“I soon realised the strangest thing about my new home. All the hunting is done for you by a tribe of hunters who bring food to the shops. In my tribe, everybody was a hunter, or made the fire, or looked after the children. We only did those jobs. The humans have many different jobs and don’t have to think about hunting and food all the time. This means they feel something called boredom. They don’t like boredom, but I think it’s very relaxing and so they should shut up and count themselves lucky.”
Gareth Roberts, Only Human (2005)
 |
| We always used to call these things 'zappers' in my childhood home. |
When was it that the consumption of
material designed for my entertainment started to feel less like a delight and
more like a strange kind of obligation?
I’ve lost count of all the books, films, television serials, radio programmes, YouTube channels, video games, musical soundtracks, and so forth that have been enthusiastically recommended to me by various friends and acquaintances. In fact, ‘enthusiastically’ perhaps isn’t quite the right word. I’m talking about the kind of recommendations made in absolute incredulity that I could possibly be ignorant of the material in question, with great stress on the grievousness of the deprivation to which I am subjecting myself by remaining in said ignorance: “How have you not seen it? You have to see it. It’s so good.”
I don’t suppose this is at all the intention of those making such recommendations, but they always leave me feeling rather inadequate. If the thing in question – I’ll generically call it The Littlest Elf for the rest of the post, for convenience and because it’s a fun A Series of Unfortunate Events reference1 – is something so good and excellent and valuable that I simply have to see it, if watching The Littlest Elf would improve my life so profoundly, then what does that imply about the state of my life at the moment? Surely the answer can only be that my life is worse than it could and should be, and, by extension, that I am worse than I could and should be, and that I am the only one to blame for the fact, because every effort has been made to enlighten me as to the virtues of watching The Littlest Elf, and if I would only stir myself to do so, my life would doubtless attain to the same quality as that of everyone else who has seen it.
In fact, I am entirely without excuse for not having seen The Littlest Elf, because I live in a catch-up culture where a whole ocean of entertainment is available right at my fingertips. No longer is it a case of asking the friend who recommended The Littlest Elf for a quick overview of the story so far before jumping it at whatever episode happens to be on next; no longer is there any need to glean the important details from the ‘previously’ clips at the beginning of the programme; no longer is it of any import whether one manages to catch the latest instalment as it is broadcast or not. Instead, between iPlayer, Netflix, YouTube, and a whole host of other video sites of varying levels of legality, access to every single episode is freely available. Catch-up culture doesn’t just apply to television, either: there are extremely well-stocked music-streaming platforms, vast online libraries of ebooks and audiobooks – almost every conceivable form of entertainment is downloadable within minutes if not seconds, no need to move from in front of the computer.
But if the availability of The Littlest Elf itself presents me with no obstacle, the availability of the time required to watch it is quite another story. There are, after all, only so many hours in a week, and most of the time, the vast majority of them are already spoken for – work, sleep, church, and so on – so that the rate at which I receive recommendations leaves me quite in despair of ever reaching the bottom of the list even of the ones I can remember. In other words, I can’t find the time to do what has been pitched to me as nigh on vital for my continued membership of human society: “How have you not seen it? You have to see it. It’s so good.” Clearly, there must be something very wrong with my priorities.
And it’s here, I think, that we discover the heart of the problem. Catch-up culture labours under the assumption that our greatest need in life is the need to be entertained. The range of advertisements on the tube, I think, evince this particularly strikingly: of the collection of huge posters at stations and slightly smaller ones inside the trains themselves, the majority seem to be devoted to forms of entertainment – books, films, stage shows, attractions – yet meanwhile, a by no means insignificant number are busily singing the praises of products and services designed to save people time. A couple of examples: HelloFresh, who offer home delivery of ready-to-cook recipe boxes, sell themselves with the slogan, ‘Hello, is it time you’re looking for?’; TaskRabbit, who arrange for people to do chores and run errands on their clients’ behalf, opt for, ‘We do chores, you live life.’ What do the tube adverts tell the good people of London they need out of life? In first place, entertainment, and as an auxiliary to that, more time to spend on that entertainment. Humanity’s greatest problem, apparently, is that we’re bored.
