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

[minoanmiss]

Definitely a spectator society. People have this idea that anything creative should only be done at a professional level -- if I had a dollar for everyone who, upon finding out I write fanfic, told me to change the names and try to sell it -- ugh!

[sartorias]

I think we've always been a spectator society. Bread and circuses is not exactly new. Everyone going to the hanging of a notorious highwayman or killer (sometimes walking as much as ten miles in nasty roads, and bring the kiddies!) made that equally clear. We're curious about others. If there's something to watch, we watch it, without necessarily wanting to do it. And the more we watch, the more we want to see those skilled at the thing, as the surprise aspect has waned. Ancient Romans wanted to see gladiators fight, not a bunch of farmers or whatever whacking at each other. Likewise those who like to entertain have always been with us; since the advent of theaters, then radio, then TV/film those who like to entertain left the local scene to go where stuff is made so more could see them. But that doesn't mean local stuff has ended. It's just not the only game in town.

That curiosity and willingness to watch something surprising, exciting, or scary extends to social engagements, I think, as well. In the days when the only others to see were your neighbors, well, you listened to gossip as suited your particular personality, but the old saying about everyone knowing everyone else's business was a saying for a reason. You didn't talk about the mundane stuff, but the exciting, maddening, scary, or tragic things. Now you can know everything about [pick your celebrity/sports player/politician/writer/etc] because of the internet but I see it as the same as yapping about family/friends/village or tribe..

My impression is colored by the ton of reading that I did years ago, about the rise of literacy, especially among women, and how that pretty much transformed society. Men still ran things, but women's influence is only in the last few decades being understood. What changed was the methods of being curious about others: reading.

[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!

[light_of_summer]

I'm not sure if it's useful to generalize by saying, "we've become a society of..."

From my own experience, I was taught to sew as a child in 4-H. I only liked part of the process, but I've used it occasionally as a teenager and an adult. I learned to crochet as quite a young child, and was fascinated with it, then, though I haven't done much of it as an adult. I attempted to learn to knit almost as young, and utterly failed at that time, but I succeeded in teaching myself to knit, out of a book, as an adult, and I still occasionally knit things.

I liked the dancing that I learned to do in school, so I sought out ways to keep dancing and learn other ways to do it, or to do other movement forms like Tai Chi and Ba Gua, as an adult.

And I liked making art, in school, so I've made art, off and on, as a student/amateur, throughout my life. I liked singing in school and in the church of my childhood, so I've also sought out some opportunities to sing in other contexts.

So, I think I discovered, pretty early, that there were things that I enjoyed doing, and whether some people made money at them or not was almost irrelevant to me—the exception to that for me was theater, which I very much enjoyed doing in high school, but which I didn't pursue afterwards, because it involved huge time and energy commitments, even back then, and I felt like I could have a better balance, in my time in college, and a better balance and a better chance of making a good living, in my adult life, by using my time and energy to pursue other joys and learn and practice more easily salable and financially rewarding skills.

It probably helped me, when I was a child, that my one living grandmother was a dedicated crafter, and that my mother did some sewing, and that both my mother and my father did some amateur painting. And they supported me in learning these things, too, via 4-H and one childhood art class.

I also had piano lessons for a time, in childhood, and played musical instruments, in school, for a couple of years. I dropped my formal studies of making instrumental music fairly quickly, though, because I didn't enjoy practicing. However, I played the family piano for my own enjoyment (mostly by ear), and I've bought and played with a variety of small and large musical instruments during parts my adult life. It probably also helped me, here, that neither of my parents insisted that I keep studying a musical instrument when I wasn't enjoying the practice.

Throughout my life, I've found other people learning and practicing and enjoying similar things, so I've never really had the feeling that we were a society of spectators—I almost always knew other makers, students, and/or participants!

But if I think about what childhood learning was like for my younger brother, I don't think he came out of childhood with as much love of learning things or making things as I had. He had a harder time in school, both academically and with being bullied. And sexism about making some kinds of things was more common, then, than I think it is now. Physical accomplishments were more socially accepted, and he learned to ride both skateboards and unicycles, which I never got good at.

So, that's two children living in the same household, but experiencing different social expectations. For children whose parents didn't or couldn't support them in learning things outside of school, it was probably a lot harder to develop love of learning to make things. And my impression is that opportunities to enjoy things like art and dancing within school may be less commonly available, now, then they were then.

