Lulled to Complacency?

Well, the fall is upon us, and I'm back in town consistently enough to write again. This weekend, I went for a drive for fresh apples with my family, I took in a movie and dinner with some friends, I watched the backlog of television that I recorded over the past week, I cheered on both my favorite professional team and my own students in football wins, and I played several games of cards. That's a weekend in my life during the school year, unless I'm in the middle of a performance run (in which case, it's off to the theatre on Friday and Saturday nights).

So just what of value have I actually done this weekend?

I'm not quite sure.

Of course, time with my family and friends is important time well spent. That's not what I mean. But of all the things I do, and I think I'm not all that far off from "everyman America" in my weekend sample this weekend, what have I actually accomplished? Not much... not much at all.

I can't help but wonder at the diversions that we find so important and pour our hearts into within our culture. Certainly fan-ship of sports is one of the most common passtimes, as is taking in the pseudo-arts in mass media (movies, television). What do we take from these experiences? I watch people watching sports, and the activity seem so very vicarious to me - we cheer and rant and ride the emotional roller coaster with the team, sulk away after a loss and share high-fives after a win - but we didn't DO anything. The mass media even moreso - we observe these incarnations of theatre not as an artistic audience, but more as a patient, taking intravenous feeds of emotion from the stories we see on the screen.

Just what, do you suppose, is this doing to us? Sure, the crowd and the audience are important... and a bit of escapism is healthy for anyone... but I wonder if we don't all go too far. Instead of watching a game or two occasionally to appreciate the athleticism of our favorite practitioners, we watch every matchup, as if it were a religion; instead of discriminatingly taking in a movie or television show that we have reason to believe will be a work of art worth our time, we sit down to virtually tolerate mediocrity, and when there are works of artistic value, we are so grateful that we worship them weekly like a cult.

We're pretty weird, huh?

I just wonder, if you compare our culture to those around the world, if what you might find might be that other cultures balance their escapism as a minority of their time, offset by a majority share in their life of active striving toward achievement. And I don't just mean work, here... I mean in free time too. It's as if the masses would all rather watch the success of the few shining stars, somehow feeling that they "share" in their accomplishments and victories, gaining a false sense of achievement from their achievements. We even have ways to provide ourselves with a sense of achievement for achieving a largely meaningless goal (heard of video games?).

Now, I'm not trying to be depressing here... actually, I'm feeling kind of excited. A few hours ago, this all hit me, and I started doing rather than watching. I finally worked toward a few projects I've been putting off for months, and even completed two, with results of which I'm particularly proud. And guess what? I haven't felt this good in many days. I feel energy, motivation, and optimism I haven't had in me for quite some time. I rather frightened my wife with my mood several times today.

One step further... how much is the world missing out on because we are letting ourselves be lulled into that complacent trance? How many inventions, how many victories, and how many miracles have been waived unknowingly by someone instead letting their life pass them on a screen? And how much more could we do, collectively, if we all broke out of the trance... if we all stretched our potential... if we all applied our minutes and hours to making dreams into realities rather than being content with the dreams?

It's a lot to wrap my mind around, but I'm looking forward to trying.

But for now, I'm going to go watch some TV before bed.