A Document on Diversion found in Charles Brandt’s Archives written by Charles Brandt (date unknown)
Diversion:
In “Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude” in DISPUTED QUESTIONS, Merton writes at some length about “diversion”. He borrows the term from Blaise Pascal, who speaks of divertissement as inane activities which benumb our humanness. Merton sees it as a constant turning to superficial or meaningless actions to avoid facing the realities of life. Just as “bread and circuses” served as the divertissement of ancient Rome, soap operas, and situation comedies offer people in today’s world something that may help them forget the banality and meaningless of much of life.
Merton calls diversion a tyranny, because it controls our lives and deprives us of the freedom to be our real selves.
Society seen as collectivity, while it cannot give us a way of escaping our solitariness entirely, does everything it can do help us forget it. This it does by enticing us to live fictitious lives, lives in which we are out of touch with reality and become victims of diversion, by which he means systematic and planned distraction, which makes it possible for a person to avoid facing the realities of daily human life.