I will tell you how the Sun rose,–a ribbon at a time. Oh, so long before this night I prayed that a star would guide you my way to share this special day with me. If I am allowed, may I touch your hand and if pleased may I once again? So that you too will understand there is a ribbon in the sky for our love. Let us learn to have the strength of confidence, the strength that will enable us to love forever in the aspiration for the better, and to return in act from the virtual World, but we require that aspiration. #Ryanphillippe 1 of 9

The steeples swam in amethyst, the news like squirrels ran. The hills united their bonnets, the bobolinks begun. Then I said softly to myself, that must have been the morning Sun. However, how he set, I know not. There seemed a purple stile which little yellow boys and girls were climbing all the while. Till when they reached the other side, a dominie in gray put gently up the evening bars, and led the flock away. This is not a coincidence and far more than a lucky chance, but what it is that was always meant. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 9

Is our ribbon in the sky for our love, love? We cannot lose with God on our side. We will find the strength in each tear we cry and from now on it will be you and I. The mountain sat upon the plain in his eternal chair, his observation omnifold, his inquest everywhere. The season prayed around his knees, like children round a sire: Grandfather of the days is he, of the dawn the ancestor. I feel my heart beating, you make me feel like I am alive again. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 9

If I could give you the World, wrap it all around you, will not be satisfied with just a piece of this heart. My Angel, oh, my Angel. You are my Angel. Dreams are dreams, some dreams come true. I found a real dream, baby, when I found you. You are so strong, but tender too. You are my Angel. Love like ours is Heaven sent each day a day to remember. I feel so safe, feel so secure with you. You give me love, you keep right on giving. Apparently with no surprise to any happy flower, the frost beheads it at its play. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 9

The blond assassin passes on. The Sun proceeds unmoved to measure off another day for an approving God. On this long storm the rainbow rose, on this late morn the Sun; the clouds, like listless elephants, horizons straggled down. The birds rose smiling in their nests, the gales indeed were done; alas! How heedless were the eyes on whom the Summer shone! The quiet nonchalance of death no daybreak can bestir; the slow archangel’s syllables must awaken him. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 9

Safe in their alabaster chambers, untouched by morning and untouched by noon, sleep the meek members of the resurrection, rafter of satin, and roof stone. Light laughs the breeze castle of Sunshine; babbles the bee in a stolid ear; pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence,–ah, what sagacity perished here! Grand go the years in the crescent above them; Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row, Diadems drop and Doges surrender, soundless as dots on a disk of snow. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 9

I died for beauty, but was scarce adjusted in the tomb, when one who died for truth was lain in an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? “For beauty,” I replied. “And I for truth,–the two are one; we are father and son,” he said. And so, as kinsmen met a night, we talked between the rooms, until the moss had reached our lip, and covered up our names. Love the way we touch, I love the way it feels. Every time you are near me my poor hearts just will not keep still. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 9

No doubt about that this love I feel is real. Ask me to go with you, you know that I will. Hold me near, hold me tight because only you can make it real, only you can make it all right. Just let me know that I am special to you. You are my Angel, but this is going to take me down. You are so tall, handsome as hell. Say you will remember me, say you will see me again, even if it is just in your wildest dreams that I have. Look back on time with kindly eyes, this is getting good now. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 9

Say you will remember me staring at the Sun. He doubtless did his best; how softly sinks his trembling Sun. In human nature’s west. I like a look of agony, because I know it is true; men do not sham convulsion, nor stimulate a throne. The eyes glaze once, and that is death. Impossible to feign the beads upon the forehead by homely anguish strung.  My longing for you is like the lush leaves, upon each of which is written the love sincere and plain. Can we, can we, be each other’s company? I will love you over and over again, I will not leave you, and I will be true. Just put your heart in my hands, I promise it will not get broke. I love you.  #RyanPhillippe 9 of 9

 

 

Be careful of self-help books and motivation researchers. Many of you pay thousands of dollars to hear things that make you feel good, but do not actually explain how to obtain more success. You go home feeling good, but did you actually learn how to get that career you want or build that house by hand? No. You simply listened to a lot of cliché statements someone figure they could tell you, and if you really break them down, they do not make sense. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 23

