I think we all need to give up our addictions to the internet.
Until around eight years ago, I successfully resisted all aspects of 'spectator culture': I never watched TV (and campaigned against my siblings watching TV); I rarely went to sports games or theatre: I prefered to spend my time participating rather than watching. The internet has changed this.
The internet is 'interactive' to a small degree, however I believe it is overwhelmingly passive.
Since I gained my first hotmail address in 1998, I have been glued to the computer screen. Early on, I subscribed myself to email lists that sent voluminous tracts of mail to my slow computer, occupying me sometimes for eight hours at a time. The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator List was the worst, sending many threads exploring idiosyncratic commonalities between us INFP's, spread across continents and mainly in North America. Since then, being on many different activist lists has sometimes felt like I was taking action, when in reality I wasn't doing much.
In its most recent issue, The Ecologist explores this phenomenon, describing the gadgets that surround us as "Electric Cabaret", allowing easy access for marketers to make their presence known in our spare time, and enabling us to take refuge from the problems of everyday life. The author writes of the role of Cabaret in Weimar Germany, when 'Cabarets provided refuge from social ills fomenting in the streets, at home and at work, where the bourgeoisie could escape the apocalyptic horsemen on the horizon.'
Such is the state of denial in our world today. (to be continued)
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