Active Play or Passive Entertainment? 主動的玩樂還是被動的消遣?

Our diurnal existence is divided into two phases, as distinct as day and night. We call them work and play. We work so many hours a day. And, when we have allowed the necessary minimum for such activities as eating and shopping, the rest we spend in various activities which are known as recreations, an elegant word which disguises the fact that we usually do not even play in our hours of leisure, but spend them in various forms of passive enjoyment or entertainment―not playing football but watching football matches;not acting but theatre-going;Not walking but riding in a motor coach.

人們的每天的生存狀態(tài)可以一分為二，像白天和黑夜那樣清晰可辨。我們將之稱為工作和娛樂。每天，我們在工作上花費許多小時，再把花在諸如吃飯、購物等必不可少、無法再減的活動的時間扣除，我們把花在其他活動的剩余時間歸在娛樂范圍。娛樂這個詞相當雅致。但掩飾了這樣一個事實：即使在休閑的時光中，我們通常并沒有玩樂，而是在進行各種各樣被動的享樂或娛樂中——不是踢足球而只是看足球比賽，不是登臺演出而是看人演戲，不是散步行走而是搭乘汽車。

We need to make, therefore, 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 enormous growth of purely receptive entertainment which has given rise to a sociological interest in the problem. If the greater part of the population, instead of indulging in sport, spend their hours of leisure viewing television programmers, there will inevitably be a decline in health and physique.

因此，我們需要不僅對工作和娛樂做出嚴格的區(qū)別，而且要同樣嚴格地區(qū)分主動的玩樂和被動的消遣。在我看來，正是由于主動的玩樂——業(yè)余體育運動衰退和純粹接受性消遣的瘋狂膨脹，導致了社會學家對這一問題的關注。假如人口的大多數(shù)不是參加體育活動，而是把閑暇時光花在“看”電視節(jié)目上，人們的健康和體質都會不可避免地下降。