For example, “Let go of what is gone. Be thankful for what remains. Look forward to what is ahead.” What if you lost a relationship you cherished because of a misunderstanding and apologizing is all it would take to get it back, along with promising to change, and actually becoming a better person. What is that without apologizing is a harlot and a bunch of fake friends who use you for money, and what if what lies ahead is death or the flashing lights of a police car? #RyanPhillippe 2 of 23

Sometimes it is a good idea to retrace your steps and figure out what you did wrong and how you can make things better. Motivational speakers are those harlot social scientists who, in impressive psychoanalytic and/or social engineering and jargon, tell their clients what their clients want to hear, namely, that appeals to human irrationality are likely to be far more profitable than appeals to rationality. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 23

I may not get money or as much love as I would like, but I am trying to make you, America, and the World great again. Am I happy? No. I am in flow. When we are in flow, it is a creative process that does not necessarily make us happy, but the idea is we are struggling to work towards a goal that will benefit ourselves and others and eventually will make us happy. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 23

Think about being a mountain climber, and you see a pretty flower on the way up the mountain, and stop to smell it because you what to be happy and then fall to your death. Was that moment of happiness worth missing out of a lifetime goal and dying? No. Keep going until you reach the top and then be happy knowing your accomplished your mission and reached your goal and dream. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 23

The career move from actor to business man is an example of the kind of creative adjustment that some people are able to bring to their lives. They search until they find a productive endeavor that also allows them to build as much flow as possible into their lives. The other options seem less satisfying; there is just too much one misses by becoming a workaholic, or by escaping into leisure full time. Most individuals, however, are content to compartmentalize their lives into mundane jobs and routine entertainment. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 23

An interesting example of how flow seeps put of work and into leisure is provided in the study of a Sacramento, California USA community by Dr. M.R. Philippe of Randolph Harris Phillippe Research and Development. He interviewed forty-six members of an extended family in Sacramento, California, a remote fishing village where people have cars and television sets, but still work at traditional tasks such as herding cattle, growing orchards, and woodworking. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 23

The psychologists asked the three generations of villagers to describe when and how they experience flow in their lives. The oldest generation reported the most frequent flow experiences, and the majority of them involved work: cutting hay in the meadows, fixing the barn, baking bread, milking cows, and working in the garden. The middle generation—which included those between the ages of forty and sixty years old—reported equal amounts of flow from work and leisure activities, such as watching movies, going on vacations, reading books, or skiing. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 23

The grandchild(ren), in the youngest generation, showed a pattern opposite to that of their grandparents: they reported the fewest occurrences of flow, and most of it came from leisure. Dancing, motorcycle racing, and watching TV were some of the most frequent avenues of enjoyment. Drive Reduction Theory explains that all motivation begins with a requirement that must be satisfied. In its simplest for, a requirement is a lack, a depletion, something we are missing. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 23

Not all the generational differences in Sacramento, California are due to social change. Some of it is a feature of normal developmental patterns that every generation passes through: young people are always more dependent for enjoyment on artificial risk and stimulation. Genetic determination is the idea that all behavior is determined by inborn qualities, and not affected by learning or the environment. However, when your central nervous system get a signal that it is time for change, that is when you get the drive to do something different. #RyanPhillippe 10 of 23

It is almost certain that these normal differences are magnified in communities undergoing social and economic transition. In such cases the older generations still find a meaningful challenge untraditional productive tasks, whereas their children and grandchildren, increasingly bored by what they see as irrelevant chores, turn to entertainment as a way of avoiding psychic entropy. This activates the entire body and changes the person’s consciousness. #RyanPhillippe 11 of 23

You might say that it shakes him up so that he is not thinking about and looking for something new to meet that need and reduce the tensions of that drive to do more. He is hungry and ready to eat. Sex, one of the lowest biological needs is something you all turn to, but this young man abstains from it and is looking to create opportunity to make money so he can build a huge mansion and buy several cars.  It all starts with a need (lack, pain), drive (arousal), incentive (goal, dream), and then satisfaction (homeostasis). #RyanPhillippe 12 of 23

