. They continued to coach girls privately as they do today. Warfare escalated to being a continuous focus of leadership and the gang form of warfare was either forced to join the new government based form or face being an object of enforcement. Sporting and religious events became really massive, inspiring construction of gigantic buildings to allow many to watch at once. With the conversion of the Romans to a form of christianity and later the middle east and northern africa to islam, the role of women in religion in a huge part of the world was completely restricted to spectator. A similiar change happened in the orient, apparently as a result of escalation of warfare, to the point where women were shy to engage in any grossly significant activity. In the areas where the leadership by women was explicitly prohibited, teaching about sexuality became prohibited also. Apparently men were unable to take on even a minimal educational leadership about orgasm or childbirth. Menstruation and childbirth became quite painful and dangerous due to ignorance about them and improper preparation. The masculine dominance of children whose father was indeterminate was difficult to establish, so intercourse outside of marriage had to be prohibited, and all study of sexuality prior to marriage was thus also condemned as criminal. Menstrual cramps were judged illusory and childbirth pain to be the unavoidable consequence of an ancient religious violation. Sex as a form of seeking fun had to end or go underground, so the concept of prostitution was invented, in which a condemned but tolerated subculture of women would continue to study and perfect sexuality, involving men technically as customers or protection support partners, but realistically as sexual players. d. 21st century differences Industrial society introduced device mania into the pursuit of fun. This has apparently considerably eased the tragic loss of noble sexuality, though the pain and danger of childbirth and mentrual ignorance is still a disaster. Books becoming cheap and plentiful made guided dreaming much more accessable. Travel became an option for nearly anyone and language homogenized enough to facilitate cultural melding and eventually a conversion of literal world warfare into commercial forms. Commerce has exploded as a source of fun creation with new services as well as new devices. Orgasm education by women is still generally condemned, but no longer illegal as long as all participants are adults. Some mentrual and childbirth education is even mainstream in a sanitized form that forbids the recognition of orgasm as being essential in preventing pain. The autonomy of individual pursuit of fun, made more and more possible through technical invention, inspires idealistic panic on the part of many philosophical people, but to no avail. A new form of feral human has emerged that can participate easily in domestic society without actually being policed by it to any important degree. Even the heavily socially controlled muslim world is breeding the new form. The result is what one author, Andrew Keen, has labeled the cult of the amateur, referring to the proliferation of self taught authorities. Though he focuses on the internet, where he does business, the phenomenon took off in the early twentieth century with cheap automobiles and the telephone. Exploration of wisdom that was once restricted to rich and highly obsessive people like Thomas Jefferson became cheaper and politically tolerated. George Gurdjieff managed to maintain his high profile bizarre school, deliberately helping 20 year old men to dodge the military, right through World War Two some 30 miles from Paris. That war also saw the emergence of the conscientious objector, the license to permit anyone to assess the legitimacy of a war, regardless of how ignorant and uninformed they are. Undoubtedly though, the cult of the amateur has been low profile and quite huge for all of domesticated history, and simply able to show itself in the twentieth century. Quite possibly the cults of symbolic idolitry are coming to a close, and with it the cult of the blinkered formal specialist. e. Potential directions of development What becomes of fun creation when the majority is emotionally at a seven year old level and the babysitting infrastructure that allows that is gone temporarily? There is currently considerable panic about unruly geology bringing a brutal end to human fun. The small scale power outages and major floods have shown a basis for worry that, where the disaster is large enough that there is no realistic neighbor in better shape to appeal to, fun utterly changes form into vandalism, tyrannical government and no familiar recreation. The amateur internet demonstrating how easy it is to hoodwink a large portion of the public about a matter of great significance is undoubtedly going to make more obvious to everyone how unreliable all sources are, particularly where a clear motive to lie exists. People are likely to evolve into accepting overt discussion of withholding cures to disease in countries where population control is failing or the possible benefit of a military conquest of a foreign government that is thwarting the exploitation