[Reading English every day] active play or passive entertainment

Author: gnuhpc
Source: http://www.cnblogs.com/gnuhpc/

Active play or passive entertainment

Our diurnal (adj. daytime; daily) entertainment is divided into two phases, as distinct as day and night. we call them work and play. we work so far hours a day. and, when we have allowed the necessary minimum for such activities such as eating and shopping, the rest we spend in various activities which are known as recreation, an elegant word which has the fact that we usually do not even play in our hour of leisure, but spend them in various forms of passive entertainment or enjoyment --- not playing football but watching football matches; not acting but theater-going; not walking but riding in a motor coach. we need to make, therefore, make a hard-and-fast distinction not only between work and play, but equally between active play and passive entertainment. it is, I suppose, the decline of active play, of amateur sport, and the enormously growth of purely valid tive entertainment, which has given rise to a sociological interest in the problem. if the greater part of the population, instead of indulging in sports, spend their hours of leisure viewing television programmes, there will inevitably be a decline in health and physique. we have to live art if we wocould be affected by art. we have to paint rather than look at paintings, to play instruments rather than go to concerts, to dance and sing and act ourselves, engaging all our senses in the ritual and discipline of the arts. then something may begin to happen to us: to work upon our body and soul.