I feel fortunate that I got so many chances to learn enjoyable things, and I wish everyone were as fortunate.

One positive note about changing times—I think it is much more common and accepted for boys and young men to study and practice dancing, now, than it was when I was growing up, though I'm not sure if that general acceptance extends beyond break-dance types of dancing.

The existence of the Web has brought new opportunities for both learning and performing. I don't know if that's changed the proportion of makers vs. spectators or not—it would be an interesting question for someone to study.

And, on a final note, the COVID-19 pandemic (and particularly the frighteningly unknown dangers of possibly catching long covid) have had a seriously chilling effect for me on in-person, social kinds of making—I no longer feel it's wise for me to go to an in-person crafting circle or dance event, or to cook with my friend Debbie. I no longer consider seeking out people to sing with. I would be seriously wary of even taking an in-person art class, even though I could do that masked, and maybe with prudent social distancing. I hate feeling like I need to forego so many kinds of joys for the sake of my health and to maximize my chances of keeping my independence for (hopefully) another decade or two. But I see so many people blithely shopping unmasked that I guess this is only a concern for a small proportion of the population.

[green_knight]

I'd say that sports and performances have always been for audiences - two kids start scrapping and a chorus of little voices forms around them, going 'fight fight fight' (source: I live close to a primary school).

And then you have a long period of penny dreadfuls and public hangings and murder ballads and soap operas, all designed to appeal to the base instincts of the audience, and people discussing the lives of Bobby and Sue Ellen. the major shift in my lifetime is that we more and more treat not only celebrities, but ordinary people (who blog, have Youtube channels) as protagonists in a soap opera. The less interactive social media become, the more people use them to talk down from a platform at the masses, the more they become 'celebrities' in their own right and their movements are dissected by an every-hungry audience.

And then I remember how in Jane Austen's time, everyone was sitting around the fire while one person read out the letters about What Our Edith Did Last Month In Brighton and I wonder whether this hasn't always been a part of humanity, only for a short time we focused mostly on fictional characters and we're coming full circle again.

[sovay]

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?

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.

[http://lotuslandfineart.com/velvetrope/]

I can only respond anecdotally: everyone I know participates in social relationships, even if those relationships are primarily from a distance. The ability to communicate readily with people from different parts of the country or world has freed us from the limitations of our local circles. That would have done me a world of good as a child growing up in a pretty insular family and religious group. Once I had internet access I was better able to be myself and participate more fully in relationships than ever before.

[watervole]

I've been positively fighting back against this for the last year. I realised I was becoming isolated and took action.

I've got back in touch with friends I hadn't seen in years and now meet up with a friend for lunch at least once a week.

there's the Jehova's Wittness who knocked on my door over 40 years ago when I was pregnant and bored. She never did convert me, but we built up a good friendship.
There's a friend who used to be in a morris team with me, and left for health reasons. We went round a museum together yesterday.
A friend I only made two years ago, but is now very dear to me (and her kids and my granddaughter get on like a house on fire). We meet up every other Saturday.

It takes effort to reach out to people you've lost contact with, and say 'I miss you, let's meet up'
But it's definitely worth it.

[anna_wing]

Making your own fun needs energy, knowledge, time and resources. If you're short of all four, spectating is the available option for most people.

[smokingboot]

Were we ever in a situation where we could spectate 24/7 before? I don't think so, and am not sure that's good for us. It feels like vicarious life and a substitute for activity and creation.

[lokifan]

I don't know if I agree exactly but I do think it makes sense that parasocial relationships got stronger in the covid lockdowns. Like apparently in the UK, at least, our level of social activities and loneliness still aren't back to what they were. And I think a lot of people got comfort from not so much 'this one person talks to the camera like we're friends', which is what so many people imagine Youtube or whatever being about, but from watching two or more friends be together and how they interact with each other. I definitely watched more Youtube that was 'two friends play video games together', anyway, and I bet I wasn't the only one.

[rimturse]

That's actually a very interesting question. For myself, I've never been into watching sports for the very reason that watching other people play has never made sense to me. I'm not keen on social relationships programs either, and now you've made me think if it's for the same reason as me not being interested in watching sports.

That said, I do like movies, series, plays, and books, which doesn't fit with the above.

I agree that there's a difference between something being effortful and something being miserable. And that sometimes you need to be effortful in order to avoid being miserable. Building something strong, like friendships or relationships, don't always take effort, though, at least not in my experience. :)