I’m tempted to say this: if Gladiator’s Maximus had existed, it would have been easy for him to live a life of action without the technology available to us today.

But I have to stop myself… because think of all the spectators who filled the seats of the Colosseum. Fifty thousand Romans sat in a stadium watching other men live and die two thousand years ago.

It started with the Colosseum. Eventually it became a television. Now it’s a social media feed. The medium has changed, but the impulse has not.

For humans in the Pleistocene, calories were scarce. Energy not spent in active survival meant more available to you to actually survive. Over millennia, that impulse to recreate was built into our system.

And it’s an important part of human existence. Bonds are planted during shared hardship; they bear fruit during shared leisure. It’s why we love campfire talk.

But technology has turned leisure against us.

Calories are abundant. Hardship is not required. And we lack a balance between action and spectating. Baseball used to be called the national pastime (think of that word: pass-time).

In Orwell’s 1984, the screens on your wall monitored you, and you couldn’t turn them off. But in our world, we’re the ones who can’t take our eyes off the screen.

Orwell missed the real threat, Neil Postman argues in Amusing Ourselves to Death. Orwell was worried about heavy-handed authoritarian control. Huxley foresaw that the heavy hand wouldn’t be needed, and it’s far more frightening.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

A few weeks ago, I bought a lockbox with a countdown timer on it. I programmed it to unlock every Saturday morning. The first week, I anxiously opened the box. I retrieved the TV remote and took a seat in the arena to watch the UFC fights. The second week, I didn’t even bother. Given a choice, I’ll use my time to create, to act, to live.