Category: 8 SOCIETY

Elements

One, two, or three? If you are lucky you can have all four. But then usually the trouble also begins.

I am standing with my feet deep in black sand. (EARTH) The Atlantic is playing tag (or is it Hsing Yi?) with me, attacking me playfully, then retreating for a new onslaught. (WATER). My lungs are drinking fresh oxygen. (AIR) And from above the yellow sphere with the warm rays, responsible for life on Earth, is competing with my sun screen (FIRE).

I seldom experience all of these elements in such a positive way. But when the quartet is so strong a fifth member tends to join in. I don´t mean ether, I mean tourists.

How fresh the air, water, sun and sand, and how dull and boring we humans. I don´t want to resort to irony or satire here, but tourist resorts… what to say about them?

Mainly that I don´t understand them.

Definition: Resort — a place to which people frequently or generally go for relaxation or pleasure, providing recreation and entertainment.

I can see the relaxation.

I can see the entertainment.

Happy new 2016!

But I can´t really see the pleasure.

Of course people find pleasure in different places. This whole resort thing reminds me of a children’s holiday camp (the Swedish “kollo”), only more boring. Seems that it´s mainly couples coming here. Seems they don´t want too much change from home. They don´t seem to interact with other couples, and not too much with each other, either.

The vibrations are slow, but not meditative. (Old French sortir, to go out.)

So wherein lies the pleasure? Perhaps in being lax, walking around in shorts and flip-flops. Perhaps in exchanging one set of predictability for another.

Of course I am not tourist material and therefore cannot fathom the mystery. “Tourist” for me means a certain attitude towards life and its experiences: Not too much of anything, not too different from home, not too cold, not too close, not too strong, not too pleasurable, and most of it done in groups.

But I am not complaining. I am intensely enjoying four of five elements. And three of them are praised in this classical summer song.

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Don´t be a clown

Unless you are one, a real clown, that is. Today many of us are amateur clowns, amateur entertainers.

I have seen this in myself, how I take on the role and costume of The Entertainer of My Friends. On Facebook and similar places.

“Yes! I need to post a great video now, or a fantastic article. This will raise my value in others´ eyes. Isn´t that what the “attention economy” is about…?”

Not only that, also the Attention Begging and Attention Whoring.

I am not condemning anybody since I see this impulse in myself. But I try to step back from it and reason with myself: Who gave me the role of entertaining my friends?

I will certainly try to do that when they come home to me or if I´ve invited them to a party. Without a doubt, and with much pleasure! But now I speak of digital entertainment at a distance (tele). There´s a great difference between the two.

In the analog world entertainment-energy is flowing to and fro, there´s conversation, instant responses, nobody is hiding their face or voice or body behind a computer screen.

In digital “entertainment” most everything is hidden, masked, non-obvious. Nothing is really flowing; the energy moves like an old car on a bumpy road, sometimes totally still, sometimes jumping madly like a locust: most of the information (tone of voice, the face with its myriad muscles, our gestures, etc) is lacking and is replaced with primitive utterances like LOL, ROFL, LLAH,  PITA and inchoate symbols (smileys) that try desperately but without success to make up for the colossal lack of nonverbal information.

The stage if set for misunderstanding, confusion and stealth. “Entertainment” on that stage is a muddy, unclear affair, hiding all kinds of unobserved motives, like seeking (sometimes desperately seeking) popularity, wanting to show off, wanting to put other people down, wanting to steal other people´s time and attention, and so on.

With that kind of entertainment, who needs neurosis?

But who am I, diarist, to talk? Blogging has the same temptations and dangers. “Aren´t you going to write a new post soon? The last one came, let´s see… fifteen hours ago! Your readership is WAITING!”

And there we are again… in the Delivering Entertainment-business.

So how to get out of it? One way is to change audience. Horatius Flaccus wrote, wisely: satis est equitem mihi plaudere – it is enough if the Knights applaud me. The Knights can be our excarnated friends and mentors, our invisible consortium. Let THEM — not the Facebook-crowd or anonymous readers/ browsers of your blog — nod if they approve of what you do.

The rest should not concern you. As for the clowning, the pros´ do it SO much better.

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