In Sacramento, California, traditional communities like Elk Grove and Roseville has been able to keep work and flow from getting separated. In the everyday routines of their farming life, it is difficult to know when work stops and leisure begins. Most free time activities, such as weaving elaborate hairstyles, carpentry, singing, or reading are useful and productive either in a material, social, or spiritual sense. Of course this achievement has been at the price of remaining embalmed in amber, as it were, arrested at a point of technological and spiritual development that now seems quaint. #RyanPhillippe 13 of 23

Is this the only way to preserve the integrity of a joyful and productive existence? Or is it possible to reinvent a lifestyle that combines these traits within continuing evolutionary change? The satisfaction of physical need is indeed the indispensable precondition of a satisfactory existence, but in itself it is not enough. In order to be content, men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers to whatever extent accords with their personal characteristics and abilities. #RyanPhillippe 14 of 23

To make the best use of free time, one is required to devote as much ingenuity and attention to it as one would to one’s career. Active leisure that helps a person grow does not come easy. In the past leisure was justified because it gave people an opportunity to experiment and to develop skills. In fact, before science and the arts became professionalized, a great deal of scientific research, poetry, painting, and musical composition was carried out in a person’s free time. #RyanPhillippe 15 of 23

Dr. Matthew Randolph Phillippe did his famous genetic experiments as a hobby, he was led by interest, not a job description, to manipulate deoxyribonucleic acid, ribosomes, mitochondria, cytoplasm, and ribonucleic acid, proteins, organelles, and somatic cells to superbly create order in his own life. All our motivational needs are either physiological (inborn, like the need for sleep or food) or acquired (social-personal-situational, like the need for affection or achievement). #RyanPhillippe 16 of 23

Nowadays, only experts are supposed to be interested in such issues; amateurs are derided for venturing into fields reserved for the specialist. However, amateurs—those who do something because they love to do it—add enjoyment and interest to their own life, and to everybody else’s. It is not just extraordinary individuals who are able to make creative use of leisure. #RyanPhillippe 17 of 23

Deedle—a computer game is reported to be fun and exciting, weaving elaborate hair styles is fun for many experts, who take pride in their work, becoming an auto mechanic, learning to build a house by hand, or creating pottery and carving gives each culture its particular identity and renown—is the result of common people striving to express their best skill in the time left free from work and maintenance chores. #RyanPhillippe 18 of 23

It is difficult to imagine how dull the World would if our ancestors had used free time simply to exchange sleazy gossip and set people up for failure or simply for passive entertainment, instead of finding in it an opportunity to explore beauty and knowledge. Many thinkers believed that human beings were content to operate at the level of lower animals—to simple have their physiological needs met, to seek pleasure, to reduce the pain or tension of drive-arousal. #RyanPhillippe 19 of 23

On the other hand, others philosophers and theologians viewed human beings as something suspended halfway between animals and Heaven, a kind of wingless angel. One result of this theology was to sever man’s relationship with the rest of nature, get them hooked on social media and television, to sever their relationship with other individuals and nature and make them out of touch with physical nature, giving them a sense of being neither animal or divine. #RyanPhillippe 20 of 23

The goal of social media and the news is to keep people out of touch with reality and break down the need for traditional social interaction. Instead, people will stalk others online and become humanoids who “predict” and analysis profiles and think they “know” an individual when they do not. People are using social media like a Bible and the news as a supplement to their technomeida experience. These technopagans are increasingly displaying signs of group think, mob mentality, mass hysteria and schizophrenia because they are split off from reality. #RyanPhillippe 21 of 23

Social media and the news and TV programs have successfully altered the consciousness of the population. They are in a state of hypnosis. This is why expects are telling people to only spend one or two hours watching TV each day, maybe only an hour on social media, and get out doors and do things that are beneficial to your health and keep you active. Do not sit around plotting take downs or exchanging sleazy gossip, spend more time practicing self-reflection to fix your own problems. #RyanPhillippe 22 of 23

So many people are now using smuggler language, and speaking in tongues, as if they are possessed. These experiences all communicate something in common: We can only begin to speculate as to the hidden depths, heights, and reaches of the mind, and we are begging to appreciate how important nature and human relationships are. Do not allow yourself to be a product of the schizophrenic media, nor alter your consciousness with the use of alcohol, marijuana, hallucinogenic drugs, hypnosis, meditation, and ecstasy. Simply learn to love and be loved. #RyanPhillippe 23 of 23