of a commercially valuable part of the earth. With clear evidence of amoral mainstream leadership, political con games may be become unnecessary for successful heartlessness. The prostitution of the arts may also come to an end. Recorded entertainment has already far surpassed the quality possible from a live presentation and the internet looks to potentially be an overwhelming prolific source of free astounding media of all kinds. Selling one's soul in the normal way and enforcing copyright may become as hopeless as selling rubber bands on a street corner. The rash exploitation of the earth may lose a lot of it's appeal also. Since a great deal of ambition is boosted by redirected or frustrated sexual focus, a shift toward sane coaching of children about orgasm and childbirth may dry up a lot of financial drive. The past obsession with personal privacy, apparently motivated by economic and sexual shame, and by fear of insane hysterical reaction to normal secrets, may also fade out as the internet airs out every conceivable manner of dirty laundry. Inevitably richer people will discover the immense psychic force made possible by a dozen people in genuine intimacy and the religious wonder of mixing that with direct contact with the living realm. People are likely to pine for a look at the astounding world around them that is only visible clearly at walking speed, leaving vehicles, even bicycles, mostly idle. 5. SIGNIFICANT CULTURAL ANOMOLIES a. Third world cultures Poorer countries often inspire stories of striking childlike light-heartedness in expressions of fun, perhaps due to having less materials and territory to inspire jealosy and worry, and more opportunity for emotional maturation due to lack of privacy. b. Internet The internet has made possible a very complex world of contact similiar to a society but where personal images can be entirely ficticious and emotional feedback is near impossible to be accurate about. Many people have found new wonder in the sea of imagination that has resulted, and have no more concern about the genuineness involved than they would about a dime store novel. Refereeing the emotional craziness that sometimes erupts has proved fairly workable, providing another kind of noble mission for people who need one. The lust to publish and get feedback has proved huge, now that the cost is trivial. Likewise the offering for sale of oddball items has become so easy and cheap that the garage sale spirit has taken on full time potential. Commerce can now be played with at a whole range of skill levels and almost anything can be called a real offering for sale, making almost anyone able to find a way in. Internet gaming, searchable public journaling and access to forbidden literature have created new delight as well, allowing experiential and educational opportunity to broaden the general range of common wisdom. c. Solitary fun Having fun alone is perhaps a contradiction but in modern societies it may be more common than shared fun. While actual psychic solitude results in the complete disappearance of emotion, a solitary guided or lucid dream can evoke quite as meaningful and intense emotion as a physically shared event, with much less limits on the details, and generally lower cost. Accuracy relative to the shared world may be compromised in unexpected ways, but for recreational fun that usually matters little. The wonder of religious hallucination is only accessable through watching from the boundary of emotional void that solitary fun facilitates, so many men are inspired to design intense solitary meditations for themselves like hang gliding or sitting staring at a wall. d. Violent social traditions and sports Many people find emotional fulfillment or delight in a vanquishing of another aspiring spirit. While logically this seems emotionally impossible, by establishing an illusory class or group identity that is completely emotionally disconnected from the opponent, a player can maintain genuine enthusiam throughout a competitive encounter. Many modern people have no group identification, even to their nation, and so are unable to have fun in a harsh encounter. Cultures that involve a lot of this kind of fun inevitably shake down traditions of what is called fair play related to their styles of combativeness, to prevent the fading of interest in the sharing or a social evolution into complete heartlessness as with the Easter Island civilization. People without a capacity to group identity are an important nusiance in most societies, spoiling competitive fun for others merely with their presense, inspiring development of choreographic seperation using buildings and traditions of formality. Many street people and religious aspirants are troublesome this way for socially or financially competitive environments, or family groups that enjoy skirmish of one kind or another. e. Hunting Having fun through an attempt to kill is a minority interest, but well accepted in nearly all societies. Like with competitive fun, hunting inspires conversation about fair play and acceptable classes to pursue and kill but few hunters seems very serious about what anyone else actually does unless another person might accidently get hit. Most