Value of Fiction: Entertainment

One of the things that I come back to and question from time to time is if my creative endeavors have meaning or value beyond just something for me to do. (Yes, RPG stuff is also something for me to do with friends, but I could spend that time with friends doing something else just as easily-significantly moreso really.)

In thinking about that, I think about ways that I could make my creative endeavors more valuable and how to have them provide a more fulfilling experience for my audience.

To this end, I intend to write a few posts over time on ways in which fiction can be valuable.

I had started a post about how fiction can be used to inspire empathy, but it ended up fairly rambely/contradictory/complicated. I still intend to finish that post, but I'll start my Value of Fiction posts off with something more straightforward: Entertainment.
I don't think people can argue with the idea that fiction can provide entertainment. So, rather than trying to talk about how fiction is entertaining, I'm going to talk in defense of fiction providing entertainment.
I think that there's a tendency for people, even myself, to look down on others or themselves for spending time doing things just for the sake of entertainment. It's sometimes seen as a "waste of time." I think that this can be true, but that taken in moderation, entertainment can hold great value.

Risk: Entertainment is a Drug

Before I get into why entertainment is good, I'm going to comment on it's danger. Entertainment is great for being able to escape the troubles of the world, to rest, to feel better. However, there is the possibility that entertainment can become too enticing. It can become an addiction that someone can't go without. It can become a crutch which is used to avoid real responsibility.
Balance is very important.

Entertainment for Rest

Life is stressful.

In talking to people throughout my life, I believe this is almost universally true. Especially in our current culture, there is a drive to fill every moment and constantly be moving. This could be productive things, it could be spending time with friends and family, it could be work, it could be studies, it could be volunteering, it could be a hobby, it could be any number of things, but it comes down to: we fill our time.

It is nice to take a breath. It is nice to relax. For me, and I believe for many others, entertainment can allow for this.

Stress has serious consequences. It makes it so that we are less efficient and less able to handle all those other things we fill our time with. It disrupts us emotionally and mentally, making everything more difficult and therefore, cyclically more stressful. In addition to this, it's been shown to have lasting long term health consequences.

Finding rest helps us to release some of that stress and better cope with the responsibilities that we have upon us.

Of course, there are other ways of doing this as well. Exercise is a valid option. And it will probably continue to be for a lot of my other reasons for entertainment. I mean, for some people, exercise is entertainment. So, maybe you'll have to wait for more "Value of Fiction" posts for more differentiation between fiction and exercise.

Entertainment for Escape

This isn't all that different from rest, but perhaps with a different form of relief. In addition to life being stressful because of our own obligations, life can just be depressing sometimes. There's so much suffering and bad in the world, be it in our own lives or the lives of others, and it's hard to deal with. A lot of times, things feel hopeless, and the world seems like a bad place to be.

Entertainment allows us to step away from all of that for a time. And that is worth something.

HOWEVER, one has to keep in mind to not escape too much and to lose touch with the real world.

Entertainment for Happiness

There's something joyful about a good story. Maybe it's a comedy that makes you laugh. Maybe you feel happy about the main characters' accomplishments. Either way, the best stories are the ones that can really reach down and help us to not just feel safe and separate from the dark and depressing elements of our lives, but actively happy. This is something great, and something that might be one of the greatest goods fiction can provide.