Bread and Circuses

Last evening my family went to see Michael Edgley's Great Moscow Circus and all were thrilled and amazed. It truly is a great circus, full of skilled acrobats, tumblers, entertainers and the most hilarious and wildly imaginative and intelligent pair of clowns I've seen. As the intrepid duo disappeared, my 18 year old son muttered about it all being for children but suddenly came alive when a string of scantily clad young women came bounding out to entertain us with some between-acts gyrations. His clapping suddenly became thunderous and his face lit up; "Now that's what I'm talking about. Now that's a circus!"

I came away ecstatic; the live performance had culminated in a ridiculously exciting act that had the whole audience gasping as the motor bike riders climbed to ever more dangerous and death defying heights in the wheel of death or whatever it was called.  There is nothing like a live performance and even a tame evening of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar leaves you humming with the pleasurable adrenaline and excited chatter of a postprandial nature. (You don't experience that after a meal? Perhaps minus the burping.)

But what struck me was that the same 18 year old son was vociferously bemoaning the fact that he had to wait for thirty minutes or so after being seated before the performance commencement without 'anything to do' as he'd left his phone at home. He asked what we did when young and cheekily suggested we must have carved wheels out of stone or hunted mammoths in the car park with shale spears or sought out small mammals among the seating area to munch on while we waited.  

As i picked a small ankle bone from my teeth and wiped my greasy fingers on my fur skins, I wondered about where we had come to that firstly, my son's education was so woefully lacking that he thought we hunted mammoths here in the south and secondly that he was in no fit condition to entertain himself for such a short time. We had indeed come full circle back to the spectacle of bread and circuses: I provided the bread (by way of hot dogs purchased at a cost that amounted to the foreign debt owed by Somalia and Kenya together) and the circus being his demand for constant entertainment and no work - yes he's still at home and unemployed...

Thomas James Martin in his article with the same title quotes Rome's ancient poet and satirist, Juvenal; "the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now meddle no more and longs eagerly for just two things — bread and circuses."

Martin goes on to say, "Those scornful words... become more meaningful when you understand that Roman citizens became increasingly addicted to free distributions of food and the violent gladiatorial... contests... He felt that Romans had lost the capacity to govern themselves so distracted by mindless self-gratification had they become."

Alice Schroeder writing for Bloomberg in 2011 agrees that Juvenal could have been a contemporary playwright making comment on modern society;

"Americans’ [read world's] addiction to entertainment has been compared to the circuses of ancient Rome... When entertainment dominates a society, it changes more than the culture; it also reshapes the economy. You can see that circuses are where the money is from the rise of digital entertainment, which has steered enormous amounts of discretionary income toward digital content and the devices that run it..."

The contemporary circuses or distractions that we have are numerous: television (in America alone there are over 1700 stations), console and x-box games and internet social media ad nauseum. Being old, I'm not even aware of most of them; I find myself overwhelmed. Many of the tv shows, particularly the invasive reality type like Big Brother et al. and the vicarious violence of many of the x-box games can be seen to be the modern equivalent of the gladiator only it is our own avatar that is slaughtering in the Circus Maximus of modern society. The screen is ubiquitous- in bars, airports, shops, office block foyers, surgeries and most public spaces; you cannot escape the endless stream of 'live updates' and news of the moment by slick, cloned newsreaders.

Was Juvenal right in that we did, in 2nd Century Rome, and have again, in the 21st Century, relinquished our responsibilities? Here in the West we make much of democracy and have fought countless wars and slaughtered millions in its name and continue to do so. America claims the war on terror under that banner and insists the world must have democracy because tyranny is abhorrent. It even seeks to force it on other nations under the guise of freeing its people.​

What is democracy exactly? It's said to have originated in ancient Greece around 500 BC, but other cultures claim it long before that; simple tribalism that is based on a leader advised by head elders is just such a model of basic democracy. ​

Its incarnation in Greece was supposed to have begun in Athens when each member of the population (qualified citizens that is; male and land owning) was called to the capital to spend a year in the senate promoting their own agenda, be it from the perspective of farmer, merchant, teacher... whatever walk of life they were from. This sought to ensure that all subsets are at some time dealt with in government, enacting laws, establishing infrastructure etc.​ for their 'tribe'.