It’s a first-world problem if there ever was one. The notion that our greatest need is the need to be entertained – that watching The Littlest Elf is what will really make our lives more worth living – is a frankly embarrassing testament to the level of comfort and privilege we enjoy in the modern west. The only reason we can be persuaded that this is so is because we take it so readily for granted that our more basic needs – food, shelter, safety, and so on – will be provided by default. My opening quotation is taken from a Doctor Who novel called Only Human in which a Neanderthal called Das ends up stranded in twenty-first-century London.2 Das marvels at the existence of such a thing as boredom – that because the people around him are not required to devote their time and energies to the business of survival, they have nothing to do – and can’t understand why humans don’t seem to like it very much. As far as he’s concerned, mooching around not doing a lot beats going out hunting any day.
Das, total fish out of water that he is, is the exception that sharpens the focus on the rule. Generally speaking, when we as humans have our more basic needs satisfied, we don’t settle down content with the fact; we start craving something else instead. I am so desperate to be entertained, so sure that it’s the thing I really need, that I burden myself with the necessity of it. I start to define myself by the content I consume. I feel obliged to entertain myself in every way that seems attractive to me, even though I blatantly don’t have enough time to, in order to guarantee that I’m not missing out, that my life is not needlessly inferior to what it could be. I put so much pressure on The Littlest Elf to satisfy me that I can’t even enjoy it properly. Seeking to be entertained becomes a wearisome encumbrance, not a route to satisfaction – which would strongly suggest that it was never actually my greatest need in the first place.
So what is?
Have a look at John 6.3 At the start of the chapter, Jesus turns a few bread rolls and fish into a picnic lunch for thousands of people. Pretty incredible, and the picnickers clearly thought so too, because they determinedly follow Jesus across the lake (by boat, rather than walking on it like he did), and start angling for another free meal:
When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”
I’ve lost count of all the books, films, television serials, radio programmes, YouTube channels, video games, musical soundtracks, and so forth that have been enthusiastically recommended to me by various friends and acquaintances. In fact, ‘enthusiastically’ perhaps isn’t quite the right word. I’m talking about the kind of recommendations made in absolute incredulity that I could possibly be ignorant of the material in question, with great stress on the grievousness of the deprivation to which I am subjecting myself by remaining in said ignorance: “How have you not seen it? You have to see it. It’s so good.”
I don’t suppose this is at all the intention of those making such recommendations, but they always leave me feeling rather inadequate. If the thing in question – I’ll generically call it The Littlest Elf for the rest of the post, for convenience and because it’s a fun A Series of Unfortunate Events reference1 – is something so good and excellent and valuable that I simply have to see it, if watching The Littlest Elf would improve my life so profoundly, then what does that imply about the state of my life at the moment? Surely the answer can only be that my life is worse than it could and should be, and, by extension, that I am worse than I could and should be, and that I am the only one to blame for the fact, because every effort has been made to enlighten me as to the virtues of watching The Littlest Elf, and if I would only stir myself to do so, my life would doubtless attain to the same quality as that of everyone else who has seen it.
In fact, I am entirely without excuse for not having seen The Littlest Elf, because I live in a catch-up culture where a whole ocean of entertainment is available right at my fingertips. No longer is it a case of asking the friend who recommended The Littlest Elf for a quick overview of the story so far before jumping it at whatever episode happens to be on next; no longer is there any need to glean the important details from the ‘previously’ clips at the beginning of the programme; no longer is it of any import whether one manages to catch the latest instalment as it is broadcast or not. Instead, between iPlayer, Netflix, YouTube, and a whole host of other video sites of varying levels of legality, access to every single episode is freely available. Catch-up culture doesn’t just apply to television, either: there are extremely well-stocked music-streaming platforms, vast online libraries of ebooks and audiobooks – almost every conceivable form of entertainment is downloadable within minutes if not seconds, no need to move from in front of the computer.
But if the availability of The Littlest Elf itself presents me with no obstacle, the availability of the time required to watch it is quite another story. There are, after all, only so many hours in a week, and most of the time, the vast majority of them are already spoken for – work, sleep, church, and so on – so that the rate at which I receive recommendations leaves me quite in despair of ever reaching the bottom of the list even of the ones I can remember. In other words, I can’t find the time to do what has been pitched to me as nigh on vital for my continued membership of human society: “How have you not seen it? You have to see it. It’s so good.” Clearly, there must be something very wrong with my priorities.
