XVII SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS

IT is a well-known fact that Sports and Amusements change and shift with the age of the individual and also with the development and culture of the race. The babe wants different Amusement than the adult, and the savage different than the civilized.

In Modern Paradise will be all kinds of interesting as well as useful sports, games, amusements and recreations. Everybody will there have abundant leisure, money, liberty and a wide circle of congenial associates.

Outdoor sports and amusements would include motoring and bicycle riding, airplaning, skating, swimming, field games, numerous athletic and gymnastic exercises, also many walks and long promenades to keep the feet and legs in vigorous condition, so that the Modern Paradisers will not always ride in cars or fly in airplanes.

There would be no end to the variety and scope of indoor sports, games, play-lessons and other interesting and useful amusements. In the grand hall, theater and ballroom would frequently be concerts, dancing, debates, lectures, round-table meetings, cards, reading circles, home-talent and other plays, wonderful movies, scientific and educational experiments, 78exhibitions of new inventions and discoveries as well as countless new diversions which yield pleasure and useful information.

There would also be frequent prize contests—Olympic games. To stimulate ambition and make life useful and happy, prizes could be awarded for such accomplishments as being the best inventor, the most useful discoverer, the best designer and illustrator, the neatest housekeeper, the neatest and most comfortable and artistic male and female dresser; to the daintiest cook, the cleverest dining room manager, the speediest restaurant worker, the most industrious child and adult, the leading artist, musician, athlete, gymnast, reader, writer, humorist, promoter, typist, stenographer, vocalist, the most charming conversationalist, as well as many other worthy accomplishments; in fact, life in Modern Paradise would be little else than a continuous thrill of health and happiness.

With sane sports, games, amusements and recreation, it is the same as with all other human affairs. Nature builds and operates on the plan of endless variety. Everywhere we meet with a wilderness of diversity in one grand unity, so that everywhere “variety is the spice of life,” and the higher the civilization and refinement the stronger is this inborn urge for 79new and varied experiences. In order to realize the variety to the fullest extent, we travel for new scenery, visit with new associates, read new books, make new styles of dress, raise new varieties of crops, build new homes, make new constitutions and new ethics. In time we outgrow our homes, our clothes, our vehicles, our food, our furniture, amusements and even our associates, so that every progressive man, woman and child is ever consciously or unconsciously on the alert for new varieties of life’s activities.

The old and frequently experienced naturally, in time, becomes commonplace, and that seems to apply, in general, to companions and love as well as to other matters of human well-being. That inherent urge for variety is also one of the two deep-seated causes for the rapid increase of divorces whether we like it or not. The other fundamental cause is the discordant outside ownership of the give-and-take marriage regime. The only remedy is self-ownership instead of outside ownership.