Two lives to live
Continuing from here and here....

Thinking of entertainment as a primary purpose of life throws new light on several subjects.

For instance. This article discusses the correlation of 'big gods' and complex societies. It concludes that monotheism was invented as a helper for the aristocracy.

Using entertainment as the pivot:

Orientals never did invent a god. China and Korea and Japan basically get along without the spiritual world. When they develop a religion-like system, it's a direct deification of the living emperor in preparation for conquering the world. No extra god needed to advertise the emperor when the emperor IS god. And you can't accuse China and Japan of being simple societies. China had all the mechanisms of economic and governmental and philosophical complexity long before anyone else.

Most cultures elsewhere, from Africa to Europe to Siberia to the Americas, had a collection of godlike creatures who performed soap opera for the benefit of humans. In some cases the soap opera had a moral purpose, but not always. Above all it was just entertainment. The godlike creatures are a standard cast of characters, shared by everyone in the culture, with a standard set of scripts that are also shared and understood and discussed by everyone. Just like soap opera.

The big god, like the phonograph, seems to have been invented only once. But even in the Old Testament we have a standard set of characters whose genealogy is listed precisely. The story is built up through the interplay of these characters. Believers know the relations and the scripts by heart. We've ended up with a sparse collection of a few stories, but it's clear from the gaps in the plot that the original series had many other episodes. Just like the sparse collections of old radio serials at archive.org.

Christianity began with the Old Testament characters, plugging Jesus into the prelisted genealogy. When pagan Rome picked up the option for the script, pagan Roman characters and events were slipped into the re-mastered series under new names. Papal Rome still maintains this mix, so Papal Rome can't be classified as monotheist.

More recently, some rebels against Rome have stripped out most of the characters leaving only the raw story of creation and morality. First Mohammed, then Luther et al. Other rebels (Byzantium, Henry VIII, Joseph Smith) continued the cast of characters or substituted new characters and stories.

In short, most religions are just Network TV with a wireless network. The only abstract NON-ENTERTAINING gods belong to hard-ass Protestants and hard-ass Muslims.

Bigger question: We are designed to create and crave and appreciate entertainment. Why? No obvious answer. This aspect of our design makes no sense from the usual Darwinian perspective of energy efficiency, but it does fit into the GOD-ASSIGNED DUTY perspective. Because we have this gift, we should be using the gift to honor the designer who gave it, AND we should be using it by the designer's rules. NEVER ATTACK. ALWAYS DEFEND. Don't use entertainment to attack enemies or create chaos and crime. Don't do "journalism". Instead, use it to maintain our sanity and our civilization.

Labels: Entertainment, From rights to duties, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 7:32 AM