The Search for Higher Pleasure: Beyond Cheap Entertainment

Today, when we turn on the TV, we find cheap comedy shows and low-quality podcasts everywhere. In the name of entertainment, these cheap comedy shows are filling people’s minds with garbage. I have no problem with comedy itself. My problem is with comedy that objectifies women and makes people laugh by passing vulgar remarks about them.

Now, the second question arises: Why do people laugh and support such content instead of opposing it? The biggest reason is our definition of entertainment. Today, the definition of entertainment has become very low in quality. Sexual comments, vulgar jokes, emotional dramas that make people cry, and male-dominated TV serials and movies have become the main sources of entertainment.

Just look at today’s comedy shows and movies. You will almost always find comments about women and sexual scenes in them. This tells us something about what people demand. Why? Because the entertainment industry operates on the formula of demand and supply.

We can already see the harmful effects of this culture. People are becoming angry young men, crimes against women continue to increase, and an overall toxic culture has been created.

Now, let us talk about higher pleasure, something that great philosophers have explained to us.

For Buddha and Mahavira, a higher form of pleasure was meditation. For Seneca, Plato, and Aristotle, it was philosophy and the search for truth. For Lao Tzu, it was becoming one with nature. For Amartya Sen, it was research. For Marx, it was exposing the truth about capitalism. For Kant and Hume, it was understanding the sources of knowledge. For Stephen Hawking, it was discovering the mysteries of the universe.

You will find one thing common among all these people: higher pleasure.

These people were not boring or disconnected from life. They were human beings just like us. The only difference was their choice of higher pleasure. Even in their times, thousands of distractions and forms of low-quality entertainment existed. But they used their reason and minds to direct their consciousness towards higher purposes.

Now, finally, I want to share my own thoughts on entertainment.

For me, the highest form of entertainment is reading philosophy and practising meditation. When I spend my time reading philosophical books such as Letters from a Stoic, The Buddha and His Dhamma, The Enchiridion, Tao Te Ching, Meditations, and Nicomachean Ethics, I experience immense happiness and pleasure.

But more importantly, I experience awareness. This awareness helps me avoid becoming part of the crowd that follows everything without thinking.

For example, after reading Marx, I have begun to understand the trap of capitalism. I have understood how the advertising industry is making us slaves to material pleasures. I cannot speak for others, but I am sure that capitalism will not easily be able to make me its slave.

Similarly, after reading Buddha, I have come to understand the truth of life: suffering. I am taking steps towards Nirvana and fighting my own battles against anger, greed, and lust.

Finally, after reading 1984 and Brave New World, I have come to understand that governments fear our independent thinking more than anything else. To destroy our ability to think independently, they sometimes use the force of the stick, and at other times, they use cheap entertainment and meaningless distractions.

They keep telling us things like, “Look, our enemies are attacking us!” or “Look how much progress we have made! Look how much the GDP has increased!”

But I have come to realise that we are being fooled and kept away from the truth. And all of this is happening simply to keep those in power in power.

Before closing this essay, I want to make a request to every reader: Please boycott those TV serials, movies, and comedy shows that are destroying you. The best way to boycott them is simply to stop watching them. Because if you do not watch them, who will they make them for?

Remember the law of demand and supply. If we stop demanding low-quality entertainment, the industry will eventually have to change what it produces.

Instead of wasting our precious time on cheap entertainment, let us search for higher pleasure, such as reading philosophy books and practising meditation.

The choice is ours: cheap entertainment that keeps us distracted, or higher pleasure that makes us aware, independent, and free.