It's a wonderful theory but the nature of power means that the powerful- be it the power that comes from wealth, cunning and manipulation or charisma- will inevitably win. Just look at the schoolyard and you know that the bully always triumphs; the quiet, introverted farmer would have had little chance in out-debating the wealthy, well-educated heir of a senator in matters of who would benefit most in distributing wealth around the nation. The vested interests of the wealthy and powerful will always win out. Unless the masses revolt.

As the population grew and I would hazard a guess, the feasibility of farmers or merchants having a year to spend away from their enterprises declined they in turn declined the honour of serving in senate, so a representative of the people became necessary and voting was settled on (with a vote I imagine). The trouble with voting (and I put my hand up here) is that often the voters have little idea of exactly what or whom they are voting for. What exactly do you base your judgement on prithee? Often I hear that people base their choice of political party on one main issue of concern to them. My own brother is so stymied by cynicism, he voted on the fact that he was promised a new rubbish bin by one party (and he was not alone).

In an article by Natalie Wolchover last year in Life's Little Mysteries entitled People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say, research showed that we are not qualified to vote for our leaders. We have no more idea than a herd of deer have of which stag will or should win- (the biggest and loudest?- so Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been a better president than Obama?- quite possibly as it turns out.) Wolchover said, 

"The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies.

The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments.

As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, "very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is," Dunning told Life's Little Mysteries.​"

Ouch! But as I said, I must admit I am a political neanderthal (just ask my 18 year old). To add to this premise, Glenn Greenwald in an interview with Bill Moyers (in regard to the response by American audiences to the Boston bombing) suggested that people make up their opinions about their political beliefs based on very little and, (inherently) biased information on only a few instances that grab the attention of the general public (ie. an election or bombing or mass shooting- a sensational story). He said,

" What you could see in how people were observing, what it was that they were watching, was their political impressions about the world, about their government, about political debates being formed, based on the very few incidents that they really pay attention to.

And I think that's the reason why incidents like this are incredibly significant in an enduring way, because it shapes how people who don't pay much attention to politics regularly really think about the world.​"

So if our opinions are shaped by biased media (which let's face it, most of the media consortium are) then we are being manipulated into thinking certain things and the media by default, are capable of powers along the spectrum from convicting people to electing presidents and prime ministers. (Surely this makes media ownership by the rich and powerful a desirable thing non?)

We have no idea about who to vote for because we have turned off our interest (and I appreciate it is a complicated issue- for another time); we have stopped being political animals and are spending far too much time watching You Tube videos of cute animals and playing games that addict and distract from what really matters.

When I was at university a few years ago, one of the lecturers, questioned why young students were not out protesting as she had in the sixties and seventies…. Where had the passion and interest and involvement that is associated with the enthusiasm of the young (particularly radical uni students) gone, she asked? Was it a case of (insert croaky old voice) "what you young things need today is a war to sort you out"? Is it true that youth is only galvanised in moments of crisis?

Do we become politically unaware, mentally flabby and develop 'canteen lady arms' because we aren't out there waving placards and pelting our political leaders with eggs in order to bring the proletariat issues to the attention of the fascist leaders? Are we all just back to the lazy Romans wandering the streets in search of circuses to amuse us instead of studying our civic virtues scrolls?

Thankfully I am nothing like these addicted young things that cannot go a moment without glancing longingly at their iPhone and then grabbing it jealously before embarking on some secret phone business. I do however find myself unable to ​go more than a short while without checking my emails or favourite news websites but that is all to do with the furthering of my education and social connections. If I wander over to check on the state of my underwater garden in Nemo's Reef © or over 4 Pics 1 Word © where I am damnably stuck on number 602, is neither here nor there. I am not a circus junkie like the mindless masses.