I will try to use this space to start to think through some thoughts on participation and observation. I saw two young people sitting near each other using mobile devices to send messages to other people, including each other.My aging mind immediately went to criticism, but I did manage to slow myself down. When i was young, parents complained that we were on the phone too much and had the radio on in the car for music instead of a ball game. Is it not merely another form of communication. It would have been easier to deal with my shyness around girls to be able to text a message instead of sweating and stammering in person. When is face to face communication superior to other methods of talking? Who am I to judge methods of communication, just because I don’t use them?
When I was younger, people made jokes about tourists taking many pictures. i must admit that a vision of purgatory for me was sitting through a slide show of people showing their vacation pictures. Now it seems that folks are compelled to take pictures of any trivial happening. At the same time, if someone suffers a terrible loss in the home, we look for pictures. It is as if an event is not occurring unless it is pictured, and now captured in that awful word, a selfie. It is as if an event is not in progress unless it is being documented and published to a yawning world. I wonder what is the impusle to publicize one’s everyday activity and what doe sit say about a sense of self?
As I prepare, my favorite sporting event commences, March Madness.I have no favorite teams this year. .Still, I root like crazy for teams about whom I know nothing, other than they threaten an upset.How can we pour so much feeling into watching an event in which we do not participate? At the same time, i am mystified how anyone can watch golf on TV or a mid season baseball game and not fall asleep within seconds. Fandom is a vicarious participation, and it has become one of the last refuges for sharing an interest in an area beyond oneself, to experience a bit of community.Where does all the energy for fans come from?
I worked the primary election on Tuesday. In our precinct, we had 95 people enter the polls. A good percentage of them did not seem to grasp the notion of primary election instead of a general election in November.a common comment was, one has no right to complain unless one goes to the polls.What factors influence such low voter turnout:alienation, despair, apathy, what?
As one can imagine, it is a long day setting up the polling place and staying after 7PM to shut it down. We did not have enough d to do. One of the topics that seemed to energize our little group was how difficult it was to listen to a sermon since a person talking is boring.I hear the same complaint frequently in a Bible Study I attend as sort of an outside observer.We talk about participation in worship, but frequently hymn singing is being replaced by being an audience for the music. We often mumble the prayers and responses, even if they are sometimes astonishingly beautifully written. Perhaps we bring an expectation of a certain feeling state being evoked for us to call an event participatory.where does the sense of being a critic of religious ritual as performance emerge? Why does such a small thing as sunday service attendance arouse such strong feeling?
Participating and observing are both fundamental aspects of our lives. Sometimes we seem to merge them. How will this affect relationships in our common future?
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