Just for fun

In a post-purpose first world where all our real problems have been solved and the angst of knowing where our next meal is coming from has been replaced with agonising non-decisions about which coffee cart makes the best cappuccino, and guilt ridden recycling of paper cup (with those baby-sipper-cup lids on them for the fundamentally maladroit) the search for meaning and reason to our everyday activities has become somewhat desperate. It is fairly unlikely that our children will go hungry, that our country will be invaded or that any of Pauline Hanson's strange mindless rants will evolve into a genuinely threatening fascist ideology. There's not much left to do that means anything or that would matter to the fundamental heart of the universe if we didn't do it.

So we have to find a way to assign meaning to even the most banal activities and, to that end, we have come to the point of banning doing anything just for fun.

Want to go on one of the those pilgrimage style, find yourself in the silence, long walks around the country or across the desert as a bucket list item? Just because you can? That's the kind of silly self-indulgent thing that men your age do just to get away from their responsibilities for a while. That kind of thing is not acceptable. You need to assign it some meaning. So find yourself a charity -there are something like 60,000 of them in Australia so you can take your pick - and use the activity to raise money. Now it's gone from pilgrimage to crusade. You're selflessly dedicating your free time and effort, sweating your way across endless miles of shimmering asphalt - all for the kids (or the puppies, or the old people or the scientists or some other minority, under-funded group). You've taken indulgence and given it purpose. Well done!

Thinking of a bit of physical activity. A mind-freeing amble along the seafront? Perhaps just go an chuck the frisbee around with a few mates? I don't think so. That's purposeless fun and you need all the meaning you can engineer into your life. You need a personal trainer, 50g or so of strap-on guilt (aka a FitBit), and a plan with goals and milestones.

And it's not just adults. Kids can't be allowed to play any more. Childhood was, once, that brief period of joy before the real, meaningful work of adulthood kicked in and you had to take up the yoke of bitter responsibility and necessary toil. Now, if we let them just play - given the inherent meaninglessness of modern adulthood - they might just play for the rest of their lives. We need to get them into retrofitted meaning and artificial purpose right from the get go. To that end, develop an early years learning framework and note their ability to build block stacks as evidence of gross motor skills, their ability to sort paper circles into piles by colour as gross numeracy skills and their ability to pick their noses as just plain gross. Childhood play now has meaning and purpose. Our children can be proud that they have started as they must continue - learning to pretend that there is a necessary and higher purpose to the things they would otherwise do anyway.

Certainly fun is out of the question