A couple of days ago I left the house to nip to the shops and was approached by a child who lives on the street. Parking his bike beside me he began a conversation attempting to gain my agreement that "playing on a Nintendo DS is a waste of time isn't it?". This statement / question was clearly in referrence to the fact that my own kids were, at the time, sat playing Pokemon on their DS's rather than playing on their bikes like their supposed friend wanted them to (that this wasn't possible due to the fact he's popped one of their tyres with a screwdriver while attempting to make a 'repair' a day or so before had seemingly passed him by). When I responded that, no, playing on a DS wasn't a waste of time, he pedalled away with the refrain "My dad says it is...". A little later, clearly incensed that my kids were enjoying themselves in a way he deemed unsuitable, he threatened to kick one of their heads in. Nice...
The fact that I know this child owns a DS of his own somewhat weakened his argument and led me to think that a) He didn't want to play with it, and therefore neither should anyone else play with theirs. 2) His is broken and he was jealous of my kids enjoying theirs. or 3) He was unable to play on it for some other reason (possibly his Dad had denied access due to it's unconstructive time use effects). But whatever the case, it did lead me to think about what other things, going on his argument, might be a waste of time?
The conclusion I reached upon pondering this question is that pretty much everything we do is a waste of time, at least taking the fact that playing a DS is the baseline for this result. When you boil it down, the only real purpose we have as biological creatures is to preserve the species, so all we need to do to achieve this is survive long enough to procreate and make more of us, and in turn all we need to do this is food, sheleter, and the means to raise our offspring to the state where they can continue the process. For most of us, anything else we do is irrelevant to this - playing Nintendo won't really assist, nor will watching movies, reading novels, going on holiday, eating fine food in a nice restaurant, looking at painting, taking photographs, playing sport for personal enjoyment, or any number of other activities. All of these things are means of passing spare time (hey, there's even a word for it: pastimes!) while we get on with the overall survival of the species schtick.
Now, I guess some of the aforementioned time wasting stuff can be of more benefit - books can impart important skills on how to survive, as can TV etc., social activities can help with the whole safety in numbers thing, and certainly assist with the procreation bit, but on the whole they're all just a way of getting between the survival aspects of life without getting bored (and possibly destructive once the devil gets hold of those idle hands). And anyway, absorbing useful information second hand, while of definite benefit, is still not as productive a use of time as proactively attempting to do thing that might better your own, or society as a whole's, chances of survival. No one originally discovered how to harness electricity, penecillin, or good hygeine by reading a book, all these came about the hard way, by people experimenting, testing, and learning from their mistakes. It was everyone following in their footsteps who got a handy set of instructions on where to begin.
Now, all this sounds very pompous and serious, so it's a goo job I don't buy into the premise. Whilst I agree that our overarching concern is to survive, I certainly don't believe it's all we're about. We're more than just a species; we're a society, a civilisation, and that constitutes so much more than just hanging on long enough to make some more people, As a society we need leisure in order to escape the toil of base survival It frees us and makes us happy and constructive. We need to follow intellectual pursuits in order to better our lot and make the whole thing more just and desirable. So in the end, all these waste's of time are not that much of a waste at all - they serve the valuable function of keeping us happy and healthy and more amenable to the less enticing aspects of our lives.
So, you know what? Sod it, I'm off to play some DS.