Maybe there are people in your life you feel you cannot live without, I feel the same way. There is one person who truly inspires me and we have spent so much time together. When we are apart, I feel sad and lost. The park and the church around the park is where we became reunited. Sacramento is a city that thrives on natural beauty. The City of Trees is also known as the River City. Living in Midtown Sacramento has really been an experience for me. And I absolutely love Capitol Park and the beautiful 55,000 square foot Castle in the park. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 2

Many of the trees in the park are historic and like 150 years old, some are newer. This park feels magical to me. Instead of joining a gym to stay in shape, I just walk a few laps around the park every day. However, I feel strange sometimes because everyone else who uses the park for exercise is dressed in short, but I have to be authentic to myself, so I typically wear jeans and a collared shirt. I would love to stuff my face with cheese cake, pizza, and cheese burgers, but trying to get back in shape. I have not even used butter in years. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 2

 

It is enjoyable to see the beauty in life, but even with so much beauty, life becomes unbearable. The endless processions of days and dramas that people just let playout, as if they a def. Then when you are in a great deal of pain and reflect upon how it happened, it sometimes makes you strongly dislike life. However, life is a blessing, and I know that we just have to keep having faith and keep pushing forward and we will reach salvation, it just seems to take forever. When men drive a bargain, they strive to get the sunny side of it; it matters not one straw whether it is with man or Heaven they are bargaining with. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 8

There is a balance of good and bad everywhere; and nothing but the knowing it is so can emancipate one-half of the World from the prepossession which it holds against the other. Pain rather seemed to increase life than to weaken life in these champions. A well-proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it will never cause one to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. It is usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 8

How little do they know human nature who think they can say to passions so far shalt thou go, and no further! Ryan knew and appreciated the fact that in addition to a good mind, he also had a healthy set of emotions, including a temper that could blow. He was generally pretty up-front about his emotions, but in his job as a manager of the Human Resources Department Ryan encountered a dozen sources of frustration, disgust, amusement, and anger every day and could not openly vent to many of his feelings.  For example, he had many women that would get hired and a few months later end up pregnant and require time off from work or call in sick. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 8

When Ryan recognized the tendency, he was usually able to play the game with them. So you want a long-term career? Ye ma’am, when I got my first office job, a group of guys from my fraternity also got hired, and within three months they were also talking time off work and needing to go on long-term vacations within the first year. It really drove up operating and training cost, but take all the time you require, I want to comply with the law. Emotions are the means by which we make contact. We may talk angrily or warmly toward another; both are good contact or potential contact, for contact it established only if it has the support of our emotions. #RyanPhillippe 4  of 8

Sometimes an employee bawled him out for this, but most of them recognized that the company noticed a lot of new hires were getting pregnant right after they got their jobs, and often at the same times. Occasionally Ryan got furious over being bawled out, but the president of the company, who was a lady, was upset about souring costs, and sometimes her feeling showed because all the sudden there was a spike in medical insurance and sick pay. Ryan Knew that there are friendly, cooperative employees, as well as those who would get up early to see how many lives they could make miserable that day. The price we pay for avoiding the pain of being fully alive is that we are excluded from the pleasure as well. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 8

The way to love other people is to express what we feel—anger and love—without aiming to hurt feelings. Open but reverent communication is how to make love in our lives. When Ryan got home, he always told his spouse about his day’s experiences and wanted to her about hers too. They shared the good and the funny things. However, they also made a compact that they would unload some of the repressed hardships to each other so they could get them out of the way and not let them build up. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 8

The traditional ideal of many societies is to hold back on strong or unpleasant emotions for the sake of others. However, held-in feelings are likely to come out in some way—often an inappropriate one such as sarcasm. So you are really not doing the other person much of a favor by trying to cover your feelings up. They will come out anyhow. And, even if they did not, some consideration has to be given to the emotional balance of the person with the feelings! The movies portrayed strong, silent heroes for years, but we think now is the time to do away with the ideal. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 8