And it’s here, I think, that we discover the heart of the problem. Catch-up culture labours under the assumption that our greatest need in life is the need to be entertained. The range of advertisements on the tube, I think, evince this particularly strikingly: of the collection of huge posters at stations and slightly smaller ones inside the trains themselves, the majority seem to be devoted to forms of entertainment – books, films, stage shows, attractions – yet meanwhile, a by no means insignificant number are busily singing the praises of products and services designed to save people time. A couple of examples: HelloFresh, who offer home delivery of ready-to-cook recipe boxes, sell themselves with the slogan, ‘Hello, is it time you’re looking for?’; TaskRabbit, who arrange for people to do chores and run errands on their clients’ behalf, opt for, ‘We do chores, you live life.’ What do the tube adverts tell the good people of London they need out of life? In first place, entertainment, and as an auxiliary to that, more time to spend on that entertainment. Humanity’s greatest problem, apparently, is that we’re bored.
It’s a first-world problem if there ever was one. The notion that our greatest need is the need to be entertained – that watching The Littlest Elf is what will really make our lives more worth living – is a frankly embarrassing testament to the level of comfort and privilege we enjoy in the modern west. The only reason we can be persuaded that this is so is because we take it so readily for granted that our more basic needs – food, shelter, safety, and so on – will be provided by default. My opening quotation is taken from a Doctor Who novel called Only Human in which a Neanderthal called Das ends up stranded in twenty-first-century London.2 Das marvels at the existence of such a thing as boredom – that because the people around him are not required to devote their time and energies to the business of survival, they have nothing to do – and can’t understand why humans don’t seem to like it very much. As far as he’s concerned, mooching around not doing a lot beats going out hunting any day.
Das, total fish out of water that he is, is the exception that sharpens the focus on the rule. Generally speaking, when we as humans have our more basic needs satisfied, we don’t settle down content with the fact; we start craving something else instead. I am so desperate to be entertained, so sure that it’s the thing I really need, that I burden myself with the necessity of it. I start to define myself by the content I consume. I feel obliged to entertain myself in every way that seems attractive to me, even though I blatantly don’t have enough time to, in order to guarantee that I’m not missing out, that my life is not needlessly inferior to what it could be. I put so much pressure on The Littlest Elf to satisfy me that I can’t even enjoy it properly. Seeking to be entertained becomes a wearisome encumbrance, not a route to satisfaction – which would strongly suggest that it was never actually my greatest need in the first place.
So what is?
Have a look at John 6.3 At the start of the chapter, Jesus turns a few bread rolls and fish into a picnic lunch for thousands of people. Pretty incredible, and the picnickers clearly thought so too, because they determinedly follow Jesus across the lake (by boat, rather than walking on it like he did), and start angling for another free meal:
When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I
say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate
your fill of the loaves. Do not labour for the food that perishes, but for the
food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For
on him God the Father has set his seal.”
What this bunch think is their greatest need, is the need for food. They’re following Jesus around because he can apparently pretty much generate it out of thin air, and he knows as much. Nevertheless, while starvation is definitely less of a first-world problem than boredom, Jesus still has other ideas about what the real need that wants addressing here is. The real need is for food that endures to eternal life.
Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”
What this bunch think is their greatest need, is the need for food. They’re following Jesus around because he can apparently pretty much generate it out of thin air, and he knows as much. Nevertheless, while starvation is definitely less of a first-world problem than boredom, Jesus still has other ideas about what the real need that wants addressing here is. The real need is for food that endures to eternal life.
Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”
Jesus answered them, “This is the work
of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
Food that endures to eternal life? The crowd like the sound of that. How do they get hold of it? And Jesus answers, for once, very straightforwardly: believe in the one God sent.
So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
Well, believing in the one God sent or whatever is all very well, but there hasn’t actually been any food yet, so the people issue a challenge. Jesus may have fed a few thousand people just now, but Moses fed the entire Israelite nation for a full forty years of wandering in the desert. Beat that.
Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Food that endures to eternal life? The crowd like the sound of that. How do they get hold of it? And Jesus answers, for once, very straightforwardly: believe in the one God sent.
