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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
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.
no subject
And I had never thought about what you say in the second paragraph, but YES! How much more you can talk about when you're able to hear about faraway people/places/habits/happening. And being able to read really does open up not only the whole world, but all of history ... or anyway, all of history that's written down.