Everyone wants to entertain or be entertained

I suppose that some of you are familiar with the HGTV Channel (here in the U.S.) which has a couple of nightly segments, House Hunters and International House Hunters.

In those segments, persons look for a house to buy and invariably want granite counter tops and a place to entertain.

That is, one of their sole preoccupations is a room or basement in which they can entertain guests.

Now, even if they “entertain” 65 times a year, that leaves 300 days of living without a need to entertain or accept guests over for drinks, food, and whatever else one does to “entertain.”

But the "entertainment" need trumps their housing want list.

The entertainment need isn’t confined to house hunters. Streaming outfits are rife with shows that they beg viewers to binge on (to be entertained): NetFlix, Hulu, Amazon, et al.

The town where our office is goes to extremes to provide venues that entertain: music, food (a big enticement), and a gaggle of insipid activities, including sports or visitors plying audiences with speeches and talks to make them happy with their forlorn lives.

And my Facebook pages, the UFO one and the Media one, are fraught with postings that hope to induce “likes” and favorite reviews or comments. Facebookers hope to entertain their new found or old-time friends, with photos of themselves, preening or eating or doing banal things.

Recently I visited a blog suggested by my friend, Chris Savia via The Anomalist listings.

The blog was a merry-go-round of leaden humor and twisted views on the paranormal, but the blogger received encomiums from his few visitors, saying his blog was the best ever, with writing superior to anything they’ve ever read.

God bless the fellow, who offered multiple thank yous to those who praised his variegated prose.

My point here is that we no longer, as a society, wish to be enlightened. We just want to be entertained or want to entertain.

UFO enthusiasts, via books, blogs, web-sites, podcasts, or radio shows now hope to attract those who have a need to be entertained, not made smarter, and in the process they become persons who entertain, which is all they need to feel fulfilled.

We, all, have descended into an abyss of stupidity and frivolity, just happy to be pleasant rather than intellectualized.

It’s much like the Roman era, right before the so-called barbarians removed entertainments and entertainers from society and civilization altogether.

Let’s hope that something similar will happen to our society and civilization before we all become clowns or vacuous receptacles for prattle and granite counter tops.

RR

A Chatbot acts as Teacher's Assistant, unbeknownst to students (who are wowed)

My pal, Bryan Sentes, who teaches at Dawson College in Montreal, found this laughable:

AI teaching Assistant

But it is the insidious germ of AI which will take over the world, and dominate humans, as Stuart Armstrong warns in Smarter Than Us: The Rise of Machine Intelligence [2014].

RR