A spectator society

[asakiyume]

A friend and I were talking asynchronously the other day**, and she put forward this interesting idea:

A thought: we've become a spectator society, where people often watch sports or plays rather than participating themselves. Are we also becoming a society where many people watch social relationships (on TV, the internet, etc.) rather than participating?

What do people think? More than an agree or disagree, what questions does the question raise for you, or what roads does it take your thoughts down?

For me, it got me thinking about the difference between something being effortful and something being miserable. Building something strong takes effort, and effort, by definition, involves work, which isn't always fun. But that's by no means the same as misery. You can rightly want to avoid misery, but I think you're likely to be disappointed in life if you try to avoid effort. ---But that's just one tangent. What does the question raise for you?

**"talking asynchronously" is my new way of saying "exchanging letters."

Comments

[raven]

I read a book recently called Ashes to Admin, which is a memoir by an anonymous writer who spent many years administrating Public Health Act funerals. I don't know if you have them where you are? They're "pauper's" funerals, administered by local councils for people who have no one - no family, no friends and relations - to arrange for what happens to them after the die. What she says in the first chapter and every chapter after is this: I know what you're imagining, but no one has no one. The alcoholic homeless guy has the guys at the hostel where he used to stay, worrying about what happened to him. The guy who really had no family, never married, outlived everyone, was sent on his way by the town's model railway society who'd loved having him as a member. A family member comes despite a long estrangement. The woman whose body was washed up, with no name; the town left presents on her grave.

And you know, that's one set of stories from one place at one time, and I feel like we are always predicting the tearing apart of the fabric of society; but it will take time to convince me that we "spectate" on other people's social relationships in place of our own. I'm also not really convinced that sport and theatre are things I should want to do, rather than spectate; acting and playing sport are completely different activities from watching plays and watching sports, not to mention the fact they do need spectators!

[asakiyume]

So when the author said, "I know what you're imagining, but no one has no one," and then there are examples of how no one has no one, is she stressing to the reader that yes, as the reader imagines, no one has no one? Or was it she who was pointing out to the reader that no one has no one because (opposite reading) readers *don't* realize that no one has no one?

I think indeed we are always predicting the tearing apart of the fabric of society, and yet, of course, as long as there are a handful of people present someplace, there is a society. I guess someone is always feeling unease or distress about changes and someone else is feeling exhilaration at those same circumstances. (And there are others who may not be feeling either of those things.) I wonder what this reality means, or rather, what we can do with this recognition...


Watching sports and theater are different from participating in those things, and I agree that doing them isn't somehow morally or spiritually better than watching them--after all, they're both things that require audiences! So being in the audience is fulfilling a necessary role. But I do think too that people lose something if they feel that the thing they're watching is something they themselves could never do. Or maybe it's not even that they're thinking wistfully, "Oh I could never do that," but simply that it doesn't occur as a possibility.