There is nothing wrong with entertainment if entertainment is what you want. But people often switch to entertainment automatically just because it’s easy and immediately socially rewarding.
It’s like a difference between reading internet once in a while, and spending your whole day online. There should be an “internet” time, but also a “non-internet” time. Similarly, in social situations we want to have both “entertainment” time and “non-entertainment” time.
In the spirit of purchasing fuzzies and utilons separately, perhaps we should try to make separate time slots for maximum entertainment (fun and group bonding) and time slots for maximum becoming stronger. As opposed to having mediocre insights interrupted by jokes and board games.
(As an extreme example, two hours of group sex followed by two hours of high-quality quantum physics lessons would give you both more pleasure and more knowledge than four hours of playing Monopoly and having small talk.)
Maybe people switch to entertainment because it’s what they’d prefer.
two hours of group sex followed by two hours of high-quality quantum physics lessons would give you both more pleasure and more knowledge than four hours of playing Monopoly and having small talk
Definitely not. That would be like eating a hundred tomatoes, then a hundred leaves of lettuce, and then saying that it’s better than a salad. A mix of the two is more enjoyable, at least for me.
Especially for a group that meets recurrently, it seems worthwhile to experience many different conversational contexts, some more structured and some less so. More structured contexts seem to be hard to sustain - the weekly sessions at my house focused on goal analysis often “devolve” into semi-related conversation.
Completely separating fuzzies and utilons doesn’t seem possible, e.g. the quantum physics lessons are likely to be at least somewhat entertaining, but it makes sense to try to focus on one or the other for a particular activity.
There is nothing wrong with entertainment if entertainment is what you want. But people often switch to entertainment automatically just because it’s easy and immediately socially rewarding.
It’s like a difference between reading internet once in a while, and spending your whole day online. There should be an “internet” time, but also a “non-internet” time. Similarly, in social situations we want to have both “entertainment” time and “non-entertainment” time.
In the spirit of purchasing fuzzies and utilons separately, perhaps we should try to make separate time slots for maximum entertainment (fun and group bonding) and time slots for maximum becoming stronger. As opposed to having mediocre insights interrupted by jokes and board games.
(As an extreme example, two hours of group sex followed by two hours of high-quality quantum physics lessons would give you both more pleasure and more knowledge than four hours of playing Monopoly and having small talk.)
Maybe people switch to entertainment because it’s what they’d prefer.
Definitely not. That would be like eating a hundred tomatoes, then a hundred leaves of lettuce, and then saying that it’s better than a salad. A mix of the two is more enjoyable, at least for me.
I guess that personal preferrence differs a lot in this.
Especially for a group that meets recurrently, it seems worthwhile to experience many different conversational contexts, some more structured and some less so. More structured contexts seem to be hard to sustain - the weekly sessions at my house focused on goal analysis often “devolve” into semi-related conversation.
Completely separating fuzzies and utilons doesn’t seem possible, e.g. the quantum physics lessons are likely to be at least somewhat entertaining, but it makes sense to try to focus on one or the other for a particular activity.