hunters seem to suggest in conversation that hunting is, to them, a basic human skill, essential to civilization and essential to survival in a sudden food shortage. Most women appear completely unimpressed with the idea. In most aborginal cultures virtually every man learns to hunt animals and many learn to hunt people; and virtually no women even watch or talk about it and the women obtain most of the calorie base. Some modern women have shown more interest, particularly in the recent years. Most modern men have no interest at all and some even oppose the idea. To adopt a technically defined group identity as with a nation or a race has been normal for nearly every conceptual identity for most of recorded history; though perhaps because history is generally recorded by those people. Hunting, though, does not appear to depend on group identity. Apparently many, maybe even most, aboriginal hunters overtly relate to their prey, whether human or animal, as being psychically linked with them as a kind of kin but in a heirarchy that includes killing. Many modern men express a trend towards that as well and undoubtedly someone with a character based identity could only relate to a hunt that way. With the world ecosystem showing signs of disaster and the human population getting so inclined to trade and travel worldwide, the clearly understood and shared cold-blooded group identity is getting more and more unstable among the general run of men, without apparently reducing the emotional drive to hunt and eat animals, and engage in human predation. The drive may be genetic and never actually rooted in ideas. That is to say, ideas may be able to destroy the drive to hunt but may have nothing to do with creating it. Because of this primal aspect the discussion of hunting often involves a suggestion of basic spiritual exploration, that death compells some kind of deep integrity with the universe. Some farmers speak of farming the same way; particularly if they have livestock. f. Use of machines The modern cultures have gone machine crazy, as much for fun as profit, and from the view of those not using a particular kind of machine even the industrially financed ones are operated for fun, at least at first. The industrial imagination has created a new kind of tedium, but most people in monotonous mechanical jobs nevertheless look as though they are in some kind of divine trance while working, and those few that are articulate describe their work that way, with apparent sincerity. Mechanical skill developed over a long period takes on an almost magical quality. Typing 60 words a minute seems not actually possible, and throwing a horseshoe onto the opposite post thirty times in thirty attempts one would think only happens in the movies. The more recent years have grown somewhat frustrating for machine fun, due to continual innovation. Someone who was a divine mechanic in their youth or learned cutting edge computer programming and then did something else for twenty years is suddenly a complete novice. The term Luddite refers to someone frustrated this way, their divine skill rendered worthless by the march of unnecessary innovation. Significantly, the repair of machines, that was such a major expression of machine fun in the past, is becoming relegated to expensive antiques only. The real world changes machinery so fast that most important breakdowns occur after the item has been superceded anyway, with the new improved replacement frequently costing less than the repair would have cost and quicker to obtain; but requiring a whole new round of learning how to operate it. Many new machines are not even possible to repair, at any cost. One could very well argue that all innovation is fairly unnecessary and perhaps tragic. Many older people keep their personal lives linked to the machines of the past. Many hobbies involve learning old fashioned skills in textile production or cooking or woodworking. But just as many people speak with excitement about the latest new widget that will level the playing field some more in social and economic competition, and open new avenues for novelty in whatever aspect of life it gets used in. g. Anarchist fun Political opposition to a faceless authority often evolves into a sport or playful social expression when adopted by women and children. Many nursery rhymes originated as politically expressive songs, such as Yankee Doodle and Ring around the Rosies, with the meaning faded completely away. In recent years the internet has facilitated a proliferation of international association sidestepping government oversight entirely, easing the creative paralysis that inspires attacks on regular authority. h. Commercial development Fun for a fee has spread in cultural scope in the last century, except in cultural sharing between people who know each other. Wealthier societies generally embrace the use of commercial fun as a device for passifying or emotionally linking members who would otherwise have to be incorporated through violence. Parents who can afford it embrace commercial seduction for control of children to replace the beligerence and violence that is normally necessary in ambitious societies. Unfortunately, the use of seduction has