232. The Spectacle Consumes Us

The spectacle consumes our attention. We see major events happening around us and we cannot look away. The events themselves might not impact us directly, but we know they will eventually produce problems for our community and our future.

We are unable to stop ourselves from watching every change in the emerging situation and every action taken in response to it. We feel we must focus on these things, for it is here that the problem seems to be located. We believe power originates at the top, and we think any possible solution must also be implemented at the top. Our sociopolitical structures reflect this understanding, and they frequently demonstrate how the decisions of a single person with power can have an enormous impact.

But concentrating our attention on the problem at the highest levels leaves us with little of it for anything else. We become completely distracted, and our actions become scattered and ineffective. We end up stuck, reduced to mere spectators watching a distant story unfold. We cheer when events seem to go our way, and we rage when they do not. All of this is nothing but impotence.

If our attention were open and free, we would notice that we have the ability to create real change in ourselves and the people around us. It is here, in our immediate surroundings, that we have the opportunity to develop our own power. In our local communities, we can find others who share our values and build new organizations, not to foolishly oppose elements of the spectacle and thus become it, but to address the real problems that produce it.

Doing this is no easy task. It means freeing ourselves from the anxiety that pulls our attention to things we cannot possibly influence. This anxiety is a form of suffering that arises from our own attachments, so liberating our attention requires learning about our attachments and the suffering they produce.

The work of freeing ourselves from the spectacle begins in ourselves. If we cannot make changes there, then we cannot possibly make changes out in the world. It is when we are more aware and more free of suffering that we will see how to deploy our creativity and compassion to work more cooperatively with others and become a powerful force for good.