We all know what interacting means. You have positions and roles in society. As such, you actively engage with family, friends, co-workers, strangers and more while playing the game of life. You derive a sense of belonging, accomplishment and more through these interactions. You also learn and grow as an individual; you realize what you're missing in life, as well as what you're so lucky to have. All of this wonderful human experience, however, has been under attack for many years by a societal plague best understood as spectatoritis! I and many other like-minded friends of mine talked about it, but we didn't come up with the term. Instead, we found references to an almost prophetic book from 1938 called Spectatoritis, written by a certain Jay B. Nash. In his book, Nash argued that because Americans had never before been confronted with such large swaths of leisure time, the country had not developed a “philosophy of leisure.” Without this philosophy, people were falling victim to what he dubbed “spectatoritis:” Here is an excellent excerpt for you to consider:
The machine age has, of course, already supplied an unexampled wealth of leisure and what happens? The average man who has time on his hands turns out to be a spectator, a watcher of somebody else, merely because that is the easiest thing. He becomes a victim of spectatoritis—a blanket description to cover all kinds of passive amusement, an entering into the handiest activity merely to escape boredom. Instead of expressing, he is willing to sit back and have his leisure time pursuits slapped on to him like mustard plasters—external, temporary, and, in the end, “dust in the mouth.”
The greatest point, however, is that Nash warned this would only increase, leading masses of people down a bad path with millions of lives spent, in their entirety, spectating versus interacting with other people and searching for individual greatness in individual lives.
Now, dearest readers, you may ask how this translates into 2018; after all, the book was published in 1938. Well, it seems to me like Nash was right. We have record viewership during Superbowl, with no requirements that have to be met in order to participate, and no real bonding or meaningful interactions of the masses spectating, even if they are friends spending time in the same pub or living room. Then, we have concerts where we go to spectate en masse, getting excited by artists far removed from us, while friends and stranger spectating together with us are not interacting with us in any meaningful way at all. Megachurches all over North America offer "experiences" with music, video clips and entertainment-industry-level showmanship that makes you watch but not really interact and build connections with your fellow believers- just the stage and the message. Oh, and let's not forget social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, where we consume news feeds and posts of people we either barely on never interact with. It's passive, minute-on-your-lips-but-lifetime-on-your-hips type of experience that compels us to become fat and lazy- both mentally and physically. It wants our time and money, makes us think there's no such thing as overindulging, and it keeps going until it wears us down.
The consequences of this degenerative evolution are serious. We are getting more and more used to experiencing life vicariously through others. We spectate other people's virtues and cheer on their successes without cultivating our own as much as we could if we just looked inwards and immediately around us. If this continues, we will collectively get to the point where most of us will have no skin in any of life's myriads of games, and that will be our collective tragedy and something that future- hopefully better- societies will judge us on.
What can we do about it? Well, the answer to that is as individual as your own life. Still, there are a few points that will hopefully make you think. If you really love music and concerts, do you know any local musicians- famous or getting there? Why not? If you're deeply religious, do you talk about religion with other religious family members, or are you trying to make friends with more religious people? Why not? If you're a red pill conservative, are you good friends with those in your area or are you just spectating Ben Shapiro and other such people online? Or, if you're totally liberal, are you good friends with other Michael Dyson fans so you can talk about stuff, or do you just spectate him in debates e.g. the one with Jordan Peterson? The point is, if you're passionate about spectating something, get some skin in the game and grow as a person. Pretty soon, others will spectate you ;)