To Amuse and Be Amused
There are two things that we humans can do for each other: to amuse and be amused.*
The idea that being amusing is valuable is nothing new. Subconsciously or not, we’ve all tried to be amusing to attract people to us - much of our efforts at self-improvement are thinly veiled attempts at making ourselves more amusing to others. Amusement is also the crux of the trillion dollar advertising and entertainment business. Amusement draws attention; attention is monetizable.
At first glance, it looks like there are two sides - one side trying hard to be amusing and the other side passively waiting to see who wins at being the most amusing. The ‘being amusing side’ looks like where all the effort is. Especially when there is a lot of practice and forethought in the presentation of something intended to be amusing. Apparently the other side just needs to show up.
But I think that being amused is just as much of a gift as being amusing. Being amused is not nearly as passive as we’re led to believe. It’s only because there are so many things vying for our attention at all times that we have developed an attitude that amusement is the other person’s responsibility and anyone attempting to be amusing must first earn our amusement. Lately in the high-stakes competition for our attention, being more amusing has been losing out to whatever is the most psychologically manipulating. It’s becoming increasingly acceptable for us to believe that others must not only earn our amusement but are also allowed to take it. We’re forgetting that amusement is something we can choose to give.
Being amused can be a choice. The ego is incentivized to find things amusing that other people around it find amusing. Why things become popular has less to do with how amusing they are, and more to do with how it feels like to be included with the crowd that finds something amusing. There’s this youtube video of Rage Against The Machine playing live to an indifferent crowd in October 1991 and then later on playing the same song at a packed festival. Did the song really become that much more amusing in a little under two years? The choice to be amused by something that others find amusing is what changed, not the song.
Being easily amused is not a flaw. "The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all details of daily life,” said William Morris. Deciding to be amused by the people and places around us is a gift that keeps giving -- it kicks off a reciprocal cycle of being amusing and being amused. Much in the same way that a corporation like Wal-Mart invades a community and vacuums up the cycle of money that once flowed through small businesses, distributed entertainment sucks up our amusement, leaving less to give the people around us.
In a world that is largely out of our control, being amused is within our control. Going through life with an under-thought threshold for what qualifies as amusing puts us at risk of truncating our autonomy and subsequently outsourcing it to corporations who don’t reciprocate amusement. Amusement is closely tied to being in the present and as Pierre Hadot writes in “What is Ancient Philosophy?”:
“A person who applies all his attention and his consciousness to the present will feel that he has everything within the present moment, for within the moment he has both the absolute value of existence and the absolute value of moral intent. There is nothing further to desire. An entire lifetime and all eternity could not bring him any more happiness. If one has wisdom for one moment, one will not be any less happy than a person who has it throughout all eternity.”
Choosing to give our amusement to our own feelings, to the people that matter to us and the natural world can also produce a feeling of having nothing further to desire.
*I heard Mike Birbiglia say this on his podcast but can’t remember when.