Art, Entertainment and Nature

Let me start by introducing a bit of myself. I am an avid gamer, playing PC, PS2, and recently board games. I work as a game designer. I am also an artist in my own right, having just graduated from Cosmoprof with a diploma in professional makeup artist. I draw to entertain myself. I read frequently and write short articles as a hobby (although I have stopped for a while).

During the course of doing those things, one thing occurred to me and puzzled me to no end. I couldn't find a convincing explanation as to why human has evolved to come to desire certain form of art and entertainment. In the natural world, this trait is unique to human. According to the laws of nature, living things evolve based on their needs to survive. All living things on the planet have evolved in such a way that they have just what it takes to survive. Human is different. We establish behavioral traits that are inconsequential to our survival.

We don't need watching movies to survive. We don't need makeup to survive. Neither do we need PC games, beautiful painting nor pretty dress to survive. So where does our desire for those things which has no relevance to our survival come from?

My theory is that THAT too is the work of Mother Nature. I believe the desire for entertainment and art had started when human evolved beyond simply survivalistic and started to over-populate the planet. These traits, which do nothing whatsoever in enhancing our being, were developed so that we would waste enormous amount of precious resource vital to our survival in their pursue. In the end, when we have successfully wasted all those resources, we will die off. And the world will perhaps return to a balance.

To summarize, I believe that our desire to indulge, to entertain and to be entertained, is a fail-safe mechanism implanted by Mother Nature, to curb the extend to which we can harm the planet.

Humanity has always quibbed that it has conquered nature, I think that's a child's wishful thinking. That is about as foolish as saying computer or robot will one day conquer man, which, unfortunately, is another point of argument that human likes to get into.

Nobody conquers their maker. Try to believe me the next time you see a movie or play a computer game.

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