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A spectator society
A friend and I were talking asynchronously the other day**, and she put forward this interesting idea:
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."
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."
no subject
It feels like false premises to me, because for example attending the performance of a play is not a form of human disconnection, it is participation in the communal activity which is the experience of this piece of art. The entire premise of fandom—which is just a specialized subset of the common referents of a culture—is the connections that people form through their shared knowledge of plays or music or books or films or television or sports. It doesn't feel to me like some second-order, glassed-off way of being in a society, and it feels deeply peculiar to me to cast the enjoyment of art as such. [edit] Do I think it's dangerous to treat the real lives of people like a fictional narrative scripted for the entertainment of third parties? Duh. But I am not sure that's a participation-vs-spectatorship problem.
no subject
I'm thinking maybe the question or the idea loses something in the absence of the whole correspondence, a fact that's interesting in itself. An idea floating untethered to the conversation that came before could mean all sorts of things, and so elicits all sorts of responses that are surprising to me--because I have the correspondence and know that [X, Y, or Z] are not at all what my friend was suggesting or meaning. So this has been a lesson for me in how sharing things contextless is not a very wise idea. (I mean, I should know that? But.)
Trust me when I say that my friend in no way thinks that attending a performance of a play is a form of human disconnection, or that fandom sharing is a glassed-off way of being in society ... But there was no way for you to know that from just the quote, and I share your rejection of these notions--as my friend would, too.
About the last thing you say, "I am not sure that's a participation-vs-spectatorship problem"--can you say more? Tell me more about how you're thinking about it?