Paying someone else to live your life
by Bob on August 5, 2007
Someone once said this to me about people these days in our world. "By watching a lot of television [and by extension, theatre, movies, etc.], we are paying for the privilege to see someone else live our lives for us".
Well, that was a profound statement to me about our modern world. Or even any period of human history.
It's largely true. People have become veritable "couch potatoes" watching a zillion channels on TV and surfing all the time through the channels with a minimal attention span. And it's not even interactive in any true sense.
So, effectively, no one is living life. Not even the actors on the TV who, despite Shakespeare saying that all the world's a stage, which is true, are playing roles too. Except the actors are active not passive.
It's silly to pay so much money for cable TV services, pay-per-view movies, etc. and watch other people go to England on holiday when WE could go to England on holiday and have a great real time moving our own legs and locomoting all about the countryside and cities.
Why must we pay good hard-earned money to watch a bunch of electrons do it on TV ? Or maybe do it, for there is an illusion of cinema and TV as to whether the actors are on location or in front of a blue screen in a studio.
Ancient cultures took performing arts as an active expressive way of life. Not to replace life. That came later in our time.
Dionysus was the patron of tragedy and the theatre arts. Besides what most people think of him as the god of wine, he was really charged with relieving men and humankind of their everyday tiring routine. This could be done with a merry wine feast, or a beautifully moving theatre performance in ancient Greece. But it was not passive for the audience in many ways as it is now. And it was in an open-air theatre. If it rained, too bad. Show cancelled.
We miss the Greek chrous and their dance to a ritualistic altar of Dionysus as it in fact started.
The exception has become the rule. We watch others living life instead of our actually living our lives. That should be the exception as Dionysus presented it. But it has become the everyday rule. Escapism.
Ah, but for the snows of yesteryear. Francois Villon.
No wonder Jim Morrison of the doors called himself an incarnation of Bacchus. Jim knew how to live, albeit flagrantly. He didn't pay anyone at all to live out his life.