“The tremendous leisure industry that has arisen in the last few generations has been designed to help fill free time with enjoyable experiences. Nevertheless, instead of using our physical and mental resources to experience flow, most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow
I had live-streamed Bonnaroo on my laptop on June 15, 2014. I had been talking to my sister who lived so close to the festival site (Manchester, Tennessee) at the time that she could hear the music. We are both huge Jack White fans so she was ecstatic to be able to hear his set live from her backyard and I was green with envy as I sat in Orlando watching it live-stream on my laptop. But I recorded a few bits and pieces of his set onto my voice recorder on my iPhone as I listened. Today I was going through all my old voice memos and heard one from Jack's Bonnaroo set that I wanted to share. It's just something that I've thought of many times and to hear someone else say it was pretty cool.
He quotes a conversation he had with a movie director one time who said, "I think films are so strange. If an alien came down and walked into a movie theater, and watched [all the people watching] two people talking to each other on a screen, an alien would've said to a human being, 'so you come in here and pay money, your hard-earned money, to sit down and watch two people talk to each other? Why don't you do that at home? Why don't you do that at home?'"
I just think that's interesting. I've always felt a little strange watching TV or watching a movie. (don't get me wrong, I can binge-watch all 9 seasons of The Office, and I also love Grey's Anatomy) but I've always thought, "why am I sitting here watching other people do things? It's weird. Why don't I go out and do things?"
It's also a topic covered in a book I read a few years ago called, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. In it, he writes, "Although watching TV is far from being a positive experience—generally people report feeling passive, weak, rather irritable, and sad when doing it—at least the flickering screen brings a certain amount of order to consciousness. The predictable plots, familiar characters, and even the redundant commercials provide a reassuring pattern of stimulation. The screen invites attention to itself as a manageable, restricted aspect of the environment. While interacting with television, the mind is protected from personal worries. The information passing across the screen keeps unpleasant concerns out of the mind.”
I guess my point is, watching movies and TV has its place. Sometimes we need to do something mindless and escape our reality for a while. I just think we need to be careful not to go overboard and let our lives slip away. It feels so much better to create something yourself, whether you're dancing, singing, writing, painting, crafting, designing a video game, a website, starting your own biz, quilting, making handbags out of your cat's shedded fur...
Anyone else agree?
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