“Panem et Circenses.”
From 1980s when our houses had a TV with just one or two channels and programs, today we have hundreds. If this wasn’t enough, there is the ubiquitous internet and social media. Everyone has a phone and entertainment at their fingertips. We all love to look into the future and make prophecies. It is only when some of them come true do we say to ourselves, be careful what you wish for.
Published in 1949, the dystopian ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ was a scary novel by George Orwell warning us about the complete denial of individuality in totalitarian states. Since then we have witnessed the effects of totalitarianism in Germany, the (former) USSR as well as China. Another writer, Aldous Huxley, saw a different possibility in his book, ‘Brave New World’, where people themselves lose their individuality to intoxication.
Another less well-known work was produced in 1985 by Neil Postman called ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’. The author talked about how entertainment in the form of television was taking over the senses of people leading them to move away from text and reason. People were moving away from the age of reason to the age of television. In the introduction to the twentieth-anniversary edition of the book, the author’s son, Andrew Postman, wrote,
“Twenty years isn’t what it used to be. Where once it stood for a single generation, now it seems to stand for three. Everything moves faster. ‘Change changed,’ my father wrote in another book. A lot has changed since this book appeared. News consumption among the young is way down. Network news and entertainment divisions are far more entwined, despite protests.
While the online communities are increasing, Andrew states, other communities are collapsing. Far fewer people join clubs that meet regularly, fewer families eat dinner together, and people don’t have friends over or know their neighbours the way they used to.”
None of that looks wrong to us from a lived experience point of view. We were becoming more alone then than ever, more virtual than real. However, one wonders how the twentieth-edition introduction compares to 2022 since another advancement was coming into being by then, the social media. Around the same time when Andrew was drafting the introduction, a few more events had happened or were about to be set in motion. Facebook and LinkedIn had started their operations some time ago and Twitter would begin in 2006.
On the other end, automation has picked up a lot since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century making us work for fewer hours than in the past to maintain the same standard of living. An average US worker used to work more than 3000 hours a year in the 1850s, whereas, now an average US worker works only 1800 hours. Across the world, the working hours have come down by 20 to 30 hours a week. Not all this reduction can be pinned to improvement in the technology, some also came about because of better work policies. However, the net result of this is the increased availability of leisure time for the people.
The leisure time available today varies between 3 to 6 hours a day with more developed nations at the higher end and the developing ones at the lower. In order to understand leisure, let us look a little into the book Recreation and Leisure in Modern Society by Krauss. Leisure in ancient times was not clearly demarcated from work though it was always present in the form of games, music, dancing and other arts. From Egypt, to Asseria and Babylonia and to Greece, the activities carried out in the name of leisure were part of education. From wrestling to singing, they helped either in the future wars or to learn about the past and remember history. A lot of it was also a form of worship. The meaning of leisure slowly changed, and perhaps, regressed. The Romans supported play for utilitarian rather than aesthetic or spiritual reasons.
The Roman society had four social classes: senators, curiae, plebs and the coloni. The Plebs or the free common men did not have much to do because most of their work was done by coloni and the slaves. This idleness gave rise to the need of entertaining the common men and thus, came panem et circenses or the bread and circuses. The reign of Emperor Claudius had 159 public holidays a year of which 93 were given to games and feasts at public expenses. To quote from the book, as leisure increased and the necessity for military service and other forms of physical effort declined for the Roman citizen, entertainment became the central life activity of many citizens. Games corrupted, became more and more depraved. Contests were fought to the death, animals and humans were maimed and butchered in cruel and horrible ways.
We all know the rest, the Roman Empire fell. No, not entirely because of entertainment, but that was definitely one of the reasons.
The current situation is not very different. Entertainment is becoming the central life activity. Like a wildfire, the number of users of the social media platforms has grown to 4.48 billion in 2021 with a growth rate of 12.5% year-on-year since 2015. An average person spends around 2 hours and 25 minutes on social media each day, which translates to around 5.7 years of our lives. This is not restricted to adults. The companies want to grow their base and have targeted children as young as 6. It is not the senate that is providing the circus here, it is the large social media companies. And the public unwittingly makes it easier for anyone with the will and the intent to harm them.
The combination of technology easing our lives and giving us more leisure time along with access to the internet and social media is a little worrisome. We can again look back to history and the Roman Empire. Leisure that formed the backbone of a society and helped in the acquisition of knowledge, philosophy, contemplation became a political instrument for entertaining and placating the common people. We are yet again at that juncture, history has come a full circle.
Just like the meaning of leisure corrupted to become the Colosseum, modern leisure that was about meeting friends and playing real games corrupted to become social media, which too is devolving further. It has become a place similar to the colosseum. A lot has been written on the connection between the use of social media and mental health. Trolling, cancel culture, fake news and keyboard activism are not entertainment. They are debauchery of the mind and the perversion of society without making any difference in the real world.
In his original foreword, Neil Postman had already warned us.
“In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
Should entertainment be the central focus of our society? If so, what types of entertainment? Answers to these questions are neither easy nor pleasant but they are necessary. As 2022 begins and we fight the pandemic that has gripped the world, we will become a more virtual world. We will have much more leisure time on our hands. One hopes that we can define leisure again such that it builds a society rather than being the reason for its fall. Else, we are all doomed to enjoy the bread and the circuses.
Wish you all a happy 2022. Keep reading.
