how is working in the entertainment industry considered productive to society?

[YUPPIE]

What does productive even mean in this context. If your starting points are non-existent you get what you asked for: a crappy debate.

you know, helping society move forward or actually helping other people? Compare making buildings or cooking for the poor to entertaining a crowd of rich people on a stage for the evening.

[Independent voter]

Been thinking: People always tell you to get the fuck off your ass and do productive things in life for society. Well, how is working in the entertainment industry like writing fiction and acting or making music and video games considered productive? You're just entertaining rich people and not doing shit like working construction, feeding people, or anything that actually helps society.

I can understand if you want to get paid or make a living, but how is it considered productive to society in any way?

Television, books and movies are one of our top exports.

[Zero3]

you know, helping society move forward or actually helping other people? Compare making buildings or cooking for the poor to entertaining a crowd of rich people on a stage for the evening.

I'm guessing you never watched a movie or a show or listened to music? Never been sad and felt like watching a stand up comedy show or movie to make you feel a bit better?

[YUPPIE]

I'm guessing you never watched a movie or a show or listened to music? Never been sad and felt like watching a stand up comedy show or movie to make you feel a bit better?

yeah but is that really productive to society? My feelings being better that is.

[Themius]

That sparked a question in my head. Really I assume that arts has had major value to social thinking because that's what I'm told, but when I thought about it, there actualy isn't any emperical evidence that supports that.

Art directly influenced some of the most major world-changing events...

[Unholyground]

Art and entertainment is to keep the brain occupied, human brains get wonky when they are not being fed information or kept doing something.

[Zero3]

yeah but is that really productive to society? My feelings being better that is.

Pretty sure yeah, a happy person is a productive person. You've seen all these tech firms like google and apple with their bean bags and hoverboards and what not all to create a nice work environment because it boosts pretty much everything.

Or at the very least it keeps you for another day from commiting suicide so you can pay them taxes to the government.
Also they make money and pay taxes so that's productive and helpful

[Mihalik]

That sparked a question in my head. Really I assume that arts has had major value to social thinking because that's what I'm told, but when I thought about it, there actualy isn't any emperical evidence that supports that.

Even in military engagements and ongoing wars the military goes to remarkable lengths to provide some degree of entertainment and comfort to troops even on the front lines. Music, reading materials, films. There's only so much the human mind can take without "art" of some form.

Art has been an intrinsic part of human culture. Starting from cave paintings (which is actually hypothesized to have been used as an educational tool, beyond just being pretty, think of it like a picture book for children to learn which animal is what), musical instruments going back at least 43 thousand years, and the recital of oral history (which typically came in a poetic/lyrical form) before written history. Religious art was also a way of telling stories by showing them in a time when most people couldn't read.

Art has also always been deeply tied to the sciences, for much of human history. The study of shapes, forms, structures, materials overlapped with artistic or aesthetic pursuits. The construction of places of worship, of theaters and amphitheaters, hippodromes, the study of materials for coloring things for creating structures that challenge the structural behavior of the materials they have been build with. The study of the nature of mater, reality and self.

Religious story telling, sports, storytelling through arts, folk tales, folk songs, legends have shaped communities, individuals and societies. Any human group more complex than immediate kinship requires some form of shared notion of group identity, it can be something abstract as clan, nation, faith or something more physical like the fact that we are all humans, but all this is usually interpreted and learned through some form of the arts.

[Eggroll]

Well, entertainment is relaxing for the mind, which obviously a lot of people need.
Then there is arts as in culture which has a significant value for human society.

Although I would count super hero movies out for sure. They are just for money grabbing and in my opinion are not contributing anything meaningful to cultural progress. Especially for the target audience I'd say they are more harmful than helpful.

[White Goodman1]

It's not. They should all go build houses and buildings, bridges and tunnels. After the day, they just go home to sleep and back to building or if they are done for the day little earlier, they just sit quietly in their house until it's time to sleep.

[Mihalik]

yeah but is that really productive to society? My feelings being better that is.

Yes. It has always been and will always be so. The complexity, development and well-being of societies can often be directly measured by their cultural output which in turn drives their social and technological development.

[Zero3]

It's not. They should all go build houses and buildings, bridges and tunnels. After the day, they just go home to sleep and back to building or if they are done for the day little earlier, they just sit quietly in their house until it's time to sleep.

Sounds like npc life in skyrim. Even some of those guys go to the inn and drink a little and dance.

[Monster Hunter]

Even in military engagements and ongoing wars the military goes to remarkable lengths to provide some degree of entertainment and comfort to troops even on the front lines. Music, reading materials, films. There's only so much the human mind can take without "art" of some form.

Art has been an intrinsic part of human culture. Starting from cave paintings (which is actually hypothesized to have been used as an educational tool, beyond just being pretty, think of it like a picture book for children to learn which animal is what), musical instruments going back at least 43 thousand years, and the recital of oral history (which typically came in a poetic/lyrical form) before written history. Religious art was also a way of telling stories by showing them in a time when most people couldn't read.