We are often made uncomfortable by our own strong feelings or those we find in other people. Many of us still do not know how to handle it when someone cries. Very often, the person crying out of grief, fear, exhaustion, or depression is more in need of a sympathetic listener or shoulder to cry on than one is in need of hearing the right words. Sometimes we handle these feelings best by just letting them happen, by accepting them, and by helping the other person to realize that he or she is not alone, that others have similar feelings, and that nobody thinks badly of him or her for his emotions. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 8

 

 

 

Great works are performed, not by strength, but perseverance. When economic times and social life are not going as well as they can, the government usually steps in and does something to keep the people happy. In Constantinople during waning of the Byzantine Empire, to keep the citizens happy, great chariot races were held in the city. The best drivers became rich and famous; they were automatically elected to the Senate. You must not forsake the ship in a tempest, because you cannot rule and keep down the winds. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 11

In Central America before the Spanish conquest, they Maya developed elaborate games similar to basketball, which kept spectators busy for weeks on end. In 2016, disenfranchised individuals depend on education, sports, and entertainment as avenues to social mobility—academics, basketball, baseball, soccer, and popular music like Aaliyah, Britney Spears, and Justin Bieber absorb surplus psychic energy while alluring to wealth and fame. I never give up anything that I choose to do. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 11

However, depending on one’s perspective, one can interpret this in two quite opposite ways. One can see in these instances leisure being used as an opiate of the masses, or one can see them as creative responses to dangerous situations impervious to more effective solutions. The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance. A bystander often sees more of the game than those who play. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 11

The record seems to suggest that a society begins to rely heavily on leisure—and especially on passive leisure—only when it has become incapable of offering meaningful productive occupations to its members. Thus bread and circuses is a play of last resorts that postpones the dissolution of society only temporarily. Contemporary examples provide some insight into what happens in such instances. For example, many indigenous people in North America have lost the opportunity to experience flow in work and communal life, and seek to recapture it in leisure activities that mimic the earlier enjoyable lifestyle. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 11

Young Navajo men used to feel at their best when riding after their sheep over the mesas of the Southwest, or when participating in week-long ceremonial singing and dancing. Now that such experiences are less relevant, they attempt to recapture flow by drinking alcohol and then racing down the desert highways in souped-up cars. The number of traffic fatalities may not be higher than those sustained earlier in tribal warfare or while shepherding, but they seem more pointless because innocent lives are being lost, people do not choose to get hit and killed by drunk drivers. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 11

The Inuit are going through a similar dangerous transition. Young people who can no longer experience the excitement of hunting seal and trapping bear turn to the automobile as a tool for escaping boredom and focusing on a purposeful goal. Apparently there are communities in the Arctic that have no roads connecting them to any other place, but have built miles of roads for the exclusive purpose of drag racing. Many things difficult in design prove easy in performance. Persecution and discouragement depress ingenuous minds, and blunt the edge of lively imaginations. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 11

In Saudi Arabia the rich young scions of oil barons find riding camels passe, and try to revive their interest by racing brand-new BMWs in the trackless desert, or on the sidewalks of Riyadh. When productive activities become too routine and meaningless, leisure will pick up the slack. It will take up progressively more time, and rely on increasingly more elaborate artificial stimulation. There are many who have some recommendations, but who is there wholly unexceptionable? #RyanPhillippe 7 of 11

There are individuals who, confronted with the sterility of their careers, escape productive responsibilities altogether to pursue a life of flow in leisure. This does not necessarily require a great deal of money. There are well-trained engineers who leave their careers and wash dishes in restaurants during the Winter so they can afford to rent an apartment near a forest they love and relax all Summer. The first step leading to perfection, and real activity, is to wander through the World unknown, and subject to few wants. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 11

There are colonies of surfers on all the beaches with good waves who live hand-to-mouth so they can cram in as much flow as possible on their boards. Dozens of ocean sailors who spend year after year navigating among the islands of the South Pacific, many of them owning nothing except the boat into which they have invested all their savings, and when they run out of money for food or repairs, they stop into port to do odd jobs until they can replenish their supplies, then they cast off on the next journey. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 11