So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
Well, believing in the one God sent or whatever is all very well, but there hasn’t actually been any food yet, so the people issue a challenge. Jesus may have fed a few thousand people just now, but Moses fed the entire Israelite nation for a full forty years of wandering in the desert. Beat that.
Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
They said to him, “Sir, give us this
bread always.”
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of
life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall
never thirst.”
Jesus tells them they’re barking up the wrong tree. These people’s greatest need isn’t for food, like they think it is, but for Jesus himself.
That’s worth dwelling on. Jesus doesn’t say that what the crowd really needs is a get-out clause from God’s justified anger against them, or a ticket to heaven. He says they need to come to and believe in him, the bread of life. He himself is the fulfilment of their greatest need. And the same is true for those of us who are tempted to call the need for entertainment our greatest one. The whole point of Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross was to enable the fulfilment of that need, to grant us access to him and, through him, to God the Father. It’s not a case of subscribing to some doctrines, setting aside some Bible-study time, making a few lifestyle changes, and then settling back into the routine of seeking out the maximum possible entertainment for ourselves, betraying that we still think that’s the real business of life. To believe in Jesus is to recognise that my need for him trumps all needs. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference whether I ever get round to watching The Littlest Elf or not.
Now, I don’t want to make anyone feel guilty for spending time enjoying entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with it in itself, just as there’s nothing wrong with food: both are good gifts from God. The question I would, however, encourage us all to ask is: if I’m finding myself prioritising getting my entertainment fix over devoting time to Jesus, what am I saying about where I think my greatest need lies? What is it that I expect watching The Littlest Elf to achieve that makes it so important?
And I would also encourage us to stop recommending things to one another using the language of, “How have you not seen it? You have to see it. It’s so good.” By all means recommend things – if you enjoyed The Littlest Elf and want others to experience the same joy, that’s commendable – but please, I humbly ask, don’t pitch any piece of entertainment as a necessity. Whatever our catch-up culture may tell us, Jesus makes it clear that the only necessity is to believe in him.
Jesus tells them they’re barking up the wrong tree. These people’s greatest need isn’t for food, like they think it is, but for Jesus himself.
That’s worth dwelling on. Jesus doesn’t say that what the crowd really needs is a get-out clause from God’s justified anger against them, or a ticket to heaven. He says they need to come to and believe in him, the bread of life. He himself is the fulfilment of their greatest need. And the same is true for those of us who are tempted to call the need for entertainment our greatest one. The whole point of Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross was to enable the fulfilment of that need, to grant us access to him and, through him, to God the Father. It’s not a case of subscribing to some doctrines, setting aside some Bible-study time, making a few lifestyle changes, and then settling back into the routine of seeking out the maximum possible entertainment for ourselves, betraying that we still think that’s the real business of life. To believe in Jesus is to recognise that my need for him trumps all needs. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference whether I ever get round to watching The Littlest Elf or not.
Now, I don’t want to make anyone feel guilty for spending time enjoying entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with it in itself, just as there’s nothing wrong with food: both are good gifts from God. The question I would, however, encourage us all to ask is: if I’m finding myself prioritising getting my entertainment fix over devoting time to Jesus, what am I saying about where I think my greatest need lies? What is it that I expect watching The Littlest Elf to achieve that makes it so important?
And I would also encourage us to stop recommending things to one another using the language of, “How have you not seen it? You have to see it. It’s so good.” By all means recommend things – if you enjoyed The Littlest Elf and want others to experience the same joy, that’s commendable – but please, I humbly ask, don’t pitch any piece of entertainment as a necessity. Whatever our catch-up culture may tell us, Jesus makes it clear that the only necessity is to believe in him.
Footnotes
1It was a very clever way to begin the film, truly in the spirit of the continual exhortations to read something more pleasant with which Lemony Snicket filled his novels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXAZ50HOj6s.
2Recently re-released with a snazzy new cover as part of Doctor Who’s fiftieth anniversary series. On the off-chance that you feel inclined to purchase it, you can get a couple of quid off the RRP by doing so through Hive (and support independent booksellers at the same time): http://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Gareth-Roberts/Doctor-Who-Only-Human--50th-Anniversary-Edition/14525409.
3Here it is: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+6&version=ESVUK.
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