not improved the nhilism and deliquency record of tightly supervised children. i. Utopian experiments Due to emotional explosiveness that fun can inspire in bystanders, a considerable amount of imagination has gone into utopian social experiments that redirect aspiration to have fun or design new opportunities for fun in ways prohibited in the originating society. New religious movements may have this kind of angst as a major component of their success. The British invasion of America involved many utopian ideas, such as the predatory "manifest destiny" and the California gold rush, though significantly with a long term result of general estrangement in American neighborhoods that have no compensating ethnic dominance. j. Fun as medicine Though double-blind research has only established that friendly association is medicinially helpful, a lot of anecdotal evidence supports the use of fun as medicine. Some even theorize that fun in some form is essential to all medical recoveries. k. Poisoning oneself for fun Deliberate creation of handicap in oneself is oddly common in nearly all cultures, inspiring much derisive discussion among non-participatory observers. Many modern cultures have even used laws against specific forms of handicap, such as use of religious drugs, to suppress cultural mixing. Some cultures require universal handicap of one kind or another, such as a 40 hour work ethic or marijuana use, as an apparent form of cohesion. Tightly supervised children often discover that a temporary handicap from glue sniffing or falling out of a tree can ease the harshness of the police effort focused on them. Alcoholism appears to be largely motivated this way, as an escape from the inner policeman. l. Other people's children Though child raising looks quite attractive, from the outside, as a source of fun, the reality is usually a stiff compromise at best. But other people's children often prove to be a great opportunity in the right supportive situation. Though children are generally fairly lame as workers, they appear to be open to calling any lively focus fun if an associated adult calls it that. They are far easier to boss around in pagentry than adults, and are far more tolerant of vicious outbursts or gross stupidity of any sort. Mistreating children does appear to backfire eventually, but if the option to abandon them at that point is available then that is not necessarily a disincentive. Since most parents are quite abusive, an outsider poisoning their child's equilibrium will likely go unnoticed. Genuinely friendly engagement with children generally fails without a strong trusting familiarity, so grandparents or similiarly tribal associates seem to be the only people able to be kind and happy with children. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. Figures of speech a. Having fun Fun as a possession or commodity is a common archetype in America, though the experience of fun appears quite relationship dependent everywhere. The logically implied mockery of a person's emotional dependency does appear to poison the feelings of fun when the term "having fun" is used in conversation. b. Are we having fun yet? Many, and perhaps even most, kinds of fun have an initiation phase of some sort that a person must endure before they are able to be spontaneously graceful enough to focus on feeling. The question though, "are we having fun yet?", with it's use of "we", is logically a serious mocking jab, generally said with that intent. c. Did you enjoy that? Friends decompressing after an event have a deliberately kind way to speak of the feelings using the word enjoy. Though the word can be said with a lewd tone to poison it, that use is uncommon. Though fun feelings are highly relationship dependent, they are illusion and so are inevitably unique to each person and each event, and are radically affected by uninhibited expression at the time. Thus often even an empathic friend cannot guess at someone's experience of happiness. d. Making fun of Creating fun and making fun are oddly opposites. "Making fun of" is a logical reference to a commodity focus on fun, particularly of using a person as if they were a device without feelings. Since actual feelings of fun have no commodity basis, an attempt create feelings of fun using a "making fun of" approach is logically risky and often fizzles unless the person evoking it has some sort of institutional support. e. Funny feeling Fun and funny are tied by a reference to novelty, a funny feeling being a feeling that somehow contrasts with normal background. Even if worrisome, a funny feelings feels good enough to nearly always be a delight. f. Poor sport The emotional casualties of fun are not always answered with compassion or even tolerance. Particularly in competitive fun, those who lose and feel to rotten to be inspired to further engagement are often derided as being a "poor sport". For many people a nasty or painful stimulus is much more life affirming than no stimulus, so they will make an offer of abusive engagement intending a genuine gift, and can be quite baffled and disappointed if the result is social disaster. 7. See also a. Leisure b. FUN (magazine) c. F.U.N. 8. References 9. External links