Art has also always been deeply tied to the sciences, for much of human history. The study of shapes, forms, structures, materials overlapped with artistic or aesthetic pursuits. The construction of places of worship, of theaters and amphitheaters, hippodromes, the study of materials for coloring things for creating structures that challenge the structural behavior of the materials they have been build with. The study of the nature of mater, reality and self.

Religious story telling, sports, storytelling through arts, folk tales, folk songs, legends have shaped communities, individuals and societies. Any human group more complex than immediate kinship requires some form of shared notion of group identity, it can be something abstract as clan, nation, faith or something more physical like the fact that we are all humans, but all this is usually interpreted and learned through some form of the arts.

Yea I suppose I should seperate things, we have art as a natural human, and art the industry.

[roboscorcher]

Been thinking: People always tell you to get the fuck off your ass and do productive things in life for society. Well, how is working in the entertainment industry like writing fiction and acting or making music and video games considered productive? You're just entertaining rich people and not doing shit like working construction, feeding people, or anything that actually helps society.

I can understand if you want to get paid or make a living, but how is it considered productive to society in any way?

When I was young, a certain movie had this quote:

“I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something.”

This quote sums up the value of entertainment perfectly. The 'great stories' give us hope when the real world does not. Endgame gave me that feeling last weekend, as did LOTR back then.

Not all great stories are positive, but they can still tell us a lot about ourselves. Dexter is a murderous vigilante who makes us question our sense of justice by seeing things through his eyes. Is he justified? Is he as bad as the people he kills? Worse? These are questions we may never ponder in the real world. Fiction allows us to distance ourselves from real events and ask questions freely. In this way, entertainment is key in shaping the 'moral compass' of the public.

[JimmyHotz]

That sparked a question in my head. Really I assume that arts has had major value to social thinking because that's what I'm told, but when I thought about it, there actualy isn't any emperical evidence that supports that.

How do you define emperical? I think we are too jaded now as we live in the age of the internet but before that, artists, both visual artists, actors and musicians, were widely celebrated as keeping a beat on the 'pulse' of our culture. For example, Charlie Chaplin made a film called 'Modern Times' about how shitty life was for those performing some kind of menial labour in a factory or something, just for the sake of 'keeping up with the Jones's' as it were. You maybe not be able to say it directly changed anything, but it was food for thought, which is how conversations get started. No doubt some of the earliest union organizers in our society were influenced as a part of this conversation, as were other worker's rights groups. It also gave individuals a chance to pause and look at their own desires to compete in the rat race and ask, "Is this worth it?"

[JimmyHotz]

Sounds like npc life in skyrim. Even some of those guys go to the inn and drink a little and dance.

I lol'ed at this

[Mihalik]

Well, entertainment is relaxing for the mind, which obviously a lot of people need.
Then there is arts as in culture which has a significant value for human society.

Although I would count super hero movies out for sure. They are just for money grabbing and in my opinion are not contributing anything meaningful to cultural progress. Especially for the target audience I'd say they are more harmful than helpful.

Superhero movies and comics are very much the Iliad or Odyssey of our times. Superheroes are the just the latest incarnations of demigods, mythical heroes and whatnot.

Shakespeare was considered vulgar and crude in his time (a time when theaters either primarily kept endlessly replaying the Greek and Roman classics or religious morality tales), although he was very popular with the "plebs" and the urban middle class. Tchaikovsky was immensely popular with the masses but considered childish, simplistic and bombastic by the educated peers of his time.

I am not a huge fan of either comics or the superhero movie genre, but I can its value, even if it is not my cup of tea. Perhaps in 500 years school kids will write term papers on the idealistic morality and logical shortcomings of the great mythical hero of Cap 'Murica or about how the Hulk represents the duality of the human potential for good and evil.

Don't underestimate our ability to project meaning.

[breadisfunny]

you trying to take my blood elf strippers from me?

[Monster Hunter]

How do you define emperical? I think we are too jaded now as we live in the age of the internet but before that, artists, both visual artists, actors and musicians, were widely celebrated as keeping a beat on the 'pulse' of our culture. For example, Charlie Chaplin made a film called 'Modern Times' about how shitty life was for those performing some kind of menial labour in a factory or something, just for the sake of 'keeping up with the Jones's' as it were. You maybe not be able to say it directly changed anything, but it was food for thought, which is how conversations get started. No doubt some of the earliest union organizers in our society were influenced as a part of this conversation, as were other worker's rights groups. It also gave individuals a chance to pause and look at their own desires to compete in the rat race and ask, "Is this worth it?"

It could also be argued that they and Charlie were more likly influenced by the strikes of the 1800's in England during the industrial revolution.

And those strikes being influenced by the machine breakers.

But that's what I mean its hard to say, that's my only point and as such you can't really change the OP's opinion, he could be right, he could be wrong, we have no way to tell except our own subjective view. It's too complex a system.

[Dellis0991]

You're right art has never contributed anything to society.

Tell that to Leonardo da Vinci. He inspired artists, mathematicians and scientist for hundreds of years.