Voyerism.

"I live my life vicariously through the people at the laundromat."

Toni once said this to me, and I laughed hysterically at the time, and I always said that I would use that as an opening line if I ever wrote a book. Well, I'm not a writer, and have no plans to ever write a book, so I am using it here. Copyrighted btw.

The more I think about this comment, the more I think it is entirely appropriate for society today. Living lives vicariously implies that we are not living them ourselves, not experiencing things ourselves, but living through others. We do this everyday, almost everything we undertake involves voyerism to some extent.

Television: Whether it's a movie, escaping for a couple hours into a world of someone elses making, or watching "reality" television, we are on the outside looking in. (And could someone please tell me whats realistic about reality television? Who lives in a loft with 8 strangers, or battles others on a deserted island, or races around the world? Who does this stuff? No one. Reality television would be watching a middle class family race around form activity to activity, or watching a single mother try to make ends meet month by month. Reality television my arse, talk about a misnomer.)

Sports: We have turned sports players into heroes. We sit on the sidelines paying exhorbitant amounts of money to watch these people crash around and throw things. Very few of us participate, but many of us are fanatical about watching.

We whine and complain about 'society' and politicians and how everyone is screwing our world up, but we don't do anything to fix it, we just bitch about it and then move on to the next thing we want to watch.

There are so many other things that I was thinking about when I was thinking about this that I can't remember now, and I must get back to work, but how do we change this? The media has such a strong hold on our lives they control so many aspects, do they have a hand in encouraging the idle lifestyle of voyerism that I'm thinking about?

I'm not communicating this as clearly as I'd like I'm sorry.