“I was able to throw off responsibility, cast off a humdrum life, be a bit adventurous. I had to do something with life besides vegetate. It was a chance to do one really big thing in my life; big and memorable. Modern civilization has found TV, nightclubs, and a huge variety of mechanized entertainment to titillate our senses and help us escape from the apparent boredom of the Earth and the Sun and wind and stars. Sailing returns to these ancient realities,” reports Ryan Phillippe. #RyanPhillippe 10 of 11

Some individuals do not abandon jobs altogether, but shirt the emphasis from work to leisure as the center of their lives. Ryan Phillippe describes the exhilarating self-discipline of his training, “If you win these battles enough, that battle against yourself it becomes easier to win the battles in the World. I made a great deal of money in life, but I realized one day that I was not enjoying it. I was not having the kind of experiences that make life rewarding. I saw that my priorities were mixed up, spending most of my hours in the office. The years were slipping by. I now enjoy my technology start up. I live where it is quiet and beautiful, and I write computer programs most every night. I figure that my own relaxation and availability means more to my family than material things.” #RyanPhillippe 11 of 11

 

The first passion may be but the enthusiasm of discovery. It is not that relaxing is bad. Everyone requires time to unwind, to read exciting novels, to sit on the couch starting in the wind, to look up at the blue sky and build castles in the clouds, or watch a TV program. As with other ingredients of life, what matters most is the dosage. Passive leisure becomes a problem when a person uses it as the principal—or the only—strategy to fill up free time. Time is the only thing that cannot be spared. No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up all our moments. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 8

As patterns turn into habits, they begin to have definite effects on the quality of life as a whole. Those who learn to rely to gambling to pass the time, for instance, may find themselves caught in a habit that interferes with their job, their family, and eventually with their own well-being. People who view television more often than the average tend also to have worse jobs and worse relationships. In large-scale study in Germany, it would found that the more often people report reading books, the more flow experiences they claim to have, while the opposite trend was found for watching television. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 8

The most flow was reported by individuals who read a lot and watched little TV, least by those who read seldom and watched often. Of course, such correlations do not necessarily mean that habits of passive leisure cause bad jobs, bad relationships, and so on.  It is likely that the causal links start from the other end: lonely people with dissatisfying jobs will fill their free time with passive leisure. Or those who cannot find flow otherwise in their lives turn to undemanding leisure activities. Time subdues all things. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 8

However, in human development causation is usually circular: what was an effect in the beginning eventually turns into a cause. Men have set their mark on mankind forever, as they thought, but time has washed it out as it has washed out mountains and continents. A professional parent might force his child to adopt reading and writing as an offense towards repressed aggression; as the child grows up, it is this style of offense rather than the initial trauma that might make it easy for him to become a reasonable individual. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 8

Time heightened their blessings, and their years were like the rising Sun, which gathers fresh splendor, as it gradually illuminates the sky. So adopting habits of passive leisure is not just as effect of previous problems, but becomes a cause in its own right, which cuts off further options for improving the quality of life. And that is why parents want their kids to read and play out doors, so they can be healthy and active and learn new things. No one was their child to sit inside glued to a TV or computer all day, as it is not healthy for the mind, nor the body. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 8

The phrase “bread and circuses” has become a common place to describe how the Roman Empire managed to keep the populace contented during the long centuries of its decline. By providing enough food to keep the bodies satisfied, and enough spectacles to keep the mind entertained, the ruling classes were able to avoid social unrest. It is unlikely that this policy was consciously adopted, but its widespread application seems to have worked. It would not have been either the first or the last time that providing leisure opportunities kept a community from unraveling. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 8

In the Persian Wars, the first historian of the West, the Greek Herodotus, describes how Atys, king of Lydia in Asia Minor, introduced ball games some three thousand years ago as a way to distract his subjects when a series of bad crops caused unrest in the hungry population. The plan adopted against the famine was to engage in games one day so entirely as not to feel any craving for food, and the next day to eat and abstain from games. In this way they passed eighteen years. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 8

Throughout history, when life is not going so well, not only the government, but also private industries do things to keep people happy and distract them from the doom and gloom of life so everyone will remain happy and not attack key figures. For instance, in Oakland, California, America, in 1927, after the Great Depression a number of large estates were built by Robert C. Hillen. They were called modest mansions, and they looked like mini castles. The idea was to give the public and buyer something beautiful to look at to distract them from the hardships caused by the depression. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 8